4 ms·
I can't think of a single instance, from the last 200 years, where money alone has achieved the appropriate constraint of a process, product or industry. All t
by NeedMoreTea 8y ago
I can't think of a single instance, from the last 200 years, where money alone has achieved the appropriate constraint of a process, product or industry.
All the significant milestones in health and safety have been from hard won regulation and money - not just taxation, but penalties and fines. Usually accompanied by enormous effort and spending from industry to lie, cheat and avoid said regulation being enacted, or having to comply with it once enacted.
Business has become ever more multi-national, taxation is gamed across nations, trade deals have placed commerce above government, and regulation is becoming ever less fashionable. Industry now feels ever more able to simply move things out of sight, overseas to developing nations sub contracted to members of their supply chain. All health, safety and environmental issues can be dealt with via a simple press release expressing disappointment, but they are, after all an "independent" supplier.
I'd say the last two centuries have proved that trend entirely inappropriate for everything except corporate profit.
- gumby 8y ago> I can't think of a single instance, from the last 200 years, where money alone has achieved the appropriate constraint of a process, product or industry. Money upset the mobile phone business which was a lazy cartel controlled by carriers, who functioned as monopsony customers of phone manufacturers. Europe's market was more dynamic than the the US and Japan due to regulation but still the phones weren't amazing. Then about a decade ago Apple blew up not just the design of phones but more importantly IMHO the relationships between the end users, manufacturers, and the carriers. I cite this as a proof that it can happen but in general I think regulation to manage externalities is underused due to ideology. Yet as a businessperson I don't consider regulation inherently evil -- in fact, for example, a safety reg which applies to everyone doesn't disadvantage any one company.
- r00fus 8y agoHow did money upset it without tech disruption?
- gumby 8y agoIt was a tech disruption. NeedMoreTea said a significant disruption requires "regulation and money" and while I agree in the general case, the iPhone is an example that shows that "requires" is overstating it. An existence proof that it "pure" capitalism can cause positive disruptive change, even if that's a rare case. And I write "pure" in scare quotes because Apple did benefit from a raft of laws and regulations (police, building codes, court system, patents, etc) -- but not to a greater or lesser degree than the other participants in the phone ecosystem.
- mindslight 8y agoI had hoped I included enough of a "disclaimer" referencing the pitfalls to avoid this comment. Alas.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoPlenty of disclaimers I agree with, but I still dispute that reducing anything to a single, monetary measure is a sensible thing to do. The pitfalls are as clear as with other overly simplistic measures it leads to gaming that measure at the expense of everything else. Or encourages belief that some of those externalities are unimportant as they are not in that headline £££ figure.