It doesn't protect citizens against wrong-doing by for-profit companies, hence the regulation. There was a time when the medical field was largely unregulated[0], and it was a dangerous/misleading time. Snake oil, anyone?
0. https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/look-back-old-t...
I refuse to believe that we can't achieve a balance ... when there's too little regulation, add more. When it becomes too onerous, pare it back. The thing that seems to be missing is that balancing force. The body's immune system is important for regulating and protecting bodily functions, however when things go wrong, they go very wrong (auto-immune diseases, etc); I feel like that's where we are right now.
Unfortunately one man's onerous is another's not enough when it comes to regulation, and seemingly due to ideology, not rationality.
Consider those mattress tags which actually saved hundred of thousands of lives, but now seem pointless. We could probably get rid of them and nothing bad would happen for decades, but the risk is higher than you might think.
Without straight answers to these, every bad story becomes a mob outcry for more regulation.
[1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-epa-rolls-back-... [2] - https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-is-now-really-offic... [3] - https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/02/business/uncertain-ho...
Sure, imagine you could just pull a trigger and one day remove all regulations. Then see what happens. Buildings will collapse, people will organize to require building standards. Quacks will kill patients. People will organize to require testing of drugs. It’ll all just build up again. Rules (however you want to define and manage them) exist everywhere, they’re an unavoidable consequence of society.
I think the strongly libertarians/anti-regulation folks need to come up with solutions to over regulation, bad regulation, regulatory capture, etc that work within a realistic understanding that humans are humans. Then they might get somewhere, propose some changes that help everyone in the process. (Though I sometimes think there’s a contradiction there that if you do understand other humans you don’t tend to end up so far down the libertarian scale in the first place)
I've started to come to the conclusion that anyone who studies economics, systems, and political science more than they study psychology, sociology, and history is at dire risk of becoming a libertarian.
What do you mean?
Practical anarchist, though. Gratuitous rebellion for its own sake is counterproductive.
It is necessary that humans come together in cooperation to accomplish goals otherwise impossible without cartels, to break the Nash equilibriums. But it is also necessary to dismantle and diffuse concentrations of power when they become destructive to their original aims. The more permanent an institution, the more inefficient and corruptible it can become as time passes. Corporations need to sometimes fail and be replaced by scrappy startups. Governments need to sometimes hand over power to a different political bloc. Religions need to sometimes have ideological schisms. Statues and monuments sometimes need to be taken down and warehoused. Perfectly good uniforms sometimes need to be replaced with different designs. Sometimes, the fortunes of the rich need to be squandered, stolen, or sunk.
The impulse to rebel must be satisfied, and one would hope that it is possible without violent rebellion, but that is sometimes unavoidable, if the entrenched power structure in question proves unwilling to diminish itself peacefully.
As it is now, my primary concerns are the increasing concentrations of wealth to fewer people, and consolidating ownership of communications media, broadcast and network channels, and intellectual property. These are self-reinforcing, and can lead to a runaway, much like increasing atmospheric CO2 can trigger a runaway greenhouse effect. The healthcare/health-insurance industry is a potential future threat, but it isn't yet too late for them to sort themselves out through rational analysis and discussion.
All of those issues, as far as I can tell, are actually a BIGGER problem in the various parts of the world (and of world history) with weaker state mechanisms, in terms of the ability of the largest portion of their populations to reach as far as possible up Maslow's heirarchy.
If a problem arises in part because government was too weak, that does not imply that the problem may be fixed by making government stronger. In this specific case, the best solution for consolidation might actually be to weaken IP law, while strengthening FCC licensing restrictions.
As for the other problem, the rich seem to have installed themselves and their hopeful cronies to make governments their tools, so their humbling will probably need to come from another vector. Unless, of course, the government tools may be taken back from them. I think that unlikely, but people surprise you sometimes. Setting a higher marginal tax rate on the richest would certainly be preferable to murdering them and taking their stuff, but that's always on the table. I think unions are also a reasonable counterbalance to corporate barons, but the labor cartels are very weak now.
Sure they do. "The invisible hand of the market"! Which requires customers to have perfect knowledge of the market to work. Somehow they can't fathom that someone who is willing to harm others in order to make a profit might also be willing to act dishonestly and commit fraud in order to make even more profit.
The other argument is, "Well, it would happen anyways with regulation!" Which is true, but, just like the "bad regulation" and "regulatory capture" arguments, effectvely boils down to saying, "I don't need to go to the doctor because I'm going to die anyways."
How so?
It’s precisely because no one has perfect knowledge that markets beat central planning, as Hayek articulated in The Use of Knowledge in Society.
[0] In Free to Choose, required reading when I was an undergrad
No libertarian I know of opposes penalties for misbranding and false advertising (i.e. fraud). It seems like you’re attacking a strawman.
a) some moron couldn't color within the lines or
b) some player wants to ice out competitors.
For example it’s the courts that are reining in Monsanto. Regulators didn’t care a whit about the harm they caused. Big tobacco is another example. the list goes on and on.
Look, this isn't that hard. I'm not saying any branch of government isn't corruptible, we're all smart people here and we know that any human organization can be manipulated. But that doesn't change the fact that it's observably true that centralized power structures, like administrative regulation, are much more easily captured than distributed ones. This is basic civics, but sadly that isn't taught anymore. Even so I shouldn't have to tell anyone here why distributed systems are more fault tolerant and robust than centralized ones!