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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

What works in NY and CA is often very harmful in low population states. Laws like AHCA and agencies like the EPA often give little consideration to the economies of low density states. It doesn't have to be this way, we can exploit natural resources safely, and we can have affordable health care, but not in the current fashion.

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Oklahoma's natural resource exploitation regime is so lacking in regulation that they are notorious for their man-made earthquakes. It is near the theoretical lower limit of regulation. It is unimaginable that excessive regulation is the state's foremost problem.

These man-made (mini) earthquakes have caused damage that in total could be measured in the low millions of dollars (if that much).

To put that in perspective, a single large frac well can pull in a million dollars a day easily.

I live in Kansas, I'm well aware. The story is much more complicated than that, there are a ton of contributing factors that stem from intentional regressive regulations.

The earthquake problem is caused by salt-water injection over-budgets (no, fracking does not cause earthquakes no matter what you read on the news). The better question is: why was this never an issue when business was _booming_ in the 70s-80s?

Obama's administration removed a key tax credit for prospecting businesses if they hit a dry hole (A tax credit that's available to any other business for failures). These wells used to be completed and leased as injection wells. Now, if a hole starts to appear dry, drilling is stopped and the well sealed and capped.

This has decrease the diversity of injection sites across the states, straining current infrastructure.

So according to your argument, the states fortunes should be changing right about now, since there is less regulation now..

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