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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

The problem with government regulatory agencies is that once they solve the problem that instigated their creation, they can't stop. They keep looking for more problems to "fix" in a never ending loop of justifying their existence. Once they become typical bloated behemoth bureaucracies, common sense doesn't work anymore.

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1. Once a bureaucracy is created, its 1st act is to perpetuate itself. It has no allowance for self-destruction someday.

2. When one coalition of governments and bureaucracies don't work to one's advantage or agenda, create a new one.

3. If threatened w/ abolition, bureaucracy's main defense is counting d no. of bureaucrats who'll lose job, social tension.

4. Before the main mandate is accomplished, create new functions, prgrams and "needs" to perpetuate itself forever.

5. Create one admin or regulations order, monitor how ineffective it is, create a revised regulations order, monitor...

http://funwithgovernment.blogspot.com/2011/07/rules-of-burea...

Once a bureaucracy is created, its 1st act is to perpetuate itself. It has no allowance for self-destruction someday.

Certainly we can all see the results of this sort of behavior, which is a real thing.

You can't extract, from that observation, the general principle you propose, though. The boards, bureaus, and commissions that have allowed themselves to fade away are gone, of course. The ones that act to perpetuate themselves persist. When you observe the behavior of the organizations around you, you're not looking at a fair sample of the organizations that have existed.

And exactly the same is true of private clubs, charities, corporations and companies of every sort. This isn't a characteristic of governmental organizations, it's a property of organizations, period.

Ah, but the crucial difference here is a private organization can no longer exist once it has exhausted its purposes. A privately-funded bureaucracy which simply self-propagates while producing no value goes bankrupt automatically, regardless of what they can spin.

Not really. There are plenty of private organisations that produce no value while consuming funds. There are no major differences between large corporations and the the government in this aspect.

Really? Where are they getting these funds if they aren't providing some service or 'value' in exchange? Maybe you are right but you seem to have stopped mid-argument. Examples might help illustrate your point.

The financial sector or defense? They operate within a framework where they are pretty much guaranteed profits.

That isn't a serious response.

1) Both industries are intimately tied to the government in a variety of ways and so aren't particular good examples of 'private organizations'.

2) The notion that these entire sectors have no value is preposterous.

Debating this sort of thing in the aggregate ('banking sector', 'defense sector') just doesn't make sense. Lots of banks fail and go out of business even outside the fiscal mess of the last few years. Same with defense contractors.

Still waiting for an example of a private firm that provides no value and consumes funds indefinitely.

"Value" is a slippery term, but...

Palotta, Komen, Grassroots, and other professional charity/political fundraisers that sell hope and lies to donors and spend the proceeds on administration.

I have no knowledge of these organizations, but I was assuming we were not discussing fraudulent endeavors.

I guess my larger point is that 'value' is in the eye of the beholder. Someone is giving money to the organizations you listed and must have determined that there was value in that from their perspective.

This goes to the heart of the idea of liberty and freedom of action. Individuals are going to value different things in different amounts and should have the freedom to act upon their own judgement. Someone else may not come to the same conclusion but everyone's circumstances are different and so there isn't going to be any universal agreement on 'value', nor need there be.

To go back to the original point, a private organization can not force individuals to fund their endeavors, while the government can (raise taxes, establish regulations and fees with fines or imprisonment for violation, etc).

Because the government has the unique authority to force compliance we should be extremely circumspect about attempts to expand its scope and power to avoid creating a self-sustaining bureaucracy. For example, the notion that government agencies can't be reduced or eliminated because that would eliminate 'jobs' is a terrible reason to avoid the reduction or elimination. It is an acknowledgment that the government agency doesn't exist for any public purpose other than to cut paychecks. By that rationale we should simply tell the workers to stay at home and at least eliminate the props that support the charade (buildings, electric bills, maintenance expenses, and so on).

Yahoo?

A privately-funded bureaucracy which simply self-propagates while producing no value goes bankrupt automatically...

It's a beautiful theory.

The most obvious counter-example would be patent/copyright/trademark trolls.

Another might be financial services companies who sell worthless derivatives as AA grade. Or the analysts who provide those grades. Or the brokers who make the worthless loans the derivatives are based on.

That the US's implementation of this law is heavily lopsided in favor of the patent trolls doesn't change the fact that patents incentivize innovation. (Whether they're effective or not is another debate.)

And does it need pointing out that without the government's intervention, banks that give out irresponsible loans would simply go out of business?

Whether they're effective or not is another debate? The truth or falsity of your preceding "fact" is unimportant?

IP trolling is the patenting of obvious stuff (or buying out the rights to dumb patents) for the purpose of harassing other parties with legal threats. Whether IP law really does encourage innovation in general or not, that activity clearly does not encourage innovation, and it doesn't "produce value." It's called rent-seeking for a reason. They don't want to get paid for producing value, they want to own things. It's a return to the principles of feudalism.

And does it need pointing out that without the government's intervention, banks that give out irresponsible loans would simply go out of business?

Focusing on the banks alone is missing the forest for the trees. The whole mess involved a stack of businesses from mortgage brokers to banks to investment firms to financial services firms. And there was fraud, dereliction of duty, and malfeasance at every level.

Most of those businesses haven't had any "government interference," and are doing well enough, considering how badly home sales have stalled. Some have absolutely made out like bandits.

> That the US's implementation of this law is heavily lopsided in favor of the patent trolls doesn't change the fact that patents incentivize innovation. (Whether they're effective or not is another debate.)

Moving the goalposts.

FRA as such isn't the problem. See, every European country has its own railway regulatory office, which is perfectly fine, but there is simply so little unification between the different countries, that international railway traffic between various EU countries is so painful, that it simply cannot stand in competition with the road freight. You can easily load your cargo on a truck and move it from Bulgaria to Scotland, but it's incredibly painful to do that on rail.

There are tons of various signalling systems, there are multiple electrification systems (even in a single country), there are different norms everywhere, various load gauges, available railway clearances… it's a HUGE mess. And it's expensive.

Some progress is being made, but of course, it doesn't get so easily through. ETCS (European Train Control System) is being developed and very slowly deployed, but only very slowly, it's expensive to equip a locomotive with it (more so than to put a multiple national signalling systems there) and you can use it on only very few lines. And you will never fix everything. Like, you are not going to rebuild every railway line in the UK to the continental clearance. Won't happen.

So, I don't think there is a problem in having a federal reguatory agency. The problem is that it's dysfunctional and nobody really cares. But not having anything like that is bad as well.

There are even different track widths, with the russian system being wider than the most common standard.

Well, there isn't much of a passenger traffic to the Russia and back, there are facilities to handle the freight, it's an EU border (implying long legal procedures regardless of a transport mode) and the roads there aren't very good (in comparison). Baltic states and Finland lack connections to the rest of EU and again, it's mostly freight only. So it doesn't harm rail transport that much. Less obvious, but much worse problem is that there are incompatible axle loads and clearances, russian carriages are heavier and wider. Too much for the most of standard gauge lines.

Much funnier example of a country with multiple railway gauges is Spain. There are three widely used gauges…

I'd say this is more like government taking a local optimum from one time period, and casting it in stone. You can see the same thing happen with in the nuclear power industry, with light water reactors being given a regulatory blessing that made sense at one point.

Ture and agree, but this is true of any organization. The essence of any organization is to serve its own interests. It can be charitable or ideological or profit-driven, but if it does not serve its interests, it is no longer an organization.

We shouldn’t be surprised that gov’t agencies are similar. The difference is that its funding is decoupled from its benefit to constituents.

Amen. You don't have to go as far as an organization. Get an ad-hoc team together and they'll try perpetuate themselves.

It's normal human behavior, and has nothing to do with the "evils" of bureaucracy.

The problem as far government agencies are concerned is the informal corruption that allows for ever increasing amounts of money to flow into those agencies. This is very hard to fight, since it is almost impossible for even the most dedicated and upstanding elected representative to judge if the funds assigned are justified. Surely there is a need for something like the FRA, and surely there should be rules governing the safety of trains?

The funding isn't decoupled, but it isn't coupled to something as simple and transparent as a free market. There needs to be active democratic oversight, which is way, way harder.

I don't buy that. Every other country with high-speed rail has rail regulations as well.

Exactly. In fact, I'd say that looking at the existing evidence successful rail deployments are entirely uncorrelated with regulatory action. This is just a whipping post for the libertarian nutjobs, and the only notable thing is that it's one that aligns them in goal with the pinko commie rail boosters.

Clearly the determining factor isn't regulation, it's subsidy. Countries that pay for fancy rail systems out of public funds ... have them.

Effective, good-quality regulation is a form of subsidy.

This article is right to look at the costs of not updating regulation to meet reality.

The idea is to regulate business out of existence, then declare capitalism to be a failure.

This is the worst sort of comment -- blanket assertion of a controversial yet vague idea, no actual arguments, no specific statements, nothing to discuss.

It's just as much noise as reddit-style joke threads. Those don't seem to be tolerated here, and neither should comments like this.

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