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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
I always think of lower regulations this way - A firm takes in INs and produces OUTs, some of which can be traded for profit, others of which usually can't. If you can force people to deal with their own OUTs, we'd be golden. But some people find the best way for dealing with the OUTs is to dump that shit in my drinking water. And I want somebody watching out.
This is definitely the foundation of pro-regulation sentiments, and it doesn't appear to be wrong since there are examples of regulation thwarting specific corruption. However, this assumes its own premise that regulation solves problems of corruption in aggregate. I'm not sure if it does or doesn't. Additionally, regulation virtually always throws the baby out with the bathwater by stymieing some OUTs that are actually good. But overall I think the best point was one Renton made a while back: property rights take care of the problem of somebody dropping their OUTs on you.
Most of the rights we experience in our daily lives have little to do with regulatory policy and a lot to do with the protection of property. For example, there are virtually no regulations about how you and other people are allowed to physically interact with each other, and everything works out fine. Regulations on personal interaction exist when it becomes violent or sexual, the former of which is cut and dried property protection, and the latter of which I think is misguided regulation and we'd be better off without them. The same sort of situation can be applied to dumping toxic waste if you let space be owned and protect those rights. It's like with the West Virginia thing: Renton is probably correct in that if rivers were privately owned, we'd live in a world where that doesn't happen.
What we want: laws that protect property and uphold non-coercion
What we don't want: laws that create layers of rules that are not related to property protection. A great example of this that I keep using is zoning. Cities (and countries at large) absolutely fuck themselves with zoning regulations. The regulations exist because of voters who live in the cities who want to conserve their position as incumbent special interests, but these regulations have dire consequences on the movement of capital and even go so far as to create such extremes like homelessness. If we were to collectively cut away all zoning regulations, we'd find gargantuan influxes of capital and migration to hubs, an emigration of those who could no longer afford to live there, and a vast improvement in living standards for everybody involved (especially to those who emigrated to areas where their capital is better utilized). But again, voters in cities don't want to go where their capital is best utilized (even if it means they would be ultimately wealthier), so disastrous zoning regulations that hurt everybody remain in place
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