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by aeternum
2122 days ago
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I think you're right that some industries are more conducive to competition in general. However shouldn't we be more careful then in terms of creating barriers to competition? If we treated restaurants like hospitals/healthcare we would give your employer a tax break in return for determining the set of restaurants you may dine at. Any new recipe or cooking method used by a restaurant would need to first be approved by the FDA. Restaurant chains would not be allowed to operate across state lines. Restaurant would have to accept below-market pricing for some proportion of customers (medicaid). Each restaurant would need to hire a law service to ensure they comply with HIPPA, and staff a department to allow import/export of your dining history. |
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But, I think a lot of economics gets stuck in a sort of theoretical mud. In theory, barriers to competition, entry or always have negative effects. Those negative effects can be small, big, or irrelevant relative to other effects related to the same policy.
What i am suggesting, is that industry structure determines these. So yes, there are theoretical policies that might make hairdressing worse or hospitals better in this regard. In reality though, policies are very often acting within margins where competitiveness doesn't move the needle much either way.
Assuming a thriving restaurant market exists, it will probably remain pretty competitive under any "normal" policy regime. No one is really going to implement FDA approvals for recipes or tax related employer funding schemes.
No one is going to implement a totally nonaccredited hospital system, where doctors & nurses don't have to be trained or licensed. At the very theoretical end, laissez faire dynamics might yield a market-based regulation system that accredits doctors and such without government intervention. But once again (a) that's very unlikely and (b) if it did happen that would still be regulation.
For 99% of real life scenarios, restaurants lend to a free market dynamic while hospitals do not. Governments are involved, but they do not create this reality. It is innate. One policy regime or another (short of communism or such) is not going to change that.