| > In the long term, regulation often kills competition, which inevitably kills innovation. So does non-regulation, often. A lot of this carp is "emergent" bureaucracy between insurers, other insurers, hospitals, etc. Regulation and monopolies often support eachother, merging into a nasty complex such as this... it's impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. I see financialization as a bigger factor currently than regulation. It's not a coincidence that "medical billing" is the epicentre. I just don't buy the idea that less regulation means less mindless complexity. The best if the early neoliberal/austrian economists was IMO Schumpater. Creative destruction. Complexes evolve into cludges over time. Creative destruction is often presented as a feature of free markets... But that's theoretical. Irl, we see firms and complexes become effectively immortal... Immune to market forces and moated from competition. These tend to be the massively inefficient ones. Regulated or not, insurance consortiums are much more like a government department than they are like a local restaurant. There are a lot more "private" regulators in the mix than public ones. |