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reckoner2

You mention that needless regulations are bad. Matt Levine [1] has an interesting theory on regulations: (paraphrased)

1. There are two types of regulations:

- Custom Regulations (smart, particular, specific)

- Bulk Regulations (generic red tape, not reasoned or desired)

2. All regulations are custom regulations.

3. All discussion (like your point) is about bulk regulations, which do not exist.

Regulation is tough. Everything that you believe to be needless, may actually serve a very specific and important purpose.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-24/metrics-f...

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> Everything that you believe to be needless, may actually serve a very specific and important purpose.

It may or may not, and it may have served a purpose once upon a time but not anymore because the context has changed or because it's been superseded, it may have failed to achieve its goals or led to undesirable outcomes (either aside from its success or making the situation worse), it may have had a (now considered) horrendous purpose, …

That one must be careful with regulations and understand why they exist is more or less GP's entire point:

> deregulation is a difficult thing that must be done carefully

I like this old quip/aphorism that you shouldn't be able to ask for a law's removal if you don't know why it exists, though I'm not sure it's always feasible, especially for the older texts.

And of course the recorded purpose may not have been honest in the first place (see: many voting regulations in the US).

Does Matt address the industry-sponsored regulations (ie, ones promoting barriers to entry to protect existing players)?

The problem is, it's not clear which ones those are. Regulations don't come with labels saying "this is industry-sponsored to protect incumbents", and reasonable people can disagree on whether a barrier-promoting regulation has legitimate reasons.

Sure, there may be some fuzziness here, but there is one clear outlier that should be noted: the 1998 ruling [1] against web radio was a huge one that benefited broadcasters at the expense of online stations.

I'm sure others could get similar things for other markets, but this one was a complete give-away.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/21/business/panel-s-ruling-on...

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