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This notion that industry needs regulating keeps ending us up in one disaster after another. Who was it who said "when buying and selling are legislated, the f

This notion that industry needs regulating keeps ending us up in one disaster after another. Who was it who said "when buying and selling are legislated, the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators?"

supercanuck 14y ago
How would the free market prevent the Fertilizer plant from exploding and killing all those people?
- Danieru 14y ago
  Fertilizer plants are expensive? As are wrongful death lawsuits? Not saying this is enough but no one is exploding these things for profit.
  - shiftpgdn 14y ago
    Tort reform in Texas HIGHLY limits the payout on a wrongful death lawsuit. It'd barely be a dent in a days business for the plant.
- chrismsnz 14y ago
  Theoretically civil lawsuits, or the threat of such.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- spikels 14y ago
  Explosions are very bad for business not only is your valuable plant destroyed but you can't make fertilizer until you build a new one. Existing and potential employees would demand higher wages and/or increased safety measures after an accident. Neither the free free nor a regulatory body can reliably prevent all accidents. Probably has more to do with how the interested parties value life and property.
  - kalleboo 14y ago
    That's a great theory, but real life has shown time and time again that businesses don't always act in their own long-term interests and individuals aren't rational actors. And people aren't satisfied when the "cost of business" to reach the end-goal of having poor businesses weeded out is people's lives.
  - ck2 14y ago
    Except they work on the idea "oh that will never happen", ala BP oil rig explosions. They refused to build a blast wall and congress defunded inspections so the last one was in the 90s so there was never any enforcement.
- tantalor 14y ago
  The industry under discussion (communications) generally does not risk lives, i.e., no catastrophe when you screw up. Some types of industry do risk lives. Don't confuse safety regulations with other business regulations. They serve completely different purposes. We should regulate the hell out of fertilizer depots, power generators, medical software, flight. For good reason.
  - emiliobumachar 14y ago
    Communications can, in fact, kill people. High-intensity electromagnetic emissions. Those cell towers in the middle of the city have to be very thougthfully planned and installed.
    - white_devil 14y ago
      If "high-intensity electromagnetic emissions" from cell towers kill people, I doubt making them safe is just a matter of placement. If you want to place some in the middle of a city, they will be close to a lot of people, and if their emissions kill people, it's probably not a good idea to place them near lots of people. But they have been placed pretty much everywhere. It appears that either you're overstating the dangers, or we're both about to die any second now.
    - tantalor 14y ago
      http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedian_protester.png http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedian_protester.png
- icelancer 14y ago
  How did the regulated market prevent it from blowing up?
  - pyre 14y ago
    How did a law against murder prevent murders from happening?
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    If you've been paying any attention at all to the West, TX, story, you'd be aware that the regulators were largely defundend and eviscerated by anti-regulation interests. Gov. Perry got a little steamed when his "Business is Booming" campaign was highlighted: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/perry-disgusted-by-california-newspaper-cartoon-depicting-explosion-after-deadly-west-blast/2013/04/26/a80e80e8-aecf-11e2-b59e-adb43da03a8a_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/perry-disgusted-by-ca... Edit: better story link to cartoon.
DArcMattr 14y ago
P.J. O'Rourke said it. Nothing else explains regulatory capture so succinctly.
kalleboo 14y ago
That would be an interesting experiment - fully unregulated airwaves. Imagine AT&T jamming Verizon's 3G signal, private transmitter hijacking terminals, etc.
- mseebach 14y ago
  Well, in the jamming case, Verizon would probably jam AT&T back. So neither is getting any revenue, and they are left to work out a truce or face bankruptcy. There exists swathes of practically unlicensed spectrum, such as ham radio and 2.4GHz. While regulation exists, large scale enforcement is pretty much unheard of, yet it works pretty well. The big cellular telecom standards (GSM and CDMA) assume a very orderly environment (contrasting the 801.11x standards that are more adaptive), so they would probably look different in a world with unregulated airwaves. EDITED to add: For the purpose of such a thought experiment, It's not practical to imagine what would happen if the current GSM 2G and 3G spectrum just became unlicensed overnight. There is a huge infrastructure investment, both on the carrier and consumer ends that would become worthless, and this is clearly undesirable. Rather, imagine a block of airwaves (say, ex-military or analogue broadcast TV) being released with zero or minimal regulation (no exclusivity, basically).
  - rayiner 14y ago
    2.4 GHZ are regulated in the only dimension that matters for spectrum: power output. And unlicensed devices are all inspected and approved by the FCC.
- bcoates 14y ago
  The ISM bands are vastly less regulated. It's some of the most useful spectrum because of that.
Kroem3r 14y ago
I get the point of view. I disagree with it, but even more, I find it jarring to apply a faith-based approach to thinking about these things in lieu of a critical assessment one. As if it were sufficient to cut through all the tangle and uncertainty with, like, "Daniel 11:3 'And a great king shall stand up ...'" and think that was case and point. What's more, it's hardly clear that you've got this proverb the right way around: It seems as likely that corrupt legislators create regulation to enrich them and their kind, as opposed to well-intentioned regulation leading to the corruption of legislators. I've cut out the middle - corrupt legislators creating corrupt legislation - which is what we actually have and also the sort of murk that doesn't lend itself to witticism.

supercanuck 14y ago

How would the free market prevent the Fertilizer plant from exploding and killing all those people?

Danieru 14y ago
Fertilizer plants are expensive? As are wrongful death lawsuits? Not saying this is enough but no one is exploding these things for profit.
- shiftpgdn 14y ago
  Tort reform in Texas HIGHLY limits the payout on a wrongful death lawsuit. It'd barely be a dent in a days business for the plant.
chrismsnz 14y ago
Theoretically civil lawsuits, or the threat of such.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
spikels 14y ago
Explosions are very bad for business not only is your valuable plant destroyed but you can't make fertilizer until you build a new one. Existing and potential employees would demand higher wages and/or increased safety measures after an accident. Neither the free free nor a regulatory body can reliably prevent all accidents. Probably has more to do with how the interested parties value life and property.
- kalleboo 14y ago
  That's a great theory, but real life has shown time and time again that businesses don't always act in their own long-term interests and individuals aren't rational actors. And people aren't satisfied when the "cost of business" to reach the end-goal of having poor businesses weeded out is people's lives.
- ck2 14y ago
  Except they work on the idea "oh that will never happen", ala BP oil rig explosions. They refused to build a blast wall and congress defunded inspections so the last one was in the 90s so there was never any enforcement.
tantalor 14y ago
The industry under discussion (communications) generally does not risk lives, i.e., no catastrophe when you screw up. Some types of industry do risk lives. Don't confuse safety regulations with other business regulations. They serve completely different purposes. We should regulate the hell out of fertilizer depots, power generators, medical software, flight. For good reason.
- emiliobumachar 14y ago
  Communications can, in fact, kill people. High-intensity electromagnetic emissions. Those cell towers in the middle of the city have to be very thougthfully planned and installed.
  - white_devil 14y ago
    If "high-intensity electromagnetic emissions" from cell towers kill people, I doubt making them safe is just a matter of placement. If you want to place some in the middle of a city, they will be close to a lot of people, and if their emissions kill people, it's probably not a good idea to place them near lots of people. But they have been placed pretty much everywhere. It appears that either you're overstating the dangers, or we're both about to die any second now.
  - tantalor 14y ago
    http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedian_protester.png http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedian_protester.png
icelancer 14y ago
How did the regulated market prevent it from blowing up?
- pyre 14y ago
  How did a law against murder prevent murders from happening?
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  If you've been paying any attention at all to the West, TX, story, you'd be aware that the regulators were largely defundend and eviscerated by anti-regulation interests. Gov. Perry got a little steamed when his "Business is Booming" campaign was highlighted: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/perry-disgusted-by-california-newspaper-cartoon-depicting-explosion-after-deadly-west-blast/2013/04/26/a80e80e8-aecf-11e2-b59e-adb43da03a8a_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/perry-disgusted-by-ca... Edit: better story link to cartoon.

DArcMattr 14y ago

P.J. O'Rourke said it. Nothing else explains regulatory capture so succinctly.

kalleboo 14y ago

That would be an interesting experiment - fully unregulated airwaves. Imagine AT&T jamming Verizon's 3G signal, private transmitter hijacking terminals, etc.

mseebach 14y ago
Well, in the jamming case, Verizon would probably jam AT&T back. So neither is getting any revenue, and they are left to work out a truce or face bankruptcy. There exists swathes of practically unlicensed spectrum, such as ham radio and 2.4GHz. While regulation exists, large scale enforcement is pretty much unheard of, yet it works pretty well. The big cellular telecom standards (GSM and CDMA) assume a very orderly environment (contrasting the 801.11x standards that are more adaptive), so they would probably look different in a world with unregulated airwaves. EDITED to add: For the purpose of such a thought experiment, It's not practical to imagine what would happen if the current GSM 2G and 3G spectrum just became unlicensed overnight. There is a huge infrastructure investment, both on the carrier and consumer ends that would become worthless, and this is clearly undesirable. Rather, imagine a block of airwaves (say, ex-military or analogue broadcast TV) being released with zero or minimal regulation (no exclusivity, basically).
- rayiner 14y ago
  2.4 GHZ are regulated in the only dimension that matters for spectrum: power output. And unlicensed devices are all inspected and approved by the FCC.
bcoates 14y ago
The ISM bands are vastly less regulated. It's some of the most useful spectrum because of that.

Kroem3r 14y ago

I get the point of view. I disagree with it, but even more, I find it jarring to apply a faith-based approach to thinking about these things in lieu of a critical assessment one. As if it were sufficient to cut through all the tangle and uncertainty with, like, "Daniel 11:3 'And a great king shall stand up ...'" and think that was case and point. What's more, it's hardly clear that you've got this proverb the right way around: It seems as likely that corrupt legislators create regulation to enrich them and their kind, as opposed to well-intentioned regulation leading to the corruption of legislators. I've cut out the middle - corrupt legislators creating corrupt legislation - which is what we actually have and also the sort of murk that doesn't lend itself to witticism.