Comment by samdoesnothing
14 hours ago
You cannot separate the idea of regulation from their harm because they are inherent to the concept. A system so complex and dynamical as human civilization is beyond our ability to correctly ascertain the outcome of interventions, especially those imposed from the top down. In other words, we're likely to do more harm than good by imposing interventions because we cannot accurately predict their outcomes. Which is why they often have paradoxical effects. Rent control is a fantastic if trivial example of such.
We know central planning doesn't work, yet we are inclined to do it anyway under the false notion that it's better to do something rather than nothing.
> A system so complex and dynamical as human civilization is beyond our ability to correctly ascertain the outcome of interventions, especially those imposed from the top down. In other words, we're likely to do more harm than good by imposing interventions because we cannot accurately predict their outcomes. Which is why they often have paradoxical effects.
This isn't quite right. There are some regulations that have such obviously enormous benefits that even if our estimates are imperfect, they'd have to be off by a thousand miles to not be the right thing. Examples like banning leaded gasoline or asbestos, or having antitrust laws that kick in if a market gets too consolidated for any reason.
The problem is then people start making a bunch of other rules that on paper would improve things by a couple of percent, but in practice because they're not accounting for overhead or their numbers aren't perfect they're actually making things slightly worse, and then multiply that by thousands of such individual rules and you've got a huge mess.
I agree with this. When Michael Huemer talks about political knowledge he lists several requirements:
1. Simple. For example, “Demand curves slope downward.” The more complicated a theory is, the more ways there are for it to go wrong.
2. Accepted by experts. For example, there is a broad consensus in economics that protectionism is undesirable. If a theory is well-justified, then the great majority of reasonable and intelligent people will usually come to accept the theory, once they understand the arguments for it.
3. Non-ideological. Theories that have an ideological flavor and that call forth strong emotions tend to be pseudo-knowledge–for example, the theory that behavioral differences between men and women are entirely due to socialization. Reality is unlikely to conform to ideology.
4. Weak. For instance, we do not know that free markets are always perfectly efficient. We can say only that free markets are usually approximately efficient.
5. Specific and concrete. We can be much more confident in a concrete claim such as “Ted Bundy’s murders were wrong” than in an abstract theory such as “It is always wrong to initiate violence against another person.”
6. Supported by appropriate evidence. For example, the claim “violent entertainment increases violent crime” cannot be known without empirical evidence. In this case, a study based on a large, random sample would be appropriate, rather than, say, a few anecdotes.
7. Undefeated by counter-evidence. If there is a large quantity of evidence against P, or if one does not know whether there is such counter-evidence, then one does not know that P. For example, if one has read several studies supporting gun control while having read none of the literature on the other side, then one cannot claim to know whether gun control is desirable.
The claim "Leaded gasoline should be banned" reasonably fits most of these requirements, thus it's probably a relatively safe intervention with upside.
>Rent control is a fantastic if trivial example of such.
No it isn't. Rent control is made to provide short term relief. Regulations tend to be long term requriements. Of course making a short term temporary solution long term does not work.
>we're likely to do more harm than good by imposing interventions because we cannot accurately predict their outcomes
For policy, I think it is important to be risk averse. Regulations are extremely risk averse. Slowing down reckless actions so that people don't die should be considered a good thing. Of course, that can be anathema to businesses who rush to be first to market.
I don't see regulations being a problem here, but the cost of the regulations. Instead of focusing on de-regulations we look into what that 100k certification is going to? Hopefully not yet another for-profit middleman with incentives to bog the process down.
> Rent control is made to provide short term relief.
Quite the opposite. The benefits of rent control grow the longer you are in the same apartment without moving as the difference between what the tenant pays and the market value diverge further with each lease renewal. There are people in NY who have been in their apartments 50 years and pay 10% of the market rate.
I'm talking about the policy, not the tenants. Enacting 50 years of rent control is no different from Japan's economy the last 30 years.
Of course after multiple generations you scare off housing investment. But not after 5. And that should be the goal of rent control. Short term relief while doing the long term plan of building more housing.
Politicians not doing it this way is like blaming your duct tape for falling apart after a few weeks of adhesive duty.That doesn't mean duct tape is bad. It means no one bothered to fix the underlying issue.
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> Quite the opposite. The benefits of rent control grow the longer you are in the same apartment without moving as the difference between what the tenant pays and the
You're assuming a form of rent control where new tenants pay market rate. That's not the only form, e.g., Berkeley's rent control used to continue "forever", until California forbade that (Costa Hawkins act in 1995).
And that person can never ever move.
They're right. Rent control is useful as a short term measure to keep rents from spiking, but it does long term damage to supplies and you need completely different methods to fix the supplies.
The "we" that knows central planning doesn't work and the "we" inclined toward central planning are the same?
If so, I've not met this group of people, but I'd like to share your first point with them because I tend to agree.
If central planning didn't work, why does every corporation under the sun use it internally? Why don't they just let everyone do what they want, and then sue eachother when it doesn't result in great outcomes?
Central planning does work at small scales. Everyone "centrally plans" their own life. Can you imagine doing it any other way?
The issue is that as the context expands, we lose the ability to make accurate predictions. To some extent we can't even predict our own lives although we try our best. When you expand that to the size of a corporation it's mostly just guessing. Corporations fail all of the time. When we expand that to a society, we are just guessing for everything but the most simple of predictions.
What is the average age of a corporation?
I say that as someone who actually thinks a little central planning is good.
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> In other words, we're likely to do more harm than good by imposing interventions because we cannot accurately predict their outcomes.
This doesn’t follow from your premise.
> We know central planning doesn't work
Europe conquered the world using central planning. Every society on earth with any measure of security, order, and cleanliness to speak of is dominated by a central bureaucracy. It works.
> under the false notion that it's better to do something rather than nothing.
Doing nothing is precisely why anarcho-capitalists failed to change anything. Everyone smart associated with that movement studied power dynamics and moved onto other projects.
You mean the British Empire, that committed all sorts of atrocities? Thats what you call "works"?
> Europe conquered the world using central planning.
Ah yes, I remember when the country of Europe conquered the world.
And you cannot separate the idea of lack of regulation from the harm inherent to the concept.
This kind of lazy ideological posturing is thought-terminating and incredibly tiring.
Your position is simply unable to demonstrate to us how a blanket policy of letting whatever corner-cutting garbage slip into your food, medicine, construction materials, safety systems actually leads to globally better outcomes. It would be truly baffling if of all conceivable points on the axis it was a global optimum.
I sympathise with your fatigue, I get tired of repeated arguments too, but I suppose the tiredness itself isn't a sign of being right. I wonder whether oh no not this again contains useful information. Perhaps not. Misconceptions are popular, but good ideas are also popular.
The earliest regulations were about the purity of bread and beer, and I tend to think of them as a good thing. But concepts like gypsum doesn't go in bread are simple enough for a king to understand, so perhaps those early regulations were more suitable for central administration. This was before there were brand names or consumer organizations. I suppose a non-central form of regulation would have to be along those lines, adversarial but symbiotic with the specific industry. Restaurant rating stars. IDK. Some stuff isn't consumer-facing though.
When unmonitored, people aren't motivated to behave, and they make a mess. When monitored, the people comply, but the monitors aren't motivated to be wise or understanding, only to enforce. Sometimes you get situations where an entire culture of people are spontaneously careful and good, or where they are regulated by regulators who are wise and perceptive and flexible. This state of affairs comes about, so far as I can tell, at random, or by voodoo.
I think this specific thing is more an effect of human brains trying to stereotype complicated things.
"all regulations are bad" is a much simpler premise than "rule #3.70.66.345 should be adjusted to consider multiple drive trains with the same engine to pass the same tests".
Like, if you found a specific regulation that was badly designed and advocated for it to change, no one would argue against it, but you wouldn't get any internet engagement either.
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> Your position is simply unable to demonstrate to us how a blanket policy of letting whatever corner-cutting garbage slip into your food, medicine, construction materials, safety systems actually leads to globally better outcomes.
You're gonna complain about "lazy ideological posturing" and then in the same breath construct a tired, boring straw man? Was this on purpose to prove a point or something?
Only the most simple and uncontroversial political claims can be counted on. Regulating lead in petrol is simple, uncontroversial, and very reasonably likely to do more good than harm. It's an example of an intervention on society that is relatively safe and easy to predict the outcome. And it's also an outlier, because most political action is neither uncontroversial, simple, or likely to do more good than harm.
Regulating lead in petrol was very much not uncontroversial when it was regulated. Same with asbestos - the industries involved fought really hard against it.
Central planning is why our cities are no longer choked by smog. It is extremely difficult to predict outcomes in complex human system, but that cuts both ways: it’s hard to know if some intervention is good or bad, and it’s hard to know if leaving things alone is good or bad.
If you leave things alone, you get the light bulb and the airplane, but also leaded gasoline and radioactive tonics. The notion that it’s always better to do nothing rather than something is as fallacious as the opposite.
> We know central planning doesn't work
Most corporations and dictatorships seem to be centrally planned. Communism didn't work out for the Soviets, but they also didn't have smartphones and ChatGPT.