3 ms·

Absolutely. Deregulated systems are every bit as vulnerable to greed and corruption as regulated ones. With regulation, you have to be careful to avoid rent-see

by namlem 11y ago

Absolutely. Deregulated systems are every bit as vulnerable to greed and corruption as regulated ones. With regulation, you have to be careful to avoid rent-seeking schemes by established interests trying to raise barriers to competition. With deregulation, you have the obvious health, safety, and environmental risks, but you also have the issues of collusion that you mentioned, like price fixing and market segmentation. Fwiw though, there are online-only mattress brands that bypass the establishment by delivering directly to the consumer.

cm3 11y ago
But what other choices than regulation do we have? The regulation has to be regulated and fully transparent. I hope that as long every penny crossing the table is visible we'll have a positive outcome. e.g. US judges feeding inmates to private prison companies they have shares in is an extreme instance of where regulation and oversight failed. > Fwiw though, there are online-only mattress brands that bypass the establishment by delivering directly to the consumer. Yeah and there's one online-only mattress firm that is now shifting to making their own mattresses and selling them as "Anti-Cartel Mattress" and promptly the firms that tried to prevent them earlier from selling their products cheaper than fixed have been trying to sue them for the product name. In German: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/streit-um-eine-matratze-wie-ein-matratzenfabrikant-gegen-den-marktfuehrer-kaempft/11945698.html http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/streit-um-eine-matratz...