Comment by goku12
8 hours ago
I can see two problems causing the pain described here, which I will discuss shortly. But the article seems to stretch that experience too much into the 'regulation is bad' territory. Regulations exist for a reason. They aren't created for the power trip of government officials. This is the same US where companies dump PFAS into drinking water sources with impunity, has some of the highest fees for the worst quality interest access, where insulin is unaffordable and corporate house renting is a thing. There are many such areas where regulation and oversight is woefully inadequate, much less any 'overregulation'. Regulations are practically the only thing standing between the rich and the powerful and their incessant attempt to drive even more wealth into their own pockets at the expense ordinary people's health, wealth, future, welfare, housing, etc.
Now let's look at the specific problems here with a much narrower scope than 'regulations'. The first problem is the type of regulations. Some regulations are too arcane and don't reflect the current state of technology. Others affect the unprivileged people disproportionately. The solution for that is to amend these regulations fast enough - not deregulation. It's also important to assess the negative impacts of loosening these regulations - something I don't see discussed in this article.
The other important requirement is to increase the staffing of the regulatory agencies so that their individual workload doesn't become a bottleneck in the entire process. There is a scientific method to assess the staffing requirements of public service institutions. According to that, a significant number of government departments all over the world are understaffed. Regulatory agencies and police departments top that list. Increased workload on their officials lead to poor experience for the citizens availing their services (this is very evident in policing). Yet those same experiences are misconstrued and misrepresented to call for deregulation and defunding of these institutions - the opposite of what's actually needed. (PDs need more staff and more training in empathy. Not defunding, nor militarization.) This is exactly what I see in this article. An attempt to target regulations as a whole using a sob anecdote.
>insulin is unaffordable
In large part due to regulation. Reflexively adding more regulations to deal with the negative effects of existing regulations is like "fixing" a bug by adding special-case logic for inputs which trigger the bug, without understanding why the bug actually occurred. Just like code, regulations should ideally be simple and elegant with a minimum of special cases.
The EU also has regulations, but somehow it does not make insulin as expensive as in the US. Maybe the existence of a regulation is not the issue here.
Website here has the cost of a vial of insulin as $99 USA, $3 Turkey. They could just let people buy it from any regulated country? https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-of-insulin-by-country/
Not sure how the US consumer benefits from being banned from having such choices?
Existence of specific bad US regulation and overregulation caused this.
Bad EU regulations and overregulation caused other problems. For example it is illegal for me to throw old socks full of holes into trash, I am supposed to take it to recycling centre on other side of the city.
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I'm not against the existence of regulation, nor is the OP. I'm against bad regulation. The US healthcare system is a gigantic regulatory morass.
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Yeah but EU regulation makes other things expensive and inefficient (like the labour market, housing, building new companies because incumbents protect their interests trhough regulation).
The fact is that with insulin the regulation issues comes from the patchwork system of healthcare the US developped through political concesssionns and lobbying from private firms, which makes the developpment and the subsequent commercialization expensive relative to Europe where centralized national bodies negotiate with the pharma companies.
Regulation can be good or bad, in our era it is ineffective because politicians are boomers disconnected from the issues or in the EU a pseudo-technocratic (not really listening to technocrats recommendations) body far from reality
This series of posts is a nice forray into managerialism (the source of many regulation issues) https://baazaa.github.io/2024/10/16/managers_p1.html
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The bug occurs because of the power discrepancy of those who have the demand and those of who can supply. For some reason, the problem if insulin prices and absurd health costs only exist in the US. I wonder why.
The power to charge what you want comes from lack of competition. Regulation can make entry into a market too high, especially for small start ups.
Ensuring that regulation is necessary and as straight forward as possible to comply with is good for consumers.
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If you are an European, regulation also has the benefit to induce soft protectionism from countries that are less keen on consumer and environment protection. This is the heart of the debate about Mercorsur, as it creates an unfair competition by lowering regulation (in theory european regulation applies but in practice it's harder to verify), and also an internal debate in France related to some pesticide that other European countries can use. Some argue that we should allow the pesticide, some that we should stop importing products that are exposed to it.
Why not just have a single regulation, that products must be clearly labeled by their country of origin, and let consumers decide the rest?
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> In large part due to regulation.
Wait, what? With this type of claim I was sure you were going to back it up with at least some evidence but apparently I was wrong.
I'm sorry, but the irony in this comment too much. The reason insulin is so high is because of a lack of regulation.
If the government took a stronger stance towards monopolies in the pharma industry, this wouldn't be happening. If the government REGULATED insulin prices, it wouldn't be so high. If the government reigned in PBMs, it wouldn't be so high. IF the government reigned in patents and the tricks drug companies play with them, it wouldn't be so high.
> Regulations exist for a reason.
Regulations exist for different reasons, not one reason. Some of those reasons are good reasons, like regulations against dumping or against contract killers or for food safety. Some of those are bad reasons, like regulations of parking minimums implemented to appease the property owning class. Some of those are for bad reasons pretending to be for good reasons, like the regulations that block renewable energy which are allegedly for the environment, but the true motives are more about aesthetic displeasure or ideological hostility.
> like regulations of parking minimums implemented to appease the property owning class.
Due to current market conditions we can sell all apartments without any parking spaces, therefore regulation defining a housing unit with foresight for future market conditions is bad.
> the regulations that block renewable energy
Can you name one regulation that outright blocks renewable energy generation specifically and not externalities created by developments, that sometimes happen to be renewable energy?
> like regulations of parking minimums implemented to appease the property owning class.
This regulations are crucial for preventing cities from being littered with cars (more than they already are). If developers were allowed they would build only very limited parking space and then people living there would have to park in public space burdening everybody. If anything it's a regulation against property owning class.
Are you suggesting that less “free” (cost-bundled) parking spaces would lead to more cars? Or do you just mean from an aesthetic perspective more street parking would be used when you say cities would be more littered with cars?
We’ve ended up with such car-centric cities (in the U.S.) thanks in part to the presence of ample free (subsidized) parking thanks to parking minimums and free street parking. If the cost of parking was actually borne by car owners, it would reduce car ownership thanks to higher cost. This is less true today thanks to car ownership being near-mandator, but with the right investments that can change. I’d describe parking minimums as a regulation against non-car owners as they still pay in part for the parking spaces required by their apartment/home/every business they visit in most cases.
As an aside, have you looked at how parking minimums are often set? It’s only loosely correlated with the goal of sufficient parking.
The problem is that the regulators themselves are insanely corrupt - how else would you explain the emergence of proposals like (thrice-resurrected) Chat Control, that clearly is harmful to every citizen of the EU, and I have yet to see a single individual supporting it.
Every governing decision and rule is either fully made by powerful shadow interests, proposed by said interests and is only thwarted (for the time being) by some politicians on the other side or made out to be benign or even beneficial but is in actuality compromised in some major way.
>Every governing decision and rule is either fully made by powerful shadow interests, proposed by said interests
The Useful Idiots(TM) will be along shortly to tell you how you're technically wrong because the rules are "only" 99% made/proposed by shadow interests.
I hope you enjoy the superiority high that that comment gave you before it disappear
> Regulations are practically the only thing standing between the rich and the powerful and their incessant attempt to drive even more wealth into their own pockets at the expense ordinary people's health, wealth, future, welfare, housing, etc.
Try to rethink how money is created and how money gets its value and how and by whom that wealth is distributed. Regulation as in "make rules" does not enforce rules, which is the definition of (political) power.
> The other important requirement is to increase the staffing of the regulatory agencies so that their individual workload doesn't become a bottleneck in the entire process. There is a scientific method to assess the staffing requirements of public service institutions. According to that, a significant number of government departments all over the world are understaffed.
Why are you claiming "There is a scientific method" and do not provide it? Governments do (risk) management by 1 rules, 2 checks and 3 punishment and we already know from software that complexity in system is only bounded by system working with eventual necessary (ideally partial) resets. Ideally governments would be structured like that, but that goes against governments interest of extending power/control. Also, "system working" is decided by the current ruling class/group. Besides markets and physical constrains.
> Try to rethink how money is created and how money gets its value and how and by whom that wealth is distributed.
Please elaborate.
Money is created and distributed via 1 banking system and 2 government. Are 1 rules, 2 checks and 3 punishment enforced against the banking system and government or only to stabilize and extend those systems? I'd argue the introduction of (arbitrary) rules are often just the excuses to amass power, but enforcement of checks and punishments decides who holds (political) power.
Money is printed out of thin air by the FED and then loaned out to the government for them to spend, so it enters the economy. Something along those lines.