4 ms·
"I don't think it's appreciated enough that some forms of regulation actually do make things better for everyone, and that acting only in one's own self-interes
by edanm 10y ago
"I don't think it's appreciated enough that some forms of regulation actually do make things better for everyone, and that acting only in one's own self-interest can lead to results that are provably worse for your own self-interest."
As someone who is libertarian-ish, I find that a funny thing to say which doesn't jive with reality. Western countries usually have huge governments with huge amounts of regulation, and the default assumption of almost everyone around me seems to be that regulation is the way to deal with almost anything we don't like.
So saying that it's not appreciated that some regulation makes things better for everyone sounds to me like saying "it's not appreciated enough that clothes make us warm".
(Unless, of course, you're referring only to specific circles, e.g. libertarian economists).
- marklgr 10y ago> the default assumption of almost everyone around me seems to be that regulation is the way to deal with almost anything we don't like. Well, in my experience, people are very polarized about this: either they want to go to the gulch, or they want a very protective state that deals with everything. Both population seems comparable, number-wise; YMMV.
- philipov 10y agoI think this is an illusion. The way upvoting/clickbait works primarily rewards extreme opinions, so the moderates are quitting the discussion.
- marklgr 10y agoTrue, but I was including real life discussions, with friends, colleagues etc.
- jerf 10y agoThen you have a very skewed sample set. Empirically, libertarians rate in the single-digit percentages of the population. People who conform to the libertarian stereotypes probably even less so; I'm "libertarian" because I would tend to think we're overregulated right now rather than underregulated, but it doesn't mean that I want to indiscriminately slice everything away, nor that I am permanently predisposed to slicing everything away no matter how much we might somehow slice. I'd get off that ride sooner than a lot of other "libertarians". Personally I can't help but reading anyone trying to blame underregulation on libertarians as effectively an admission that they have run out of excuses. There just aren't enough libertarians to have that much of an effect on anything. Even "deregulation" is not generally the libertarians running wild, it's non-libertarians trying to implement a "free market", for some definition of said, but they're generally not libertarians and the same people will happily vote for crony capitalism or a ton of other sorts of regulations.
- marklgr 10y agoYou're refering to true libertarians, but many people like the idea of being one, or at least tell others that they are, even though you're correct that they're often just after some "free market" which is not free at all in practice, or just tax cuts.
- Confusion 10y agoWhen was the last time you heard someone go "you know, those regulations on the plimping of stuffthings really make the world better", versus the last time you heard "damn the government for their ridiculous regulations, costing us money for no good". Being a public servant is a thankless job.
- philh 10y agoNet neutrality seems almost universally praised. The FDA is quite popular too.
- alimw 10y agoThis contributor to the talk page will appreciate no such thing: this whole article is poorly veiled propaganda by the current communist administration to justify government ownership of roads. After all, who but the government could remove a link to benefit "everyone"? By generating this absurd fake propaganda, it hopes to ply public sympathy toward state involvement and ownership. Naturally the actual proposed "facts" are totally rubbish: it is obvious that you could never decrease traffic congestion in an area by removing already congested roads. The article is an obvious hoax from the first sentence: "Braess's paradox, credited to the mathematician Dietrich Braess" redlinks. I've added a deletion tag. 82.113.121.167 (talk) 01:27, 31 March 2010 (UTC)