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> Whatever happened to small government and small bureaucracies? It doesn't protect citizens against wrong-doing by for-profit companies, hence the regulation

> Whatever happened to small government and small bureaucracies? It doesn't protect citizens against wrong-doing by for-profit companies, hence the regulation. There was a time when the medical field was largely unregulated[0], and it was a dangerous/misleading time. Snake oil, anyone? 0. https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/look-back-old-time-medicines https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/look-back-old-t...

CodeCube 8y ago
This is it right here. I can be convinced to be somewhat sympathetic to the view of excessive regulation, and ineffective bureaucracy ... however, I certainly can't be convinced that it's wholesale not necessary. Bad actors can and will take advantage of people, and it needs to be reigned in by "something". I refuse to believe that we can't achieve a balance ... when there's too little regulation, add more. When it becomes too onerous, pare it back. The thing that seems to be missing is that balancing force. The body's immune system is important for regulating and protecting bodily functions, however when things go wrong, they go very wrong (auto-immune diseases, etc); I feel like that's where we are right now.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  >When it becomes too onerous, pare it back Unfortunately one man's onerous is another's not enough when it comes to regulation, and seemingly due to ideology, not rationality.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Worse, well done regulation makes problems go away. Which makes it seem like they are not needed. Consider those mattress tags which actually saved hundred of thousands of lives, but now seem pointless. We could probably get rid of them and nothing bad would happen for decades, but the risk is higher than you might think.
    - null000 8y ago
      Link for the interested https://www.livescience.com/33039-why-do-mattresses-have-do-not-remove-tags.html https://www.livescience.com/33039-why-do-mattresses-have-do-...
  - flowerbeater 8y ago
    Exactly. It's also due to our inability to give straight up answers to questions like, What is the value of a human life? How does that value vary depending on age? What is the worth of an extra month of life? How should we decide where limited medical resources go? Without straight answers to these, every bad story becomes a mob outcry for more regulation.
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      Why would we care about the answers to these questions other than for regulation?
  - da_chicken 8y ago
    At the end of the day "rationality" and "ideology" are more or less synonymous. Few individuals believe their ideology is irrational, after all, and all "rational" really means is, "that which is most consistent with everything else I believe to be true."
    - null000 8y ago
      What bothers me in the context of regulation is how it seems like regulations as a group are frequently called out as "bad and unnecessary", but when it comes to specifics (i.e. specific unnecessary regulations or proposing targeted reforms) it's either crickets, or, in the case of some of the recent regulatory rollbacks, the ideas lie somewhere between "pants-on-head stupid" and "disastrous" [1][2]. Likewise, when people do call out stupid-sounding regulations, it's pretty common to find genuinely good reasoning behind them [3]. I guess I'd be a bit happier if I'd seen anything productive come out of the antiregulatory push in the past decade - instead it seems like it's mostly being used as an intellectual Trojan horse to increase the power of corporations and give them the freedom to pollute indiscriminately. [1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-epa-rolls-back-obama-era-coal-ash-regulations-n892586 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-epa-rolls-back-... [2] - https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-is-now-really-officially-dead-open-internet-congress-now-what/ https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-is-now-really-offic... [3] - https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/02/business/uncertain-hour/country-has-lot-crimes-theyre-all-there-reason-right https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/02/business/uncertain-ho...
User23 8y ago
Regulation also doesn’t protect citizens against wrongdoing because of regulatory capture. What actually does protect citizens from corporate wrongdoing is the law of torts. Unsurprisingly corporate lawyers and lobbyists are big fans of tort “reform.”
- sharemywin 8y ago
  You think the only part of government that can't be captured is the executive? Obviously, the legislative and judicial system can be captured. And, the first step is to convince the populace that the only solution is non governmental. That run-amok capitalism is inevitable. That all politicians are crooks. That voting/change is a waste of time.
  - User23 8y ago
    It’s much harder to capture the court system because it is so much more distributed than administrative regulators. Also judges are much less likely to retire in 4 years to work for the people they judged. Regulators routinely retire to work for those they regulated. For example it’s the courts that are reining in Monsanto. Regulators didn’t care a whit about the harm they caused. Big tobacco is another example. the list goes on and on.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      The East Texas judges did a great job enriching their community by showing off their rubber stamp to patent litigants.
      - User23 8y ago
        For a while, but a stop was put to it. Look, this isn't that hard. I'm not saying any branch of government isn't corruptible, we're all smart people here and we know that any human organization can be manipulated. But that doesn't change the fact that it's observably true that centralized power structures, like administrative regulation, are much more easily captured than distributed ones. This is basic civics, but sadly that isn't taught anymore. Even so I shouldn't have to tell anyone here why distributed systems are more fault tolerant and robust than centralized ones!
erentz 8y ago
The strongly libertarian/anti-regulation folks really don’t seem to have an answer for this. And it’s where thier whole philosophy falls down because it so fundamentally ignores human behavior so it’ll never work. Sure, imagine you could just pull a trigger and one day remove all regulations. Then see what happens. Buildings will collapse, people will organize to require building standards. Quacks will kill patients. People will organize to require testing of drugs. It’ll all just build up again. Rules (however you want to define and manage them) exist everywhere, they’re an unavoidable consequence of society. I think the strongly libertarians/anti-regulation folks need to come up with solutions to over regulation, bad regulation, regulatory capture, etc that work within a realistic understanding that humans are humans. Then they might get somewhere, propose some changes that help everyone in the process. (Though I sometimes think there’s a contradiction there that if you do understand other humans you don’t tend to end up so far down the libertarian scale in the first place)
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  > Though I sometimes think there’s a contradiction there that if you do understand other humans you don’t tend to end up so far down the libertarian scale in the first place I've started to come to the conclusion that anyone who studies economics, systems, and political science more than they study psychology, sociology, and history is at dire risk of becoming a libertarian.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    If you think you might be becoming a libertarian, just do a video search for "Chinese escalator", and cling as hard as you can to the necessity of building codes, regular inspections, insurance underwriting, and civil torts.
    - InitialLastName 8y ago
      I'll never be a libertarian; I think it's too important that humans have the ability to live their lives with dignity, and I'm fully aware of how infrequently that happens when government is limited.
specialist 8y ago
I assume the genesis of every regulation is either a) some moron couldn't color within the lines or b) some player wants to ice out competitors.

CodeCube 8y ago

This is it right here. I can be convinced to be somewhat sympathetic to the view of excessive regulation, and ineffective bureaucracy ... however, I certainly can't be convinced that it's wholesale not necessary. Bad actors can and will take advantage of people, and it needs to be reigned in by "something". I refuse to believe that we can't achieve a balance ... when there's too little regulation, add more. When it becomes too onerous, pare it back. The thing that seems to be missing is that balancing force. The body's immune system is important for regulating and protecting bodily functions, however when things go wrong, they go very wrong (auto-immune diseases, etc); I feel like that's where we are right now.

mrguyorama 8y ago
>When it becomes too onerous, pare it back Unfortunately one man's onerous is another's not enough when it comes to regulation, and seemingly due to ideology, not rationality.
- Retric 8y ago
  Worse, well done regulation makes problems go away. Which makes it seem like they are not needed. Consider those mattress tags which actually saved hundred of thousands of lives, but now seem pointless. We could probably get rid of them and nothing bad would happen for decades, but the risk is higher than you might think.
  - null000 8y ago
    Link for the interested https://www.livescience.com/33039-why-do-mattresses-have-do-not-remove-tags.html https://www.livescience.com/33039-why-do-mattresses-have-do-...
- flowerbeater 8y ago
  Exactly. It's also due to our inability to give straight up answers to questions like, What is the value of a human life? How does that value vary depending on age? What is the worth of an extra month of life? How should we decide where limited medical resources go? Without straight answers to these, every bad story becomes a mob outcry for more regulation.
  - moorhosj 8y ago
    Why would we care about the answers to these questions other than for regulation?
- da_chicken 8y ago
  At the end of the day "rationality" and "ideology" are more or less synonymous. Few individuals believe their ideology is irrational, after all, and all "rational" really means is, "that which is most consistent with everything else I believe to be true."
  - null000 8y ago
    What bothers me in the context of regulation is how it seems like regulations as a group are frequently called out as "bad and unnecessary", but when it comes to specifics (i.e. specific unnecessary regulations or proposing targeted reforms) it's either crickets, or, in the case of some of the recent regulatory rollbacks, the ideas lie somewhere between "pants-on-head stupid" and "disastrous" [1][2]. Likewise, when people do call out stupid-sounding regulations, it's pretty common to find genuinely good reasoning behind them [3]. I guess I'd be a bit happier if I'd seen anything productive come out of the antiregulatory push in the past decade - instead it seems like it's mostly being used as an intellectual Trojan horse to increase the power of corporations and give them the freedom to pollute indiscriminately. [1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-epa-rolls-back-obama-era-coal-ash-regulations-n892586 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-epa-rolls-back-... [2] - https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-is-now-really-officially-dead-open-internet-congress-now-what/ https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-is-now-really-offic... [3] - https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/02/business/uncertain-hour/country-has-lot-crimes-theyre-all-there-reason-right https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/02/business/uncertain-ho...

User23 8y ago

Regulation also doesn’t protect citizens against wrongdoing because of regulatory capture. What actually does protect citizens from corporate wrongdoing is the law of torts. Unsurprisingly corporate lawyers and lobbyists are big fans of tort “reform.”

sharemywin 8y ago
You think the only part of government that can't be captured is the executive? Obviously, the legislative and judicial system can be captured. And, the first step is to convince the populace that the only solution is non governmental. That run-amok capitalism is inevitable. That all politicians are crooks. That voting/change is a waste of time.
- User23 8y ago
  It’s much harder to capture the court system because it is so much more distributed than administrative regulators. Also judges are much less likely to retire in 4 years to work for the people they judged. Regulators routinely retire to work for those they regulated. For example it’s the courts that are reining in Monsanto. Regulators didn’t care a whit about the harm they caused. Big tobacco is another example. the list goes on and on.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    The East Texas judges did a great job enriching their community by showing off their rubber stamp to patent litigants.
    - User23 8y ago
      For a while, but a stop was put to it. Look, this isn't that hard. I'm not saying any branch of government isn't corruptible, we're all smart people here and we know that any human organization can be manipulated. But that doesn't change the fact that it's observably true that centralized power structures, like administrative regulation, are much more easily captured than distributed ones. This is basic civics, but sadly that isn't taught anymore. Even so I shouldn't have to tell anyone here why distributed systems are more fault tolerant and robust than centralized ones!

erentz 8y ago

The strongly libertarian/anti-regulation folks really don’t seem to have an answer for this. And it’s where thier whole philosophy falls down because it so fundamentally ignores human behavior so it’ll never work. Sure, imagine you could just pull a trigger and one day remove all regulations. Then see what happens. Buildings will collapse, people will organize to require building standards. Quacks will kill patients. People will organize to require testing of drugs. It’ll all just build up again. Rules (however you want to define and manage them) exist everywhere, they’re an unavoidable consequence of society. I think the strongly libertarians/anti-regulation folks need to come up with solutions to over regulation, bad regulation, regulatory capture, etc that work within a realistic understanding that humans are humans. Then they might get somewhere, propose some changes that help everyone in the process. (Though I sometimes think there’s a contradiction there that if you do understand other humans you don’t tend to end up so far down the libertarian scale in the first place)

InitialLastName 8y ago
> Though I sometimes think there’s a contradiction there that if you do understand other humans you don’t tend to end up so far down the libertarian scale in the first place I've started to come to the conclusion that anyone who studies economics, systems, and political science more than they study psychology, sociology, and history is at dire risk of becoming a libertarian.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  If you think you might be becoming a libertarian, just do a video search for "Chinese escalator", and cling as hard as you can to the necessity of building codes, regular inspections, insurance underwriting, and civil torts.
  - InitialLastName 8y ago
    I'll never be a libertarian; I think it's too important that humans have the ability to live their lives with dignity, and I'm fully aware of how infrequently that happens when government is limited.

specialist 8y ago

I assume the genesis of every regulation is either a) some moron couldn't color within the lines or b) some player wants to ice out competitors.