5 ms·

I'm not saying you're wrong. I understand where you're coming from. You raise good points. I think we need to add to this list one simple idea: regulation. Hou

I'm not saying you're wrong. I understand where you're coming from. You raise good points. I think we need to add to this list one simple idea: regulation. Housing costs are terrible. They're getting bad even in small towns like mine. There is no way that my house is worth 172k. For many, especially in California and states that followed their lead, housing cost are largely, not solely, due to regulation on new house starts. Environmental impact and associated costs make a new housing community in California on average 1 million dollars more expensive. For many, they don't even put shovel to sod. Health in the US has a lot of this too. Governmental regulations and the AMA drive up the cost of doctors. All of this is well documented. Interestingly, the free market is coming to a possible rescue on the price of generics: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/health/drug-prices-hospitals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/health/drug-prices-hospit... A good chunk of student debt is due to the government printing money for loans that students can't escape. School saw this bottomless supply and acted accordingly. Job exporting has some factors due to regulation too. As do the others in your list. I'm not saying that regulation is bad. I believe in free markets, not unfettered markets. However, a lot of the regulation is old, duplicative, and contradictory. It makes being a business far more complex than it should be. Regulation hampers innovation. We need to remove regulatory cruft at all levels. We need to adopt evidence based regulations.

losteric 9y ago
I'm a strong believer in using minimal but sufficient regulations and taxes to shape market growth. There are some absolutely unnecessary regulations, like the loopholes Tesla has to go through to sell cars because traditional dealerships don't want to lose money, or unfair taxes against green energy - protectionism must die. There are also outdated but reasonable regulations, like Seattle's density regulations. Our housing crisis is caused by the market lagging far behind economic growth because it took years for the public to recognize the city was growing, years to change the laws, and then more years for the normal construction timeline. Density regulations as a concept make sense, but we haven't figured out how to auto-scale limits to avoid falling behind. And then there are areas where we do need more regulations. For example, we absolutely need more regulations on credit cards and loans in addition to better finance education in highschool. Consumers are responsible for being informed, but there's still no excuse for even offering to saddle someone with a high-interest loan that they can never hope to pay off... some people are simply too dumb to understand the math. I like the phrase "evidence-based regulations", but sometimes the evidence is stale or measuring the wrong thing, and the data doesn't guarantee we implement the right system of incentives.
- philipov 9y ago
  The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies. Propose a good plan, and see it get shredded and repurposed to serve those it's supposed to regulate. Congress is cheep, and campaign committees wield the purse strings to keep their members in check on policy issues, so the election system doesn't respond efficiently to abuses. We won't be able to get good regulation until we can get the lobbyists and campaign financiers out of there.
  - m12k 9y ago
    Regulatory capture only really happens when your democratic system has broken down anyway, at which point you have bigger issues than regulation. Which the US absolutely does.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    >The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies. This is like saying "the main problem with laws is..." In fact, this false dichotomy between "more regulation" and "less regulation" is mainly an artefact of corporate lobby groups (plenty of examples in their propaganda of this). It dumbs down the issue to a childlike level and lets them play two political blocs who might have fundamentally similar interests off against one another depending upon what particular legislation they want introduced or repealed.
    - simula67 9y ago
      >>The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies. > This is like saying "the main problem with laws is..." Is it ? A corporation that already pays employees higher than minimum wage can drive out smaller shops that do not pay much more than minimum wage by working to raise the minimum wage. This enables them to raise prices and screw customers over if the smaller shops go out of business. 'Murder laws help murders by allowing them to capture murder laws' Does not quite seem to work
      - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
specialist 9y ago
When you say “regulation”, I hear “market protections.”

losteric 9y ago

I'm a strong believer in using minimal but sufficient regulations and taxes to shape market growth. There are some absolutely unnecessary regulations, like the loopholes Tesla has to go through to sell cars because traditional dealerships don't want to lose money, or unfair taxes against green energy - protectionism must die. There are also outdated but reasonable regulations, like Seattle's density regulations. Our housing crisis is caused by the market lagging far behind economic growth because it took years for the public to recognize the city was growing, years to change the laws, and then more years for the normal construction timeline. Density regulations as a concept make sense, but we haven't figured out how to auto-scale limits to avoid falling behind. And then there are areas where we do need more regulations. For example, we absolutely need more regulations on credit cards and loans in addition to better finance education in highschool. Consumers are responsible for being informed, but there's still no excuse for even offering to saddle someone with a high-interest loan that they can never hope to pay off... some people are simply too dumb to understand the math. I like the phrase "evidence-based regulations", but sometimes the evidence is stale or measuring the wrong thing, and the data doesn't guarantee we implement the right system of incentives.

philipov 9y ago
The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies. Propose a good plan, and see it get shredded and repurposed to serve those it's supposed to regulate. Congress is cheep, and campaign committees wield the purse strings to keep their members in check on policy issues, so the election system doesn't respond efficiently to abuses. We won't be able to get good regulation until we can get the lobbyists and campaign financiers out of there.
- m12k 9y ago
  Regulatory capture only really happens when your democratic system has broken down anyway, at which point you have bigger issues than regulation. Which the US absolutely does.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies. This is like saying "the main problem with laws is..." In fact, this false dichotomy between "more regulation" and "less regulation" is mainly an artefact of corporate lobby groups (plenty of examples in their propaganda of this). It dumbs down the issue to a childlike level and lets them play two political blocs who might have fundamentally similar interests off against one another depending upon what particular legislation they want introduced or repealed.
  - simula67 9y ago
    >>The main problem with regulation is that it's too easy to capture by various corporate lobbies. > This is like saying "the main problem with laws is..." Is it ? A corporation that already pays employees higher than minimum wage can drive out smaller shops that do not pay much more than minimum wage by working to raise the minimum wage. This enables them to raise prices and screw customers over if the smaller shops go out of business. 'Murder laws help murders by allowing them to capture murder laws' Does not quite seem to work
    - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

specialist 9y ago

When you say “regulation”, I hear “market protections.”