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Let me make it clear. I never said Texas is bad. The other guy who replied to me thought I was saying California was bad. I'm giving an unbiased view. Both are

Let me make it clear. I never said Texas is bad. The other guy who replied to me thought I was saying California was bad. I'm giving an unbiased view. Both are bad, and both are good at the same time. I'm saying the pros and cons are not clear. California laws favor the people at the expense of business. So business leaves and people follow. Texas favors business at the expense of the people. Businesses chase profit at expense of the people, however profit is paid for from people themselves so usually when businesses harm people it's insidious and subtle and doesn't become apparent until years later. Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and the whole pain killer scandal are primary examples. The harm these companies did to people were not apparent until much much later. What will happen in Texas is that the harm done to people by unregulated businesses will not be apparent until many years later. At that time regulations will slowly build up as people protest and demand the government to protect the people. This is what happened in California.... history repeating itself. It might take a decade or your entire lifetime for this change to occur and become fully realized. Meanwhile people will be harmed while California becomes more and more like Michigan.

rconti 5y ago
Right; the folly is folks who say "place X has awful politics and stupid people and place Y is much better". No, place X has the same people with the same human impulses as place Y. They simply have different circumstances and different experiences at different times.
samatman 5y ago
I don't think this framing is useful at all. People want to work a job and keep as much of the income as possible. They want to found businesses and make money. They also don't want poison in their water supply, or any of the numerous externalities which industry is in the habit of creating. Texas and California strike a very different balance in that landscape. The net result of which is that people are leaving California, and people are moving to Texas. Characterizing that as "California favors people and Texas favors business" is kinda weird, don't you think? Looks like Texas favors both, right at the moment.
- neonological 5y ago
  It's not weird. It's not even a frame. It's reality. All regulation is created for the purpose of protecting people. California has more people protecting laws than Texas therefore California favors people over Texas. There's literally no other reason why regulation exists. And all businesses that have less regulation have more options to succeed financially that would otherwise be restricted by regulation. Regulation therefore exists to serve people. So by logic less regulation means conditions more favorable for business and less favorable to people. Unless you can think of some other reason why regulations exist this is the only possible logical deduction. Does California create laws that don't favor business because California just wants to screw with businesses for no reason? Let's be real. Make no mistake. There is no frame here, this is reality unfiltered. Additionally keep in mind businesses cannot directly screw people over. Profit comes from people and companies cannot directly screw over the thing they derive profit from. When businesses screw people over it's usually obscured in some way. Think again to the antics of big oil and big tobacco. If deregulated businesses are harming the people of Texas in some way you likely won't know until many years from now.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    > All regulation is created for the purpose of protecting people. That is a politically naive, idealistic perspective that does not align with reality. Regulation often exists to serve entrenched monopolies and to raise barriers to entry. Sometimes, regulation is a purely emotional knee-jerk reaction to a particular wave of passing news or events. It's often ill-considered over the long term. Long after a society or economy has changed or evolved to the point of rendering the regulation obsolete, the regulation continues to impose costs and burdens on the subjects of that regulation. It turns out that laws are easier to enact than to roll back. There's a bias to keep existing laws, no matter the opportunity costs. And that's without digging into my former point, which is that much regulation is the result of cronyism at the highest levels to serve special interest groups. > Profit comes from people do anything they screw people over for is usually obscured in some way. Profit comes from economic value creation or perceived economic value creation in the marketplace (as determined by the market). It is revenue minus expenses. It comes from any economic activity that is conducted between two parties in a mutually agreed upon transaction in which both parties trade one type of value for another.

rconti 5y ago

Right; the folly is folks who say "place X has awful politics and stupid people and place Y is much better". No, place X has the same people with the same human impulses as place Y. They simply have different circumstances and different experiences at different times.

samatman 5y ago

I don't think this framing is useful at all. People want to work a job and keep as much of the income as possible. They want to found businesses and make money. They also don't want poison in their water supply, or any of the numerous externalities which industry is in the habit of creating. Texas and California strike a very different balance in that landscape. The net result of which is that people are leaving California, and people are moving to Texas. Characterizing that as "California favors people and Texas favors business" is kinda weird, don't you think? Looks like Texas favors both, right at the moment.

neonological 5y ago
It's not weird. It's not even a frame. It's reality. All regulation is created for the purpose of protecting people. California has more people protecting laws than Texas therefore California favors people over Texas. There's literally no other reason why regulation exists. And all businesses that have less regulation have more options to succeed financially that would otherwise be restricted by regulation. Regulation therefore exists to serve people. So by logic less regulation means conditions more favorable for business and less favorable to people. Unless you can think of some other reason why regulations exist this is the only possible logical deduction. Does California create laws that don't favor business because California just wants to screw with businesses for no reason? Let's be real. Make no mistake. There is no frame here, this is reality unfiltered. Additionally keep in mind businesses cannot directly screw people over. Profit comes from people and companies cannot directly screw over the thing they derive profit from. When businesses screw people over it's usually obscured in some way. Think again to the antics of big oil and big tobacco. If deregulated businesses are harming the people of Texas in some way you likely won't know until many years from now.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  > All regulation is created for the purpose of protecting people. That is a politically naive, idealistic perspective that does not align with reality. Regulation often exists to serve entrenched monopolies and to raise barriers to entry. Sometimes, regulation is a purely emotional knee-jerk reaction to a particular wave of passing news or events. It's often ill-considered over the long term. Long after a society or economy has changed or evolved to the point of rendering the regulation obsolete, the regulation continues to impose costs and burdens on the subjects of that regulation. It turns out that laws are easier to enact than to roll back. There's a bias to keep existing laws, no matter the opportunity costs. And that's without digging into my former point, which is that much regulation is the result of cronyism at the highest levels to serve special interest groups. > Profit comes from people do anything they screw people over for is usually obscured in some way. Profit comes from economic value creation or perceived economic value creation in the marketplace (as determined by the market). It is revenue minus expenses. It comes from any economic activity that is conducted between two parties in a mutually agreed upon transaction in which both parties trade one type of value for another.