| This is exactly correct. What people think will happen is: 1. Someone sees a problem and asks a politician to fix it. 2. The politicians enact effective regulation and the problem is solved. What actually happens is: 1. Someone sees a problem and asks a politician to fix it. 2. The politicians start drafting regulation on the issue. 3. Companies lawyers come in and lobby to have the regulation amended to either be ineffective or disadvantage their competitors. 4. The mal-regulation is enacted and we're all worse off. 5. The companies involved benefit financially and use their money to hire more lawyers (and politicians). It is necessary to first fix our political system before trying to put more regulation in place. Every time someone says "we need regulation" without doing so, they are making the problem worse, and supporting this corrupt system. An example of this is literally happening in Washington state around a right-to-repair bill: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35715998 I feel like it's so obvious that it shouldn't have to be stated, but apparently it does: companies need to be regulated because they are composed of people (who are evil), but the governments that regulate those companies are composed of those same evil people and need to be controlled by their citizens. Everybody forgets about the second part, and it's the far more important one. |