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Comment by pjlegato | Hacker News Reader

While acknowledging the reality of those externalities, it's also fair to point out that empowering politicians to attempt to override the market and deliberately police the negative outcomes of those externalities in favor of supposed social goods (the determination of which is, in itself, problematic) has never, ever worked in the history of humanity -- though it has been tried over and over in disparate societies around the world.

In practice, the politicians supposed to be looking out for the externality damage instead merely redirect outcomes to benefit themselves and their friends. The result is invariably worse than whatever damage is wrought by the open and free market.

This is not a failure or shortcoming of any one particular attempt to corral the market towards social good; it is an inevitable and expected broken-by-design outcome of attempting to do so.

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> has never, ever worked in the history of humanity.

I think you'll find that the majority of humanity (those who aren't libertarians) actually agree that policing the negative externalities of business should be part of government's function.

Stuff like "we're destroying the ozone layer," "L.A's air is mostly smog," and "this factory keeps tearing children limb from limb" were effectively solved by government policing these negative externalities, not by "the market."

It's a long way from "this factory keeps tearing children limb from limb" to "there are too many car washes in this town."

I specifically said externalities are real problems that bear addressing.

The problem is that once politicians are turned loose, they never stop. They cannot stop. They can't say, "well done, problem solved, let's pack up and go home." That would mean giving up their hard-won power -- and the concominant benefits to themselves and their friends that came with it.

So they must always seek yet another supposed outrage to feed their power. When they can't find one, they manufacture one, to increasingly absurd and implausible lengths, eventually wrecking the system.

They're different in magnitude, sure.

But even if I grant you the argument that the same system that bans child labor necessarily leads to the neoliberal brainworms of "let's create a 3% tax credit for businesses that used to be car washes," I'm still very happy we addressed the real problems. And I'd say that government intervention worked, even if some of the laws they pass are stupid or trivial.

> empowering politicians to attempt to override the market and deliberately police the negative outcomes of those externalities in favor of supposed social goods (the determination of which is, in itself, problematic) has never, ever worked in the history of humanity

Child labor laws? Pollution laws? Seat belt laws? Labor safety laws? Drug-safety laws?

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