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We don't need communism. Just basic protection from loan sharks, con artists, and the worst dishonest business practices. Libertarians may hate it, but consum

by GavinB 18y ago

We don't need communism. Just basic protection from loan sharks, con artists, and the worst dishonest business practices. Libertarians may hate it, but consumer protections make the lives of most people simpler, safer, and more free. They also reward honest businesspeople, rather than rewarding the con artists who are the least detectable.

Tichy 18y ago
I'd like to point you to PG's recent article. Additional checks end up biting you in the back. Also, how are consumer protections supposed to work? I think they would require a hypothetical "perfect" state employee who is 100% honest and 100% omniscient. Even if a few of such people would exist, I doubt that there would be enough of them to monitor ALL kinds of economical transactions. Rather, I suspect the more regulation there is, the more corruption or hidden taxes will there and be a burden on society. Even today it almost feels as if one can't do anything without the protection of an army of lawyers. More regulations => this only gets worse. Lawyers will be leeching off us, with the support of the state. Also the current crisis can not simply be blamed on crooks. Everybody was playing the game, down to the average "normal, honest" home owners. Plus, people will always act selfish, and in trades, try to get the better deal of the involved parties.
- neilk 18y ago
  Additional checks end up biting you in the back. I think what he said was that additional checks have a cost that must be weighed against the benefits. Funny, you are the one who is touting himself as able to handle complexity. And yet in this debate you can only perceive black and white. If communism is bad, that means that ALL regulation is bad! And if some people need extra help or training to deal with credit, that means that they're SHEEP who will be the wards of the state forever! I am sad that nobody has taken up the point that I was trying to make; that we all need some help from time to time. Hackers have an easy time bouncing back from rotten luck, illness, or poor life choices; things that would cause other people to eventually amass an unsustainable debt.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    I am all for helping people. I am just not sure who could be trusted - I don't necessarily trust the government to make the best choices for the people. And in this crisis, there is too much scapegoating going on for my taste. And calling for regulations seems to be an extension of that. If you call for regulations, first tell me why the market failed to regulate itself (that is weed out the crooks, if the crooks are to blame)? If you are calling for more transparency, maybe I can go with you. But I don't think complex rulesets about who should give credit and who should be allowed to get credit are the way to go forward. I don't want to claim to understand what pg wrote, but my understanding would be he wrote among other things about something exactly like that: more regulations means it becomes more costly to give somebody credit. Therefore there will be less firms giving credit, and "smaller people" will have more problems getting credit because they are not worth the bother. In the end there will be a monopoly of a few big firms who handle credit. Also, what if housing prices really would have risen forever, and regulations would have prevented people from gaining from it? Who is to say in advance what course of action is right? Or would you say everybody who took out a mortgage was a crook?
    - GavinB 18y ago
      I thought PG's article was pretty spot on. He wanted regulatory actions to be viewed in the broader context with an understanding of the net drag of all the regulations. If we could convince elected officials to do this sort of analysis, we might be able to weed out a lot of the unnecessary inefficiencies. That said, the solution to an overabundance of regulations is not necessarily to utterly eliminate them, and the lack of perfection should never be an excuse for not performing an action when the consequences of inaction are worse. I won't pretend to know what should or shouldn't have happened in the current financial crisis. My post was really directed more toward basic consumer protections -- things like truth in advertising, not selling rotten meat, being upfront about the terms of payday loans, etc.

by GavinB 18y ago

Tichy 18y ago

I'd like to point you to PG's recent article. Additional checks end up biting you in the back. Also, how are consumer protections supposed to work? I think they would require a hypothetical "perfect" state employee who is 100% honest and 100% omniscient. Even if a few of such people would exist, I doubt that there would be enough of them to monitor ALL kinds of economical transactions. Rather, I suspect the more regulation there is, the more corruption or hidden taxes will there and be a burden on society. Even today it almost feels as if one can't do anything without the protection of an army of lawyers. More regulations => this only gets worse. Lawyers will be leeching off us, with the support of the state. Also the current crisis can not simply be blamed on crooks. Everybody was playing the game, down to the average "normal, honest" home owners. Plus, people will always act selfish, and in trades, try to get the better deal of the involved parties.

neilk 18y ago
Additional checks end up biting you in the back. I think what he said was that additional checks have a cost that must be weighed against the benefits. Funny, you are the one who is touting himself as able to handle complexity. And yet in this debate you can only perceive black and white. If communism is bad, that means that ALL regulation is bad! And if some people need extra help or training to deal with credit, that means that they're SHEEP who will be the wards of the state forever! I am sad that nobody has taken up the point that I was trying to make; that we all need some help from time to time. Hackers have an easy time bouncing back from rotten luck, illness, or poor life choices; things that would cause other people to eventually amass an unsustainable debt.
- Tichy 18y ago
  I am all for helping people. I am just not sure who could be trusted - I don't necessarily trust the government to make the best choices for the people. And in this crisis, there is too much scapegoating going on for my taste. And calling for regulations seems to be an extension of that. If you call for regulations, first tell me why the market failed to regulate itself (that is weed out the crooks, if the crooks are to blame)? If you are calling for more transparency, maybe I can go with you. But I don't think complex rulesets about who should give credit and who should be allowed to get credit are the way to go forward. I don't want to claim to understand what pg wrote, but my understanding would be he wrote among other things about something exactly like that: more regulations means it becomes more costly to give somebody credit. Therefore there will be less firms giving credit, and "smaller people" will have more problems getting credit because they are not worth the bother. In the end there will be a monopoly of a few big firms who handle credit. Also, what if housing prices really would have risen forever, and regulations would have prevented people from gaining from it? Who is to say in advance what course of action is right? Or would you say everybody who took out a mortgage was a crook?
  - GavinB 18y ago
    I thought PG's article was pretty spot on. He wanted regulatory actions to be viewed in the broader context with an understanding of the net drag of all the regulations. If we could convince elected officials to do this sort of analysis, we might be able to weed out a lot of the unnecessary inefficiencies. That said, the solution to an overabundance of regulations is not necessarily to utterly eliminate them, and the lack of perfection should never be an excuse for not performing an action when the consequences of inaction are worse. I won't pretend to know what should or shouldn't have happened in the current financial crisis. My post was really directed more toward basic consumer protections -- things like truth in advertising, not selling rotten meat, being upfront about the terms of payday loans, etc.