DISQUS

DISQUS Hello! The Technology Liberation Front is using DISQUS, a powerful comment system, to manage its comments. Learn more.

Community Page

The Technology Liberation Front

The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
Jump to original thread »
Author

TCS Daily on Regulatory Policy

Started by TLF · 11 months ago

TCS Daily on June 18 ran an essay by me on regulatory policy. I excerpt thus:
In a sense, both models – market and regulatory — are flawed. But there is a difference. For every theory contending that markets fail, there is usually an answering argument that they tend to s ... Continue reading »

5 comments

  • Skip Oliva

    1 year ago

    Federal Trade Commission Chairman William Kovacic obviously didn't get the message. He says "self-assessment" is the *only* way to go...

    http://voluntarytrade.org/blog/?p=478
    reply
  • Steve R.

    1 year ago

    Self-correction may not be a common response to regulatory failure. One reason we have "regulatory failure" is that many of our regulations actually result from professed capitalists who hypocritically pay lobbyists to sheppard the passage of favorable regulation to protect their business models. Real capitalists wouldn't be lobbying the government for self-serving regulations that need correcting (revision) when the business model fails.
    reply
  • Don Marti

    1 year ago

    What about competition among jurisdictions? Look at the "do business in Alabama" or "do business in North Dakota" ads in any big business magazine.
    reply
  • eee_eff

    1 year ago

    In contrast, self-correction is not a common response to regulatory failures. There is no good explanation for how an agency or a system of rules can be designed to systematically succeed or self-correct.

    Yes, there is and several economists have discussed this issue. The primary mechanism that regulatory schemes use to self-correct is democracy, accompanied by a healthy free press, in which unpopular or unwise regulations become changed, or necessary ones are enacted. In particular the work of Amartya Sen stands out in this regard. Karl Polanyi also approached this issue, with his considerations of how economic life is embedded within social and political structures.
    reply
  • Mike Wendy

    1 year ago

    I had a similar epiphany ealrier this year on a trip from my in-laws in Miami to my parents in Boca.

    To the point: Family-tow, my young daughters in need of lunch, and strongly vocalizing their desires, we stopped at a fast food restuarant drive-thru, hoping to expedite the process. No deal. I ditch and go into the establishment, which resulted in an even longer wait.

    I thought - wow, how can a business stay in business if it does this stuff? The answer - it won't for long if it continues with the delays. It's called "fast food" for at least one reason.

    It'll simply go out of business - self-correction.

    Having more time on my hands than I had intended, I thought how this relates to government and regulations. It seems to me that the "self-correction" mechanism has at least a four-year time frame, best case scenario. Sadly, regulations have a tendency to stay on the books rather than dissapear. Thus, it seems to me that the "self-correction" mechanism - something of great import in market dynamics - is certainly not a primary (or any) goal of regulations and regulators, as noted in insightful Solveig's piece.
    reply

Add New Comment

Returning? Login