25 lbs of paperwork to register an online school? Sounds less about protecting students and more towards protecting incumbents and cronies.
SOX compliance is arduous but it only exists (and is as strict as it is) because some banks decided to destroy the global economy just to make a bit of money and couldn't understand why this was a bad thing.
Weirdly enough, cities that had their own power companies could have such contracts and didn't get rolling blackouts. I worked in Santa Clara at the time and lived in Sunnyvale. We never lost power at work but frequently found all the clocks flashing when I got home.
Which sort of suggests that centralization is the problem, not public versus private. We had a private company failing and public power companies unperturbed.
You seem to be looking to blame centralization to fit a preconceived normative view of economics rather than just acknowledging maybe markets were not effective or efficient in this particular instance and in fact suffered a massive distortion specifically because a decentralized profit motive allowed one party to abuse market making mechanisms and hijack the price setting function so crucial to efficiency.
And if we did, we would probably change it the day after it failed.
Centralization enables a lot of good thing but also some bad things. Lobbying thrives on centralization because it is easier for decision makers to scam people they don't know, more likely to happen with centralization.
the market itself was a massively cool idea, it's just that Enron had a massive conflict of interest and played both sides. they should have stuck to being a market maker and spun off their trading arm.
The CA blackouts predates the Enron fraud and accounting scandal by at least 6 months. At no time during the blackouts was anyone aware of Enrons fraud.
SOX was regulation to prevent that fraud. Notice, it does and says absolutely nothing about the energy market. That's because SOX was not designed to address the cause of the CA blackouts.
Tyco International Adelphia Peregrine Systems WorldCom (which was a big one)
And there were many more.
you are not kidding.
"You mean we have to monitor for this because someone ACTUALLY tried doing that before...?"
That sort of thing happens all the time and that opportunity cost is not often talked about.
https://politics.theonion.com/truck-accident-that-killed-raf...
SOX compliance is arduous but it only exists (and is as strict as it is) because some company built a $60 billion market cap in 2000 with financial-statement mischief that concealed a bankruptcy in the making.
Greed doesn't listen to reason.
yes, it's a felony because of regulation, made by... regulators
What's the difference? Laws are written by legislators, i.e., the elected representatives. Regulations are written by agencies created and empowered by laws to oversee certain parts of the government/governmental functions.
Regulators work largely by requiring reports because most agencies don't have criminal enforcement powers, and thus can act only on the basis of what is (or isn't) reported...
Laws and regulations which are not merely codification of natural law ultimately come down to attempting to create rules which apply to some people and not others. Unfortunately, legislators and regulators get away with this all to often through a combination of good propaganda and willingness to employ unjustified force to achieve their goals.
Check the box that you understand and expect possible, random inspections.
Because that's the most palatable alternative.
Our design engineers had to fill out government paperwork (many pages) that provided an estimate for how long the rest of the government paperwork would take.
Good thing there are APIs for printing and mailing changes to a diff :)
I have to say, thank you for your thoughtful comments here and on Twitter, and your dedication to students. As a former teacher myself, I know the work is hard.
I only wish there was a Lambda School here in Philadelphia so I could teach here. :)
Whether or not "college education" in general is "a scam" can be debated for sure.
But we aren't talking about "college education" - imagine paying for "college education" but it's a scam so you end up with less money and no education.
The fact of the matter is that to protect people... you need to have a system where ordinary people can complain, and companies get taken to task.
99% of preventative/reporting regulation is just cronyism.
Which to me shows that "the regulatory state" is not the right model.
There will always be a regulatory state, the question is what is the authority that imposes the regulation; is it a democratic government, a private company that institutes policy and terms of service, a gang that rules by force and violence. No society I know of has existed without a code of rules and obligations, and America is actually really amazingly effective.