Comment by purple_turtle
3 months ago
Less regulation is a good target.
Just not sole one.
Harm reduction (a good reason for regulation) also needs to be balanced with it.
But piles of regulation have costs - both in reduction of competitiveness, increasing expenses, reducing willingness of people to follow and support it and so on.
Regulation is bad, just it is often less bad than alternatives.
But reducing amount of regulation is a good goal.
Otherwise you end in situation where you need lawyer to understand anything, you are not allowed to throw torn socks into garbage and general population applauds people breaking law and happily support it.
"Less regulation is a good target" is only true under regimes where good faith outcomes can be expected without regulation. Given the frequency with which financial incentives align with undesirable outcomes there's no evidence to support this idea.
Regulations aren't free.
Say someone silly makes a rule that your need X hours of training annually to be an interior decorator. Now besides the training, you also have to know that that's required, you have to maintain records to prove you've had the training, the government needs a process for verifying that you've had the training, ...
That's the point of regulations.
If correct/moral/societally beneficial behavior was the most profitable then no regulation would be needed.
Lacking regulation also has a cost, it's just not to the unregulated. Dumping waste into a river is cheap for the business doing the dumping, but has environmental impacts on everyone downstream. It's more expensive to properly dispose of or recycle waste material, that's why a regulation that you must do that is needed.
The market simply does not hold bad actors accountable in any meaningful way. As a result, it pays to be a bad actor.
It's simply not a black and white issue. There are bad regulations to be sure. But it's not nearly as simple as saying that less regulation is better or that more regulation is better. The right amount is good and the wrong amount is bad. What that amount is is up for debate.
2 replies →
That all sounds good, we just need to make sure "X" is reasonable. Having reassurance that any licensed decorator had an amount of training/testing is good for the customer.
Unfortunately your silly rule is something that exists (not for interior decorators of course) but for countless other trade jobs (barber, plumber, etc). Whether that's good or bad I can't say
3 replies →
Note that I am not saying that "throw away regulation, always less regulation is better".
That would be asking to drop all regulations.
I am saying that regulations have cost so you should have as little as regulation as possible to achieve wanted effect.
And wanted effect often should not be literally zero of accidents or bribery or corruption. As it may be either impossible to achieve or extra side effects not worth it past certain point.
In other words minimisation of how much regulations you have should be one of targets.