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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
According to this logic, we should just get rid of the FDA, restaurant inspectors, and fire inspectors, since they are distorting the holy market. In fact, it's *their fault* that poor beleaguered businesses are tempted to bribe the inspectors to overlook the rat feces, contaminated drugs, or locked fire doors. After all, the free market will take care of all of this - if 200 people die because of a contaminated drug, well, maybe in future people won't buy from that company.
The 1994 Northridge earthquake in Calif. caused 33 deaths. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti caused 300,000 deaths. The primary difference is the strict earthquake building codes in California. These were not enacting with the idea of enriching building inspectors - it's not like the building inspectors passed the law in the first place.
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We could get into a battle of competing examples of where regulation provides
some needed prevention of some bad result and where it is easy to show that
it has become, at most, a mechanism to avoid responsibility and at least the
engine for graft that I described. The failures of regulation that you describe
just demonstrate a small part of the problem.
When was the last time anyone took a close look at, much less held
accountable the regulators? All these regulatory laws passed with a claim
that they will accomplish some benefit, how many have meet those claims?
How many have done any good that in anyway justifies their cost? What are
the actual numbers, the factual data, for their performance? Why is no one
looking?
It is nice to assume that we can pass a law and that the government will
see to it that our interests are protected, but there is little factual data
to suggest that it will actually work out that way.
I'm also skeptical that the poor people of Haiti had the resources to build to
the California building codes, and that if the regulations had been in place,
they could have been followed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
And of course cell phone carriers were falling all over each other to offer number portability before it was required. Oh, wait, no they weren't.
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I suspect that if one of them thought it would bring in more customers, than a
"free" phone, they would have been eager to do so. I guess they thought it
was not that big a thing to those in the market for a cell phone.
Luck;
Ken