On Mar 9, 2009, at 12:50 PM, Stefano Mori wrote: > So does that leave us with a case-by-case list of things which > sometimes the market can do better, and sometimes the government can > do better? Even cases where the market is far from desirable by any > objective measure, but regulatory efforts would make things worse, due > to the government lacking information, lacking political honesty, > being prone to the whims of interest groups, inertia, and even just > the occurrence of unintended consequences?
It's a good argument for federalism. Lots of economists thought the electric power market was over regulated. So California dismantled some of its regulations. The result was that Enron screwed the people of California up the ass, shutting down transmission to corner the market and jack up energy prices at crucial times. But at least the harm was limited to California. The other states learned from their experience without having to suffer. Land use regulation is a primary activity of local government and here in Arizona the liberals generally think there is too much of it while the right wingers want to keep at least as much as they have. The reason is that the liberals think the regulations go beyond what makes sense for health, safety and protection of the environment and support segregation of social classes and an automobile based life-style. The more extreme right-wingers congregate in areas regulated by homeowners' associations that resemble Stalinist collectives in the degree to which they intrude on what one would expect to be private life-style choices. The 'freedom' these people value is the freedom not to live near anyone who 'acts black' or 'acts mexican'. > > Are there any general rules about which should be in control, market > or government? or does it depend on each case and what else is > happening? It's not a perfect indicator but, as Dave mentioned, ease of entry into the industry is important. The easier it is for new entrants to enter the industry, the less the industry may need regulation. This actually may work better as a negative indicator. If most of the regulatory activity seems directed at protecting existing firms in the industry from competition, deregulation is probably in order. If the regulators are actually more concerned with the current players than with new entrants, they probably have not been captured by the industry and are likely doing something useful. -- And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
