Doing so was kind of an obvious business move for NCL, since segregated seating was required by Alabama law.
Right but regulatory capture means that most business would not only have a financial interest lobby against such laws to boost profits but also probably be quit effective at them.
To give an example requiring a larger number of toilets because segregation was required by law in your factory was clearly a unwanted expense, especially for investors coming in from the outside.
It sounds like you’re suggesting regulatory capture effects would have led NCL to eventually lobby against segregation laws in order to make more money by better serving black Alabamians.
But isn’t it at least as credible that regulatory capture would have led NCL to lobby for the maintenance of segregation to deter competition from upstarts offering desegregated service to those who wanted it?
Regulatory capture usually offers to explain established businesses supporting regulation, or favoring forms of “deregulation” that end up entrenching them at the expense of new competition. So this might explain it if NCL had lobbied for anti-discrimination laws (thus forbidding whites-only competitors) but I don’t see how it would predict supporting merely the removal of segregation laws.
This line of thinking leads me to wonder how much predictive power the “regulatory capture” idea actually has …
Right but regulatory capture means that most business would not only have a financial interest lobby against such laws to boost profits but also probably be quit effective at them.
To give an example requiring a larger number of toilets because segregation was required by law in your factory was clearly a unwanted expense, especially for investors coming in from the outside.
It sounds like you’re suggesting regulatory capture effects would have led NCL to eventually lobby against segregation laws in order to make more money by better serving black Alabamians.
But isn’t it at least as credible that regulatory capture would have led NCL to lobby for the maintenance of segregation to deter competition from upstarts offering desegregated service to those who wanted it?
Regulatory capture usually offers to explain established businesses supporting regulation, or favoring forms of “deregulation” that end up entrenching them at the expense of new competition. So this might explain it if NCL had lobbied for anti-discrimination laws (thus forbidding whites-only competitors) but I don’t see how it would predict supporting merely the removal of segregation laws.
This line of thinking leads me to wonder how much predictive power the “regulatory capture” idea actually has …