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> politics isn't just about helping businesses. It's mainly about helping people Many politicians are not about helping people, many are about helping themselv

> politics isn't just about helping businesses. It's mainly about helping people Many politicians are not about helping people, many are about helping themselves. Also, sometimes you can harm people with the intention of helping them

adrianN 8y ago
So? The system isn't perfect. That doesn't help in deciding whether more or less regulation is better.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > So? The system isn't perfect. That doesn't help in deciding whether more or less regulation is better. The entire concept of "more or less regulation" is partisan ideology. Every regulation has a cost and a benefit. Good regulations have benefits in excess of their costs. The problem is that calculating the cost is very difficult. You may have a regulation that increases costs by $10 and produces a $12 benefit. But if the $10 cost increase drives a competitor out of business and allows the remaining provider to raise prices by $20 in total, you're now paying $20 for a $12 benefit. They also have opportunity costs. You may have a regulation that consumes $20 of a $30 surplus but produces $50 in diffuse positive externalities, which sounds like a good idea. But if there is an alternative that also consumes $20 of the same $30 surplus and produces $500 in positive externalities, you can't have both ($40 > $30) and enacting the first one is really destroying $450 in benefits relative to the second. Trying to enact both is even worse, because then you get neither one and even destroy any benefits inherent in the original transaction. It's so easy to screw this up that it's better to err on the side of not regulating something than to convince yourself you gained $30 when you really destroyed $1000. The regulations you want are the ones that have unambiguous, huge net benefits, like prohibiting people from dumping toxic waste in the river, because the cost is low and the benefit is enormous. But even then you have to be careful, because if you're spending $50,000 to prevent $50,000,000 in harm, you could still be wasting $40,000 because there is a way to do it for $10,000. And the incentives are wrong for people to carefully evaluate things like this, because the people paying the cost aren't the people creating the rules. Which means "all regulation is bad" is false but "any given regulation is bad" is a solid heuristic.
  - wavves_collide 8y ago
    > But even then you have to be careful, because if you're spending $50,000 to prevent $50,000,000 in harm, you could still be wasting $40,000 because there is a way to do it for $10,000. Yes, but even if you create a regulation that is $40k more expensive to implement than the cheapest option, it still results in a $49.95M in savings (regardless of who would be picking up the bill, at least when you consider us as a society that depends on each other to function) compared to having not set up that regulation at all. The government spending e.g. 1M on experts hired to check whether, say, oil pipelines are built to spec and standards, and not break unexpectedly - is much better for everyone involved overall, than the company operating the pipeline paying hundreds of millions for the cleanup of the resulting environmental damage. Same goes for pretty much any and every other industry that we actually depend on. Yes, sure, be careful if possible - but personally, I’d rather see inefficient spending on necessary regulation than no regulation at all. Because then we’d definitely be picking up the bill for it, maybe not always directly with our wallets or government budgets, but we lose either way. I do agree with the rest of your points.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > Yes, but even if you create a regulation that is $40k more expensive to implement than the cheapest option, it still results in a $49.95M in savings (regardless of who would be picking up the bill, at least when you consider us as a society that depends on each other to function) compared to having not set up that regulation at all. Which is why those kinds of regulations are the ones you want. But it's still worth carefully revisiting them from time to time, because $40,000/company/year is still literally having each company hire a person to waste their entire working life. This is what regulators should optimally be spending most of their time on -- evaluating the existing regulations for ways to reduce the costs without losing the benefit.

adrianN 8y ago

So? The system isn't perfect. That doesn't help in deciding whether more or less regulation is better.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> So? The system isn't perfect. That doesn't help in deciding whether more or less regulation is better. The entire concept of "more or less regulation" is partisan ideology. Every regulation has a cost and a benefit. Good regulations have benefits in excess of their costs. The problem is that calculating the cost is very difficult. You may have a regulation that increases costs by $10 and produces a $12 benefit. But if the $10 cost increase drives a competitor out of business and allows the remaining provider to raise prices by $20 in total, you're now paying $20 for a $12 benefit. They also have opportunity costs. You may have a regulation that consumes $20 of a $30 surplus but produces $50 in diffuse positive externalities, which sounds like a good idea. But if there is an alternative that also consumes $20 of the same $30 surplus and produces $500 in positive externalities, you can't have both ($40 > $30) and enacting the first one is really destroying $450 in benefits relative to the second. Trying to enact both is even worse, because then you get neither one and even destroy any benefits inherent in the original transaction. It's so easy to screw this up that it's better to err on the side of not regulating something than to convince yourself you gained $30 when you really destroyed $1000. The regulations you want are the ones that have unambiguous, huge net benefits, like prohibiting people from dumping toxic waste in the river, because the cost is low and the benefit is enormous. But even then you have to be careful, because if you're spending $50,000 to prevent $50,000,000 in harm, you could still be wasting $40,000 because there is a way to do it for $10,000. And the incentives are wrong for people to carefully evaluate things like this, because the people paying the cost aren't the people creating the rules. Which means "all regulation is bad" is false but "any given regulation is bad" is a solid heuristic.
- wavves_collide 8y ago
  > But even then you have to be careful, because if you're spending $50,000 to prevent $50,000,000 in harm, you could still be wasting $40,000 because there is a way to do it for $10,000. Yes, but even if you create a regulation that is $40k more expensive to implement than the cheapest option, it still results in a $49.95M in savings (regardless of who would be picking up the bill, at least when you consider us as a society that depends on each other to function) compared to having not set up that regulation at all. The government spending e.g. 1M on experts hired to check whether, say, oil pipelines are built to spec and standards, and not break unexpectedly - is much better for everyone involved overall, than the company operating the pipeline paying hundreds of millions for the cleanup of the resulting environmental damage. Same goes for pretty much any and every other industry that we actually depend on. Yes, sure, be careful if possible - but personally, I’d rather see inefficient spending on necessary regulation than no regulation at all. Because then we’d definitely be picking up the bill for it, maybe not always directly with our wallets or government budgets, but we lose either way. I do agree with the rest of your points.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > Yes, but even if you create a regulation that is $40k more expensive to implement than the cheapest option, it still results in a $49.95M in savings (regardless of who would be picking up the bill, at least when you consider us as a society that depends on each other to function) compared to having not set up that regulation at all. Which is why those kinds of regulations are the ones you want. But it's still worth carefully revisiting them from time to time, because $40,000/company/year is still literally having each company hire a person to waste their entire working life. This is what regulators should optimally be spending most of their time on -- evaluating the existing regulations for ways to reduce the costs without losing the benefit.