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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism quite clearly requires strong regulation. At least, any sort of positive capitalism that doesn't immediately succumb to monopolies, cartels and corruption.

The problem is that the loudest voices arguing for capitalism, also tend to argue against regulation, accountability, and that sort of thing.

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They argue against regulations because:

- Regulations are often used as a tool of corruption and cronyism, e.g. regulation of housing construction entrenching landowner power.

- Regulations can block legitimate progress, e.g. the private antigen tests that were blocked throughout 2020.

- Regulations create complexity which acts as both a barrier to entry which creates monopolies, and as a hidden tax.

- Regulations are often theatre.

- Bad regulations are sticky; they don't sunset.

That's why I favor less regulations overall. But I don't favor no regulations. I still want regulations (or just "laws") that stop pollution, deceptive marketing, and so on.

Exactly. You don't want regulations merely for regulations' sake. Regulations need to be governed by a simple, transparent set of values, and enforce only those, but enforce them well and consistently, and keep the regulator accountable for how those values and regulations are enforced.

Blindly trusting regulators to know what's best is just as bad as blindly trusting corporations to know what's best.

> I still want regulations (or just "laws") that stop pollution, deceptive marketing, and so on.

Not allowing pollution isn't regulation, it's enforcing property rights.

Not allowing deceptive marketing (fraudulent contracts) isn't regulation, it's enforcing property rights.

If you can't see the difference between regulations and property rights then yeah, opposition to regulations will seem a bit bizarre.

Deciding that these are property rights issues and enforcing them as such is itself a form of regulation. Property rights themselves are a basic form of regulation. Expanding property rights to more areas is regulation. Everything that regulate things in a way that protects and enforces people's rights, ensures people aren't being exploited, robbed, misled, etc, is a form of regulation.

> Property rights themselves are a basic form of regulation.

In a general sense, perhaps, but not in the sense that people mean when they say that they're opposed to regulation. Context matters. In this conversation, "regulation" means a deviation from natural property rights, whether that involves directly infringing them, e.g. by attaching extra rules or penalties beyond simply respecting the equal rights of others, or granting artificial "property rights" which will necessarily infringe on others' natural ones.

> Expanding property rights to more areas is regulation.

"Expanding" the concept of property rights to areas where they don't naturally apply (like copyrights and patents) is definitely regulation, in the negative sense. But at that point you're not really talking about property rights any more.

Regulation implies regulators, and regulators can become a bottleneck for power. They can demand bribes and favors in exchange for being allowed to operate and they can use their power to selectively eliminate political opponents sources of power.

Read "The Path to Power", LBJ biography. They describe this process plainly and how he continuously used his across his entire career in this way. Its very enlightening.

Of course the regulators themselves also need to be regulated and held accountable. It's either that or prevent all concentrations of power, including corporations.

Regulations is what largely enables cronyism.

The world isn't black and white. There is good and bad regulation. Effective and ineffective regulation. For example car safety regulations are pretty effective. Cars are more safe now than they ever have been and its rare for there to be a problem with the safety systems in cars. Financial market regulation has been mostly a disaster and is in large part due to capture by the industry and serious conflict of interests at all levels of government.

Who regulates the regulator ?

If it is the government then it goes back to the people being aware of their interests and not allowing themselves to be manipulated. Which is never going to be the case.

The answer to this question has always been ideology. Establishing a deep an sincere belief in the purpose of an undertaking on the part of its functionaries is the most durable way to run a community of any sort. Successful anarchist programs require some degree of ideological commitment to a greater cause. Switzerland is probably the most decentralized society on earth and you will notice the incredibly tight sense of right/wrong throughout Swiss society.

The people at the top are deeply cynical of ideology. They fill the ranks of middle management with true believers and play their own games.

In theory the regulators, as part of the government, serve the will of the people. But the state under capitalism serves no one but the massive corporations which these regulators are meant to govern. So we end up with fossil fuel guys running the EPA and Verizon lawyers running the FCC.

There is no one to regulate the regulators because the state in its entirety is isolated from accountability to the public.

Capitalism requires strong regulation but communism requires top down control.

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