When I read "regulators failed", I don't think of Joe Regulator phoning it in at work. If Congress creates and oversees regulations, then they are the regulators in my book. This may be what the comment you replied to meant as well.
Nope, the failure is of the individuals. Sure, regulators deserve some of the blame but nobody forced the individuals to put their money into such ridiculous schemes.
> But who regulates the regulators? As bad as this example is, have you never heard of the nightmares people fall into dealing with government bureaucracies? If anything, they're much much worse than the worst that companies inflict.
I think that last sentence could only be honestly written by someone who's lived their whole life in a society protected by strong regulatory structures. The massive benefits of regulation are taken for granted and forgotten, but the problems of implementation that still exist are magnified out of proportion.
Government bureaucracy is certainly not perfect, but lets not kid ourselves that it's worse than the alternative.
And the answer to your question is: a functioning legislature that's accountable to its constituents, and competently exercises its oversight role.
> Regulatory capture is a real thing too.
But rather than a call for less regulation, it's really a call for better oversight of the regulators.
I used to work for government regulators and this is a such a bizarre view of regulation.
Trust me, people on my team weren't up at night scheming how we might put the squeeze on a companies, and what nice new regulations we might implement to make things harder on businesses.
We barely had the resources to enforce important regulations that everyone would agree should exist.
Please read up on the history of any regulatory body in the US. Nearly every governing body we have and every regulation on the books was create after there was abuse. Regulations in the Federal government are almost never proactive, and as a general rule the regulators I knew had no interest in expanding their purview.
In fact, it's quite uncommon for regulations of any kind to be enforced until you basically force yourself to get caught. Most regulatory agencies are underfunded and understaffed by design. It's a reason so many startups perform regulatory arbitrage for years without consequences, even when their actions are quite harmful to the society overall.
Supervision is not regulation, it's the enacting of the regulation. Read it as "to regulate them well watch what they're doing". Nitpicking is a great way of showing you hold a crap hand.
[from another comment] > I fail to see how regulation of regulators is somehow invulnerable to the same failures
It is not, it's just more impervious because regulators by design have to work in a more transparent fashion and there is some accountability, even if at the next elections. The players being regulated are usually completely opaque and there is no real accountability.
And just because something isn't infallible doesn't mean you have to throw it away.
Looking at all your comments in this post it seems you have very strong opinions and you don't let facts get in their way.
> Sure in theory there's all this regulation, but somehow we keep having disaster after disaster that would have been avoided if all these regulations were enforced.
Making new regulations is not helpful when the problem is the existing regulations are not enforced.
> I’m glad the EPA tried but have to wonder why congress can’t do their jobs.
There is a certain large percentage of the population who vote in people who actively want to eliminate all oversight/regulations. How do you do that? Make the regulators look like they're not doing their jobs and say, "See? We just need to get rid of it all! They're wasting YOUR tax dollars!"
> I generally take a dim view of regulators, who generally seem to have less expertise than the people they're regulating.
The thing that always worries me is — if we try to prevent the "revolving door" whereby regulators hire from the industry they're regulating, then how will we ever have regulators who know what they're doing?
>Most people do not believe you can achieve societal goals in a free-market without regulation.
>...who are the regulators? A professional class of bureaucrats well-insulated from industries, or a class of practitioner-bureaucrats that move fluidly from industry to government and back?
If you do subscribe to the premise of the first quote (i.e. that regulation is required) AND you accept the premise of the second quote (that those represent the only two choices), then it seems obvious that you have to go with the insulated bureaucrats.
Otherwise, you effectively have regulatory capture, which is to say, effectively, no regulation at best.
And, at worst, this capture represents no achievement of societal goals PLUS a distorted marketplace which further compounds societal problems.
This, versus imperfect or inefficient regulation, but regulation nonetheless.
Because the current US political climate is not in favour of regulations. It is true that we have all the regulations you describe, but each was fought tooth and nail when introduced!
EDIT: Original post had slightly more pointed political language.
> Stupid regulations almost always make things worse.
This is such an ideological comment. The reality is that stupid regulations make things worse, but non-stupid regulations make things better. We want non-stupid regulations. A world without regulations is a non-starter due to the tragedy of the commons incentive problem. Imagine a world where dumping was legal because there were no regulations. Or where explosives could be purchased from your local corner store because they weren't regulated. It's a non-starter. You would be dead from a resulting illness or terrorist attack. Nobody wants it, including you. So if you can propose a regulation-free solution to the various incentive problems like tragedy of the commons, then I'm all ears, but the burden of proof is on you to do that, and it's a burden you haven't met.
> My experience is that most govt regulators are complacent, mediocre, low energy desk jockies who default to doing as little as possible.
Yep. But the upside is that they're often the only thing standing between you and more or less infinite profit; and they're hardly an obstacle if you have the right set of keys.
When I read "regulators failed", I don't think of Joe Regulator phoning it in at work. If Congress creates and oversees regulations, then they are the regulators in my book. This may be what the comment you replied to meant as well.
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