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I totally agree that almost all of these job licensing regimes should be weaker, including doctors. But I'm not sure they should be non-existent. The world in w

by iguy 8y ago

I totally agree that almost all of these job licensing regimes should be weaker, including doctors. But I'm not sure they should be non-existent. The world in which you have to spend half an hour googling which taxi companies aren't death-traps before you can leave the airport is really less efficient. Re workplace rules, I don't mean literal payouts to widows, I mean rules about this kind of machine needing that kind of guard, and this inspection schedule, and safety gear that withstands this much impact... there are millions of highly detailed rules, and they are all adapted to the trade-offs and costs we face today. Any one of these rules you could say "of course it's a good thing that guys on scaffold must have safety clips". But the sum of all of them encodes, implicitly, that a nanomort is worth X dollars. And imposing all of them in 1900 would have made any factory completely impossible.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> The world in which you have to spend half an hour googling which taxi companies aren't death-traps before you can leave the airport is really less efficient. The existence of Uber seems to be evidence to the contrary. All of their customers had the option of hiring a taxi and yet they don't. If the unregulated alternative is worse on net then why do people choose it when given the option? > Re workplace rules, I don't mean literal payouts to widows, I mean rules about this kind of machine needing that kind of guard, and this inspection schedule, and safety gear that withstands this much impact... there are millions of highly detailed rules, and they are all adapted to the trade-offs and costs we face today. What I'm saying is that the existence of payments to widows already implies the individual details. If having a guard on your saw costs $2 and reduces the probability of a $50K payout by 5%, a rational business installs the guard whether there is a specific regulation requiring it or not. So passing the regulation doesn't prohibit anything that anyone was still doing, unless they were acting against their own self interest to begin with. The prohibition shouldn't hurt anyone because anyone who had been doing the thing being prohibited was only doing so in error. (Assuming the regulation is actually efficient and not creating unnecessary rigidity or imposing requirements whose costs exceed their benefits.) Whereas taking a job for $10/hour when no $20/hour job is available to you is hardly an error.

by iguy 8y ago

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> The world in which you have to spend half an hour googling which taxi companies aren't death-traps before you can leave the airport is really less efficient. The existence of Uber seems to be evidence to the contrary. All of their customers had the option of hiring a taxi and yet they don't. If the unregulated alternative is worse on net then why do people choose it when given the option? > Re workplace rules, I don't mean literal payouts to widows, I mean rules about this kind of machine needing that kind of guard, and this inspection schedule, and safety gear that withstands this much impact... there are millions of highly detailed rules, and they are all adapted to the trade-offs and costs we face today. What I'm saying is that the existence of payments to widows already implies the individual details. If having a guard on your saw costs $2 and reduces the probability of a $50K payout by 5%, a rational business installs the guard whether there is a specific regulation requiring it or not. So passing the regulation doesn't prohibit anything that anyone was still doing, unless they were acting against their own self interest to begin with. The prohibition shouldn't hurt anyone because anyone who had been doing the thing being prohibited was only doing so in error. (Assuming the regulation is actually efficient and not creating unnecessary rigidity or imposing requirements whose costs exceed their benefits.) Whereas taking a job for $10/hour when no $20/hour job is available to you is hardly an error.