Attempting to distinguish between stifling regulation and ordinary “prevent defections” regulation is an inherently political process.
Bypassing regulations is very rarely progress
Progress has both winners and losers. Often, the difference between progress and regression is only visible with hindsight (eg leaded gasoline)
So, the key question is not “is X a viable antidote to overregularion” but rather “who gets to decide when a regulation has overstayed its welcome. And any process that doesn’t include the voices of those currently benefiting from the regulation (eg bribery between the enforcer and someone who wants to bypass the regulation) is not a good choice.
I didn’t ask anything about viability. I asked about value. It’s good to first understand what’s happening before then deciding about what should happen.
Bypassing regulations is very rarely progress
Why? Why isn’t it progress to use technology that was previously forbidden by regulation? Using Uber instead of taxis seems to me like progress.
Dumping SO2 into the atmosphere isn’t progress.
Delivering cars without seat belts isn’t progress.
Building a factory without guard rails on the walkways isn’t progress.
I could go on. The examples of stifling regulation, even on a cursory glance, are few and far between.
I don’t see how that’s relevant to the original question.
“Does X contribute to Y” is investigating “why care about X”
“Can Z mitigate X” is investigating “how can we affect X”
The question of “is it worth the costs of Z in order to reduce Y” is a higher level question. Analyzing it in a thread under the sub-question is the wrong place to have such a discussion.
I’m not commenting on either of those theses. Just pointing out that there are substantial costs to moving corruption from “verboten” to “kinda not ok”
In my estimation, the cost/benefit here is like burning your furniture for heat.
Is it? You apparently didn’t take “most regulation is not stifling” into account when you made your original post. And you gave the impression that you think the relative cost benefit is somewhere in the realm of reasonable (by even making the post), which implied that you might not be accounting for all the costs of “using corruption”
I didn’t spent time talking about how the sky is blue either.
There was no intent in this post into accounting for all the costs of corruption but whether or not corruption is benefitial for a specific purpose.
When a topic is quite charged by preconceptions it’s very useful to focus on the part that’s unclear to gather more understanding and not on the parts that aren’t.
It’s important to explicitly say that at the top of your post.
That goes for any morally questionable discussion. If you don’t put a disclaimer like:
“Notwithstanding the facts that 1) the first order effects of regulations are to save lives and improve the physical and mental health of the people protected by them 2) allowing corruption for some things weakens protections against corruption in other areas; let us consider …”
As the first part of your post, reasonable people might think you either didn’t know those things (because nobody knows everything, and nothing is known by everyone) or didn’t believe it (because millions of people act in a way consistent with believing the opposite, and you could be one of them.)
Attempting to distinguish between stifling regulation and ordinary “prevent defections” regulation is an inherently political process.
Bypassing regulations is very rarely progress
Progress has both winners and losers. Often, the difference between progress and regression is only visible with hindsight (eg leaded gasoline)
So, the key question is not “is X a viable antidote to overregularion” but rather “who gets to decide when a regulation has overstayed its welcome. And any process that doesn’t include the voices of those currently benefiting from the regulation (eg bribery between the enforcer and someone who wants to bypass the regulation) is not a good choice.
I didn’t ask anything about viability. I asked about value. It’s good to first understand what’s happening before then deciding about what should happen.
Why? Why isn’t it progress to use technology that was previously forbidden by regulation? Using Uber instead of taxis seems to me like progress.
Dumping SO2 into the atmosphere isn’t progress. Delivering cars without seat belts isn’t progress. Building a factory without guard rails on the walkways isn’t progress. I could go on. The examples of stifling regulation, even on a cursory glance, are few and far between.
Do you believe that increased regulatory burden isn’t part of the reason for the Great Stagnation?
I don’t see how that’s relevant to the original question. “Does X contribute to Y” is investigating “why care about X” “Can Z mitigate X” is investigating “how can we affect X” The question of “is it worth the costs of Z in order to reduce Y” is a higher level question. Analyzing it in a thread under the sub-question is the wrong place to have such a discussion.
It’s a core assumption on which the case I made is build.
The general thesis here is:
Regulatory burden is a main factor for the lack of progress we see in the Great Stagnation
Corruption helps actors get around regulatory burden
I’m not commenting on either of those theses. Just pointing out that there are substantial costs to moving corruption from “verboten” to “kinda not ok”
In my estimation, the cost/benefit here is like burning your furniture for heat.
Pointing that out is pretty worthless as it’s already general knowledge.
Is it? You apparently didn’t take “most regulation is not stifling” into account when you made your original post. And you gave the impression that you think the relative cost benefit is somewhere in the realm of reasonable (by even making the post), which implied that you might not be accounting for all the costs of “using corruption”
I didn’t spent time talking about how the sky is blue either.
There was no intent in this post into accounting for all the costs of corruption but whether or not corruption is benefitial for a specific purpose.
When a topic is quite charged by preconceptions it’s very useful to focus on the part that’s unclear to gather more understanding and not on the parts that aren’t.
It’s important to explicitly say that at the top of your post. That goes for any morally questionable discussion. If you don’t put a disclaimer like:
“Notwithstanding the facts that 1) the first order effects of regulations are to save lives and improve the physical and mental health of the people protected by them 2) allowing corruption for some things weakens protections against corruption in other areas; let us consider …”
As the first part of your post, reasonable people might think you either didn’t know those things (because nobody knows everything, and nothing is known by everyone) or didn’t believe it (because millions of people act in a way consistent with believing the opposite, and you could be one of them.)