[praptak]

> The article in question highlights something that we should all understand very well at this point: Government rule-making is, more often than not, fraught with unintended consequences that, ultimately, end-up costing us in terms of money, freedom and choice.

This is how I see it:

1. Government makes an anti-kickback rule.

2. It relaxes the rule.

3. Corporations take advantage of the opportunity using kickbacks to entrench themselves in the market, costing us money, freedom and choice.

4. Your conclusion: government rule making is bad.

[anamax]

> 4. Your conclusion: government rule making is bad.

Feel free to provide 3 examples where there's significant regulation AND little/no regulatory capture.

[jleader]

1. Laws against murder.

2. Laws against theft.

3. Contract law.

4. Traffic laws (right of way, behavior at stop signs and traffic lights, etc.).

None of the above are perfect; all of the above have been used abusively at times; all of the above are needed to some degree for the smooth functioning of society. There are some debates in the area of traffic regulations about whether some situations would be safer with a little less regulation. There's also been some regulatory capture of contract law by lawyers, but because contract law is relatively symmetric, it's less of a problem there.

[anamax]

That's not the kind of rule-making under discussion, so thanks for conceding the point wrt that kind of rule-making.

As to contract-law, mandatory arbitration is getting "interesting".