Liberal Forum

Regulations - good or bad?

Simpletons here like to throw a blanket on all business regulations and say those are BAD!  (Or all good, depending on POV). The truth is more nuanced.

some regulations on business are good and necessary, I.e. a city forcing employers to run a background check on certain kinds of workers.  Understand that if you repeal all regulations, there will be school staff who are on the s.o. Registry working with kindergartners.  Maybe regulations aren’t all bad if they keep rapists away from little girls ?

How about regulations in construction?  There must be permits and inspections (regulations) to prevent having structures that simply collapse and kill dozens of people daily.

now let’s talk about BAD regulations.  These are rules that serve no purpose of safety, but serve to create barriers to entry in markets.  This happens in many ways.

this excellent lesson in economics gives a few examples https://pressbooks.oer.hawaii.edu/princ ... -to-entry/


Businesses have developed a number of schemes for creating barriers to entry by deterring potential competitors from entering the market. One method is known as predatory pricing, in which a firm uses the threat of sharp price cuts to discourage competition. Predatory pricing is a violation of U.S. antitrust law, but it is difficult to prove.Consider a large airline that provides most of the flights between two particular cities.

A new, small start-up airline decides to offer service between these two cities. The large airline immediately slashes prices on this route to the bone, so that the new entrant cannot make any money. After the new entrant has gone out of business, the incumbent firm can raise prices again.
 After this pattern is repeated once or twice, potential new entrants may decide that it is not wise to try to compete. Small airlines often accuse larger airlines of predatory pricing: in the early 2000s, for example, ValuJet accused Delta of predatory pricing, Frontier accused United, and Reno Air accused Northwest. In 2015, the Justice Department ruled against American Express and Mastercard for imposing restrictions on retailers who encouraged customers to use lower swipe fees on credit transactions.
 
 
 

Restrictions, codes and regs are the strictest for just about everything you can imagine in California.
These same things might be the most lenient in West Virginia, New Mexico, the backwoods of Kentucky.
Do we see an epidemic of disaster and death coming from the lenient States and California with an unblemished safety record...?
Old building techniques WERE SCARY LOOKING because they relied on sheer weight / gravity to secure the beams to the posts / columns. just  pound a couple of "TOE NAILS" into the timbers and call it good.
Gravity held everything together until the Carpenter could bond the structural members together better with plywood sheathing.
OK..so I would say the major advances in framing came from the aftermath of YEARLY Gulf Coast Hurricanes. They found that a few dollars worth of thin sheetmetal straps in key locations added much integrity and this was an example of a regulation that I doubt very many people ridiculed or bitched about.
To this day millions of the "old school "toe nailed" timber" homes still exist in earthquake prone California .........

It takes expensive manpower for the States to enforce codes ...so if you have a "money is no object" way of doing business like California..naturally your departments will encourage the new codes  to keep rolling in.
 

Big corporations enjoy having to comply with the epa...because it's very 3xpensive and ensures that no start up can ever compete with them. Indeed if they want to violate epa regulations...all they need to do is build fscories in China and get people to work for pennies.

Here's a funny leaked memo: https://theintercept.com/2022/07/29/ban ... ons-worse/

An important and often overlooked aspect of the 3conomy is that there is an intrinsic conflict between finance and manufacturing:

Finance wants high interest rates and low prices for goods.

Money...after all...is the opposite of a tangible good. When you buy something, you lose money.
Manufacturing wants low interest rates and high prices for goods. So if money is your "product", it is bad for you when people make stuff and wages are decent
 
So banks are literally the enemy of production. This explains the 'economic miracle' of nazi germany. They **** over the bankers and manufacturing took off.

SJConspirator » 09 Aug 2022, 9:55 pm » wrote: ↑

09 Aug 2022, 9:55 pm

Regulations - good or bad?

Simpletons here like to throw a blanket on all business regulations and say those are BAD!  (Or all good, depending on POV). The truth is more nuanced.

some regulations on business are good and necessary, I.e. a city forcing employers to run a background check on certain kinds of workers.  Understand that if you repeal all regulations, there will be school staff who are on the s.o. Registry working with kindergartners.  Maybe regulations aren’t all bad if they keep rapists away from little girls ?

How about regulations in construction?  There must be permits and inspections (regulations) to prevent having structures that simply collapse and kill dozens of people daily.

now let’s talk about BAD regulations.  These are rules that serve no purpose of safety, but serve to create barriers to entry in markets.  This happens in many ways.

this excellent lesson in economics gives a few examples https://pressbooks.oer.hawaii.edu/princ ... -to-entry/


Businesses have developed a number of schemes for creating barriers to entry by deterring potential competitors from entering the market. One method is known as predatory pricing, in which a firm uses the threat of sharp price cuts to discourage competition. Predatory pricing is a violation of U.S. antitrust law, but it is difficult to prove.Consider a large airline that provides most of the flights between two particular cities.

A new, small start-up airline decides to offer service between these two cities. The large airline immediately slashes prices on this route to the bone, so that the new entrant cannot make any money. After the new entrant has gone out of business, the incumbent firm can raise prices again.
 After this pattern is repeated once or twice, potential new entrants may decide that it is not wise to try to compete. Small airlines often accuse larger airlines of predatory pricing: in the early 2000s, for example, ValuJet accused Delta of predatory pricing, Frontier accused United, and Reno Air accused Northwest. In 2015, the Justice Department ruled against American Express and Mastercard for imposing restrictions on retailers who encouraged customers to use lower swipe fees on credit transactions.
 
 
 

What is the purpose of regulations? >Rhetorical question. The actual answer is self evident by historical behavior as this species became current population.