4 ms·

/s is missing. There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is bad. But that is not true for sane appropriate rules. Absence of public rules is n

/s is missing. There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is bad. But that is not true for sane appropriate rules. Absence of public rules is not a vacuum of rules but a universe where rules are made by the strongest. Also laws do often not prescribe details but empower regulators to manage the details. There may be laws against predatory pricing. There is also case laws against predatory pricing. But markets also evolved and it us extremely costly and time consuming to prosecute monopoly cases based on principles (read up on e.g. the case against IBM way back). It is more efficient to put in place industry specific rules which then can be enforced with much simpler reasoning.

andrewla 6y ago
> It is more efficient to put in place industry specific rules which then can be enforced with much simpler reasoning. I could not disagree more strongly. If you could point me to a rule that meets these criteria I'd love to see them -- all the rules that I've had to deal with in my professional life have been contrived to benefit the small number of companies actually capable of complying with them, rather than supporting the end goal of the regulation directly, and most of the time, allowed sufficiently large players to circumvent them entirely. Antitrust legislation is hard to enforce, costly and time consuming, as you say, but it should be hard, and it should be time consuming, because the alternative is that you outsource the hard and time consuming parts to the industry, which is just "weaponizing the complexity" -- the cost to comply does not scale linearly with the benefits, so small players are just wiped off of the board. (Note: I think you got confused with the double negatives in your first sentence -- you say "There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is bad" but I think you mean "There is this misconception that regulation is bad" or "There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is good". Not that I agree with you, but the rest of your post argues for sane regulation rather than deregulation)
- heisenbit 6y ago
  Rules e.g. establish markets and enable competition: Standard screws or standard contracts. The absence of basic rules like disclosure of service prices is doubling the cost of US health care. Other rules force the airlines to compete on services and price but not on safety.
  - andrewla 6y ago
    This is a grab bag of regulatory and non-regulatory stuff. How long do you spend in jail for making a nonstandard screw? Standard contracts are industry standards (mostly) not government or regulated. Where contracts abut government function is enforcement and to some degree limitations and exclusions on what contracts are allowed to cover. US health care is not easy to one-line, but I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that the space is not heavily regulated already, and yet mysteriously still has tons of problems. Safety regulations I’ll grant you are probably a net benefit to society. Largely because limitations of liability make the situation too asymmetric.

andrewla 6y ago

> It is more efficient to put in place industry specific rules which then can be enforced with much simpler reasoning. I could not disagree more strongly. If you could point me to a rule that meets these criteria I'd love to see them -- all the rules that I've had to deal with in my professional life have been contrived to benefit the small number of companies actually capable of complying with them, rather than supporting the end goal of the regulation directly, and most of the time, allowed sufficiently large players to circumvent them entirely. Antitrust legislation is hard to enforce, costly and time consuming, as you say, but it should be hard, and it should be time consuming, because the alternative is that you outsource the hard and time consuming parts to the industry, which is just "weaponizing the complexity" -- the cost to comply does not scale linearly with the benefits, so small players are just wiped off of the board. (Note: I think you got confused with the double negatives in your first sentence -- you say "There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is bad" but I think you mean "There is this misconception that regulation is bad" or "There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is good". Not that I agree with you, but the rest of your post argues for sane regulation rather than deregulation)

heisenbit 6y ago
Rules e.g. establish markets and enable competition: Standard screws or standard contracts. The absence of basic rules like disclosure of service prices is doubling the cost of US health care. Other rules force the airlines to compete on services and price but not on safety.
- andrewla 6y ago
  This is a grab bag of regulatory and non-regulatory stuff. How long do you spend in jail for making a nonstandard screw? Standard contracts are industry standards (mostly) not government or regulated. Where contracts abut government function is enforcement and to some degree limitations and exclusions on what contracts are allowed to cover. US health care is not easy to one-line, but I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that the space is not heavily regulated already, and yet mysteriously still has tons of problems. Safety regulations I’ll grant you are probably a net benefit to society. Largely because limitations of liability make the situation too asymmetric.