What's wrong with that statement? Other than it was spoken by a demon.
In reality, as the system for maximizing shareholder value can interact with the system creating the regulations. Thus:
> in practice regulation was often faulty
wasn't a coincidence of a situation, but rather was a direct result of the shareholder-value-maximizing machine working towards the removal of regulations that hindered shareholder value.
If that is misused, the blame lies with the regulation writers. They get to take free money from people as taxes solely so they can be impartial and write good regulations. If they can't even do that, then why give them free money?
Everybody hates corrupt government officials already, but as a society (in the US) we tend to handwave away companies doing destructive self-interested things as "oh of course they do that", when it's not actually something we need to tolerate.
Oil companies in the 70s knowing that they were causing global warming but engaging in a campaign to pretend that didn't exist? Should be jail for the regulation writers, and jail for the oil company execs who signed off on it.
The Sacklers pretending that their special opioids aren't addictive and causing the opioid crisis? Should be jail for the regulators they bribed, and jail for the people at the company who knew.
Cause the 2008 financial crisis by deliberately mis-grading subprime mortgages? Should be jail for everyone who let that fly.
That's interesting. Everywhere I read (including in HN comments) the focus is on lobbyists and not regulation writers. I've never read anyone ever put the blame on the people who were given free money from taxpayer pockets to be impartial experts, and only ever on people trying to advocate for their companies.
> as a society (in the US) we tend to handwave away companies doing destructive self-interested things as "oh of course they do that", when it's not actually something we need to tolerate
I don't believe "as a society" exists :-) It's one's perception of what happens, but wrapped in an impartial-sounding phrase. I've seen far more tolerance of regulation-writers than I would expect. And there is a clear difference between a company (legally) trying to change hearts and minds and regulation writers allowing their minds to be changed for perks.
> Oil companies in the 70s knowing that they were causing global warming but engaging in a campaign to pretend that didn't exist? Should be jail for the regulation writers, and jail for the oil company execs who signed off on it.
Oil companies don't have a legal responsibility to tell the truth about the climate, I think. Also, the understanding of climate has changed quite a lot since then, so even I might go easy on regulators in this instance.
> Cause the 2008 financial crisis by deliberately mis-grading subprime mortgages? Should be jail for everyone who let that fly.
This is a good example of regulation being to blame, though. You'd go to jail if you didn't allow a certain percentage of subprime mortgages[0].
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20080928095759/http://www.invest...
Which really wasn't a big deal since you could always do business as yourself although you (and not the corporation) also got liability then.
That doesn't mean short-termism at all costs, which is what some people hear when that is said, but it means, say, if you're Disney don't release a string of movies that all lose incredible amounts of money. Or if you do, then senior management needs changing pronto.
People won't know the implications of decisions without regulations to help them. Of course businesses are populated by people, who will try and do the right thing if that's how they are, but that doesn't mean they know what the right thing is.
> No one facet of the structure society is made of can support all of society, there needs to be safety factors in the building materials.
I can't parse this, sorry. Happy to have a read if you reword.
That's a pretty expansive view of government; I'll grant that regulations are one mechanism for communicating the implications of decisions, but to say that people can't know the implications without regulations? That just seems silly to the point that I'm unsure if I'm intended to legitimately engage with that viewpoint; is that your actual opinion?