US thoroughly punishing infractions
I like how you can tell that the hand slapping and the hand being slapped are from the same person. It draws parallels to just how bought out our politicians are, almost as though the rich are ‘punishing’ themselves.
It’s ok, though. Now that the free market has learned it’s lessons, there’s no chance self regulation will go wrong in the future. None at all!
They are going to behave now. Pinky promise. 🥹🥹
Crucial Add:
The US Supreme Court
Free market radicals forget that regulations actually exist to keep markets fair and protect private property.
I could make a business where I steal product from a competitor and undersell them. The free market solution is that people would be willing to pay more for unstolen goods so they could raise the price to cover their loss. I wouldn’t want to drive them out of business, so I couldn’t steal all their product. The market finds the happy equilibrium. No regulation necessary.
This sounds crazy, but there are a lot of markets that operate like this in one form or another. Wage theft is one good example. Pollution is something that steals a little bit of equity from a lot of people. Regulation protects private property.
Free market absolutist are childish morons.
I can’t believe anyone thinks capitalism can regulate itself.
My favorite: leaded gasoline.
If I believe in the Invisible Hand hard enough, some day I’ll get that reach-around I’ve been longing for.
should have had a panel with cops getting paid vacation for murdering people
No see everyone will abide by the non aggression principle! /s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
How about killing thousands of people overnight with no meaningful consequences?
Libertarians: LALLALALA I CANT HEAR YOU
I mean for Christ’s sake we’re literally watch what Boeing did when they self regulated and it’s a goddamn nightmare. Rich assholes only worry about getting richer
I’ll be honest, I don’t really see how the Love Canal has much to do with self regulation, as the chemical company involved did go above and beyond the regulations at the time for the containment liner. It only failed when people dug foundations through the middle of it because the local town council forced them to sell the property to the council, and then immediately flagrantly violated the terms of the sale where they agreed to never build on the site by concealing the site’s history and building a school while auctioning off the land to developers for a surrounding neighborhood on the site.
I think the Cuyahoga River can fit for both heavy industry and chemical companies. Not even necessarily for the same fire either lmao
Airlines might be a bad example. Before 1978 there was a lot more control, such as mandating price minimums. Without those you get affordable air travel.
But for airplane companies themselves, I absolutely agree. The FAA had to save money because of their tiny budget, so they had airplane manufacturers inspect their own things instead, with bad results.
That the FAA had to save money by not doing one of their most important job meant American lives got cheaper, didn’t it?
Sure? But Congress doesn’t fund them to be able to do their job.
Why the fuck not? It’s vitally important to the economy, there’s no reason for it to be privatized in the first place.
You talking about airlines or aircraft manufacturers?
Both? They need so much regulation and control that it makes sense to just cut out the middle men.
The manufacturers are so heavily subsidized by the government they might as well be publicly owned anyway.
Too much government control of the airlines was definitely detrimental after WWII. They couldn’t compete on prices, couldn’t adapt to changing routes, and couldn’t really cost optimize anything. Deregulating the non-safety aspects improved air travel a lot.
There wasn’t government control of the airlines, just regulations. Protectionist regulations.
The airlines were still privately owned and the government gave them sweetheart deals and intentionally limited the entry of new competition into the industry, allowing the formation of monopolies of the legacy airlines. There was no incentive for increasing the number of carriers because that would hurt profits, and the regulations helped by making entry into the market even harder.
That problem goes away if you just seize the airlines and run them as public utilities.
I grew up next to the Cuyahoga river in the '70s. I have no idea why that river wasn’t on fire every day.
A brief history of regulation…
- Euclidean zoning
- Alcohol prohibition
- Subsidies for fossil fuel companies
- 2008 financial crisis bailouts
A brief history of self-regulation…
- Decriminalization of drug possession and consumption
- Nunavut self-governance
- Cash donation charities; UBI
- EU Schengen agreement
Maybe: poor people self-regulating > governments regulating > corporations self-regulating > rich people self-regulating?
…wat? I can’t hear you over the industrial cherry picking you’re doing over there.
If you prefer to eat the entire cherry tree, that’s your perogative. Personally I prefer using more precise tools so I only take what I need to and do as little damage as possible, though rest assured the cherries are hand-picked. The noise must be on your end.
Euclidean zoning
Houstonian here, and developers will do that regardless of the presence or absence of zoning laws. Its just a cheaper way of mass producing suburban real estate.
Alcohol prohibition
Originally came out of a period of wholly unregulated alcohol production, resulting in enormous social harm both through direct consumption (moonshine poisoning people, quack medics distributing alcohol as a panacea, alcoholism ruining lives) and knock-on effects (domestic violence, workplace injuries, automotive fatalities). The post-21st amendment wasn’t a return to laisse-faire alcohol production, but of strict regulatory enforcement of production, distribution, and consumption under a litany of state laws.
Subsidies for fossil fuel companies
Energy is a utility and should have always been in the domain of the public sector, both because it is essential for domestic commerce and vital for national security. The biggest subsidies that fossil fuel companies receive come from the MIC, which is the largest single consumer of fuel and also the means by which the country secures access to oil fields.
And under state leadership, we’ve seen a consistent and reliable pivot to nuclear power as the preferred method of energy production. The US, France, and the UK were all heavily invested in emerging nuclear technologies during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, as they sought to compete with the Eastern Block, India, and China. The fall of the USSR, the pivot to full privatization of the energy sector under Reagan and Clinton, and the ascendancy of US-friendly Middle Eastern dictatorships in the global financial system are what continue to force our reliance on fossil fuels.
Had we continued to treat energy as a utility rather than a profit center, we’d have kept a great deal of fossil fuel in the ground and pivoted to full nuclear electrification 40 years ago.
2008 financial crisis bailouts
Graham Leech Biley created the conditions for financial collapse, not the post-collapse short-term takeover of the banks. The biggest mistake Obama made was de-nationalization. A better president would have extended the bailouts directly to homeowners and permanently nationalized the home mortgage system.
