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Government regulation by nature tends to be mediocre as it's written by politicians and bureaucrats who don't truly know the industry. Or worse, it is written b

Government regulation by nature tends to be mediocre as it's written by politicians and bureaucrats who don't truly know the industry. Or worse, it is written by pawns of the biggest companies to prevent new competition. Government regulation is also nearly impossible to roll back even when it's universally acknowledged as bad. Government bureaucrats get no rewards for taking risks, but can be fired easily if the risks go wrong. So a government bureaucrat will never make a change like rolling back a regulation that exposes them to even a small bit of risk. We need a mechanism like bankruptcy for the private industry but for government agencies.

civilized 5y ago
The pandemic really exposed the complete lack of cost-benefit analysis. The FDA and CDC prevented the country from properly monitoring COVID early, which contributed to the chaos of early 2020. It was worse than it would have been without these agencies.
- aaxe 5y ago
  Uhhh - that was because of the people at the top, not the employees there. Hell, the USPS was going to mail everyone masks but someone nixxed that idea.
  - civilized 5y ago
    Sorry, I just don't see any evidence that Trump political officials, however awfully they handled everything, caused the FDA and CDC to keep everyone from doing disease surveillance. Those agencies' career officials made a plan of their own accord and botched it horribly. The NYT documented it meticulously and even they couldn't find a finger to point at Trump's people. Better leadership at the top might have scuttled that insanely awful plan, but the insanely awful plan was 100% the creation of FDA and CDC career bureaucrats. Everyone assumed they knew what they were doing, including Trump's people, but they didn't. At all.
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      [dead]
gerash 5y ago
I can't agree more. Politicians have all the incentives to keep churning out new regulations whereas even the best sets of regulations become obsolete after some time in a fast moving industry. Yet there's no garbage collection mechanism for such regulations

civilized 5y ago

The pandemic really exposed the complete lack of cost-benefit analysis. The FDA and CDC prevented the country from properly monitoring COVID early, which contributed to the chaos of early 2020. It was worse than it would have been without these agencies.

aaxe 5y ago
Uhhh - that was because of the people at the top, not the employees there. Hell, the USPS was going to mail everyone masks but someone nixxed that idea.
- civilized 5y ago
  Sorry, I just don't see any evidence that Trump political officials, however awfully they handled everything, caused the FDA and CDC to keep everyone from doing disease surveillance. Those agencies' career officials made a plan of their own accord and botched it horribly. The NYT documented it meticulously and even they couldn't find a finger to point at Trump's people. Better leadership at the top might have scuttled that insanely awful plan, but the insanely awful plan was 100% the creation of FDA and CDC career bureaucrats. Everyone assumed they knew what they were doing, including Trump's people, but they didn't. At all.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    [dead]

gerash 5y ago

I can't agree more. Politicians have all the incentives to keep churning out new regulations whereas even the best sets of regulations become obsolete after some time in a fast moving industry. Yet there's no garbage collection mechanism for such regulations