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Sure, policy matters. It's important to have people in public leadership who understand it and can work on tuning it to avoid or eliminate unintended consequenc

Sure, policy matters. It's important to have people in public leadership who understand it and can work on tuning it to avoid or eliminate unintended consequences. But complaining about either regulation or bureaucracy at a general level is the policy equivalent of approaching software by making general complaints about how terrible existing code is: sure, some of it is probably sub-optimal and should be rewritten, but anyone who's worked in the field for a while knows that the sweep-it-away/ground-up-rewrite impulse is more often wrong than applying Chesterton's fence (make sure you understand why it's there), profiling, and examine potential alternatives against studied outcomes. > Markets would love to build more housing. Sure. And would love to chase the wealthiest end of demand and externalize costs of community displacement or ecological impact. > Markets would love to build nuclear power plants And would love to externalize the costs of risk and waste management. Note that these are not arguments against building more housing or nuclear power. There are many metro areas that do need to build housing. Nuclear power has its merits as well as hazards. They're arguments about specific incentives absent intentional oversight, supporting the general case that it is often irresponsible to believe or advocate that incentives tend towards optimal on their own, and that the primary problem is oversight itself.

darawk 7y ago
> But complaining about either regulation or bureaucracy at a general level is the policy equivalent of approaching software by making general complaints about how terrible existing code is: sure, some of it is probably sub-optimal and should be rewritten, but anyone who's worked in the field for a while knows that the sweep-it-away/ground-up-rewrite impulse is more often wrong than applying Chesterton's fence (make sure you understand why it's there), profiling, and examine potential alternatives against studied outcomes. This is sometimes true, but it certainly isn't always true. Housing policy, for instance, is largely driven by putting the interests of local property owners over those of new entrants and the broader economy. > Sure. And would love to chase the wealthiest end of demand and externalize costs of community displacement or ecological impact. Price the externalities. It's as simple as that. Nobody needs to externalize anything. Housing is plenty worth building to developers even if they fully internalize the ecological impact. And let's not neglect the ecological impact of long commutes when running this calculation. > And would love to externalize the costs of risk and waste management. Of course they'd like to do that. Everyone would like to externalize their costs and risks. The job of government is to let people do things, but force them to internalize the costs. You aren't making an argument against anything I said. > They're arguments about specific incentives absent intentional oversight, supporting the general case that it is often irresponsible to believe or advocate that incentives tend towards optimal on their own, and that the primary problem is oversight itself. Oversight is fine. Kafkaesque bureacracy and cost disease are not. The present state of our regulatory apparatus is abysmal. That isn't an argument for eliminating it, it's an argument for making it better.
- camgunz 7y ago
  Those kafkaesque bureaucracies come about when oligopolies ladder pull by writing their own regulating legislation. It's not bureaucratic overreach, it's corruption. Facebook recently tried the same thing.
  - darawk 7y ago
    Firstly, that's just not true. That is a thing that happens, but it is not the only thing that happens. Bureaucracies come about for all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of ways. The one you describe is only one among many of those mechanisms. And secondly, what's your point? The problem is still what it is. The regulations are the location in the stack that need to be corrected.
    - KirinDave 7y ago
      > Firstly, that's just not true. That is a thing that happens, but it is not the only thing that happens. Bureaucracies come about for all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of ways. So it is true, it's just not complete? > The regulations are the location in the stack that need to be corrected. What if the best way to do this is to remove the capitalist incentives that motivate local communities to operate this way?
      - darawk 7y ago
        > So it is true, it's just not complete? Yes, it is a thing that happens. But the original commenter described it as the only thing that happens, which is not true. > What if the best way to do this is to remove the capitalist incentives that motivate local communities to operate this way? I think that would be great. But how do you enact that? Do you eliminate property rights? What do you replace them with? If you want my view, the correct policy is a land value tax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax). A policy more likely to be implemented is to move zoning laws up the governmental stack to the state level, so that they're not so easily locally influenced.

darawk 7y ago

> But complaining about either regulation or bureaucracy at a general level is the policy equivalent of approaching software by making general complaints about how terrible existing code is: sure, some of it is probably sub-optimal and should be rewritten, but anyone who's worked in the field for a while knows that the sweep-it-away/ground-up-rewrite impulse is more often wrong than applying Chesterton's fence (make sure you understand why it's there), profiling, and examine potential alternatives against studied outcomes. This is sometimes true, but it certainly isn't always true. Housing policy, for instance, is largely driven by putting the interests of local property owners over those of new entrants and the broader economy. > Sure. And would love to chase the wealthiest end of demand and externalize costs of community displacement or ecological impact. Price the externalities. It's as simple as that. Nobody needs to externalize anything. Housing is plenty worth building to developers even if they fully internalize the ecological impact. And let's not neglect the ecological impact of long commutes when running this calculation. > And would love to externalize the costs of risk and waste management. Of course they'd like to do that. Everyone would like to externalize their costs and risks. The job of government is to let people do things, but force them to internalize the costs. You aren't making an argument against anything I said. > They're arguments about specific incentives absent intentional oversight, supporting the general case that it is often irresponsible to believe or advocate that incentives tend towards optimal on their own, and that the primary problem is oversight itself. Oversight is fine. Kafkaesque bureacracy and cost disease are not. The present state of our regulatory apparatus is abysmal. That isn't an argument for eliminating it, it's an argument for making it better.

camgunz 7y ago
Those kafkaesque bureaucracies come about when oligopolies ladder pull by writing their own regulating legislation. It's not bureaucratic overreach, it's corruption. Facebook recently tried the same thing.
- darawk 7y ago
  Firstly, that's just not true. That is a thing that happens, but it is not the only thing that happens. Bureaucracies come about for all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of ways. The one you describe is only one among many of those mechanisms. And secondly, what's your point? The problem is still what it is. The regulations are the location in the stack that need to be corrected.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    > Firstly, that's just not true. That is a thing that happens, but it is not the only thing that happens. Bureaucracies come about for all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of ways. So it is true, it's just not complete? > The regulations are the location in the stack that need to be corrected. What if the best way to do this is to remove the capitalist incentives that motivate local communities to operate this way?
    - darawk 7y ago
      > So it is true, it's just not complete? Yes, it is a thing that happens. But the original commenter described it as the only thing that happens, which is not true. > What if the best way to do this is to remove the capitalist incentives that motivate local communities to operate this way? I think that would be great. But how do you enact that? Do you eliminate property rights? What do you replace them with? If you want my view, the correct policy is a land value tax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax). A policy more likely to be implemented is to move zoning laws up the governmental stack to the state level, so that they're not so easily locally influenced.