Comment by Y-bar
1 day ago
> always ends up catastrophically.
Government intervention like forbidding led-based paints or asbestos in homes? Or government intervention like doing something about the ozone depletion? Government intervention like forbidding roaming fees? Intervention like requiring 3-point seat belts? Like progressive taxation? Like forbidding discrimination based on skin colour? Like air travel safety? Like a max ceiling on credit card fees?
Always?
>Like progressive taxation? Like forbidding discrimination based on skin colour?
Ok, sometimes.
Give an example regulation which has objectively been catastrophic and where there has been no clear attempts at amending or improving it.
Abortion abolition in states that are causing women to die because doctors are afraid to perform them even when it puts the woman’s life in danger not to perform them.
It even put the life of a Republican lawmaker in dander in Florida. Of course she blamed democrats.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/22/kat-cammack-...
I quoted a couple.
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Some off-the-cuff examples that come to mind:
- Drastic overregulation of nuclear energy in the US, resulting in fossil-fuel pollution measurable in gigatons over the past several decades accompanied by literally countless illnesses and premature deaths.
- Premature mandates for airbags in cars that resulted in hundreds of needless child deaths because the technology wasn't yet safe enough for universal deployment. A scenario that's playing out right now with misfeatures like automated emergency braking.
- The Jones Act (Merchant Marine Act of 1920), whose effects are too convoluted to go into here.
- Misguided, market-distorting housing policies, ranging across the spectrum from rent control to Proposition 13.
- Many if not most aspects of the War on Drugs, including but not limited to mandatory minimum sentencing and de-facto hardwiring of racial bias into the justice system.