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I'd like to point out that the industries you enumerate as serving the customers the worst are the most highly regulated. Is it possible that government interv

I'd like to point out that the industries you enumerate as serving the customers the worst are the most highly regulated. Is it possible that government intervention contributes to their poor quality and high prices?

jimbokun 7y ago
Can you draw plausible cause and effect lines from regulations to lower quality and higher costs? (If it's higher costs enforcing higher quality, arguably the regulations are working as desired.) Are there examples of countries with high quality outcomes and low costs where those industries are deregulated? I would add the Republican party in the US is so incompetent and dysfunctional, they are unable to create concrete policy proposals or pass legislation, even when they had full control of the federal government. What concrete steps did they take to fix fundamentally broken industries like health care and higher education? So I find myself drawn to Democrats like Bernie and Warren, at least they have plans to address these issues, and the status quo is unacceptable.
- JasonFruit 7y ago
  First, I'm completely in agreement on the Republican party. Both the main parties are a disaster, and their competition is stunted and ineffective. Part of that is because the two main parties are given all sorts of regulatory advantages by state and federal governments, and their competition is unfairly hobbled by the same. The favored parties' competitive abilities atrophy, and their competition cannot fully develop. An analogous situation arises in business. When the government regulates quality and cost, it leaves businesses no natural path to profitability, so to allow them to survive, it must also interfere in competition, with subsidies, tariffs, and other measures, up to and including enforced monopoly. That keeps the natural economic processes that reward good quality and low price from operating --- the favored businesses cannot be displaced by their competition, and the effect of consumer dissatisfaction is blunted --- and provides the perverse incentives that create the problems you perceive in industry (and politics).
triceratops 7y ago
Is it possible the causality runs the other way? Maybe all those regulations were enacted because those industries are so bad.

jimbokun 7y ago

Can you draw plausible cause and effect lines from regulations to lower quality and higher costs? (If it's higher costs enforcing higher quality, arguably the regulations are working as desired.) Are there examples of countries with high quality outcomes and low costs where those industries are deregulated? I would add the Republican party in the US is so incompetent and dysfunctional, they are unable to create concrete policy proposals or pass legislation, even when they had full control of the federal government. What concrete steps did they take to fix fundamentally broken industries like health care and higher education? So I find myself drawn to Democrats like Bernie and Warren, at least they have plans to address these issues, and the status quo is unacceptable.

JasonFruit 7y ago
First, I'm completely in agreement on the Republican party. Both the main parties are a disaster, and their competition is stunted and ineffective. Part of that is because the two main parties are given all sorts of regulatory advantages by state and federal governments, and their competition is unfairly hobbled by the same. The favored parties' competitive abilities atrophy, and their competition cannot fully develop. An analogous situation arises in business. When the government regulates quality and cost, it leaves businesses no natural path to profitability, so to allow them to survive, it must also interfere in competition, with subsidies, tariffs, and other measures, up to and including enforced monopoly. That keeps the natural economic processes that reward good quality and low price from operating --- the favored businesses cannot be displaced by their competition, and the effect of consumer dissatisfaction is blunted --- and provides the perverse incentives that create the problems you perceive in industry (and politics).

triceratops 7y ago

Is it possible the causality runs the other way? Maybe all those regulations were enacted because those industries are so bad.