[kristopolous]

I'd really like to know what the legal framework is for securing a market position by law.

I constantly hear the argument that by codifying contemporary business models they've secured jobs.

Using this logic we should still have manually switched phone networks where people move around cables on giant boards all day long and rooms full of people using typewriters who have to start over again if they have a spelling error. There should be artificial $1 taxes for emails to keep the physical post in business and other nonsense.

I really don't see how the argument is valid.

I'm just surprised that there isn't some landmark labor case that would invalidate laws which artificially perpetuate inefficient vestigial processes or explicitly ban a market from evolving.

[afarrell]

What would the legal argument for invalidating the law be? There is no constitutional right to efficient markets that would lead the supreme court to strike down the law. I think the court would declare this a "political question" and refuse to grant cert thereby not ever hearing the case.

[kristopolous]

I was thinking it would have been from English Common law - you know, from like the 14th century or so.

I find the reasons presented for these types of laws to always be patently absurd when generally applied and it just seems like an obvious shoo-in that should have been there since like the hundred years war.

[afarrell]

Why would there have been anything about efficient markets back in the hundred years war? Adam Smith wasn't publishing until around the French and Indian war (AKA 7 years war) 300 years later.

Also, what leads you to believe that creating economic inefficiency to the benefit of some special interest is somehow against ancient and established traditions?

[hnnewguy]

>Using this logic

Well, that is the logic. And you'll note that, despite that logic, we have the internet, cell phones, and the national postal services are going bankrupt.

There's a tenuous balance between maintaining global competitiveness and promoting technological advance, and making sure that your middle-class have blue collar jobs that afford them the ability to participate in the financial gains of of your nation.

The changes will occur; you can't hold them back. But sometimes you have to ease them in. It does the world no good to put thousands of "luddites" out of work overnight. The idea that they'll "find other work" makes sense on the macro level, but not the micro level; transitions take time.