[dwaltrip]

Look, I hear you. I think you might be 95% right.

But there absolutely are people at companies who choose not to do bad things, or to even stop doing something bad the company was already doing, that cost the company some immediate profit, despite the fact that there wasn’t a regulation forcing them to make that choice.

This happens. People aren’t economic robots.

Maybe you want to argue that this happens such a small percentage of the time that it isn’t worth considering. Or that it isn’t practical or robust to rely on this dynamic if we wish to reduce systemic bad behavior by companies. Those are different and more reasonable claims, in my mind.

My hunch is that this is an important fact about the world that we shouldn’t discount entirely. But I do agree regulations are very important. And I’m not sure the best way to make use of the dynamic I’m describing.