Quotulatiousness

June 5, 2018

Down with the experts!

Filed under: Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Quillette, Alex Smith explores the limits of expertise and why so many people today would eagerly agree with the sentiments in my headline:

“People are sick of experts.” These infamous and much-derided words uttered by UK Conservative parliamentarian Michael Gove express a sentiment with which we are now probably all familiar. It has come to represent a sign of the times — either an indictment or a celebration (depending on one’s political point of view) of our current age.

Certainly, the disdain for expertise and its promised consequences have been highly alarming for many people. They are woven through various controversial and destabilising phenomena from Trump, to Brexit, to fake news, to the generally ‘anti-elitist’ tone that characterises populist politics and much contemporary discourse. And this attitude stands in stark contrast to the unspoken but assumed Obama-era doctrine of “let the experts figure it out”; an idea that had a palpable End of History feeling about it, and that makes this abrupt reversion to ignorance all the more startling.

The majority of educated people are fairly unequivocal in their belief that this rebound is a bad thing, and as such many influential voices — Quillette‘s included — have been doing their best to restore the value of expertise to our society. The nobility of this ambition is quite obvious. Why on earth would we not want to take decisions informed by the most qualified opinions? However, it is within this obviousness that the danger lies.

I want to propose that high expertise, whilst generally beneficial, also has the capacity in certain circumstances to be pathological as well — and that if we don’t recognise this and correct for it, then we will continue down our current path of drowning its benefits with its problems. In short, if you want to profit from expertise, you must tame it first.

[…]

However, it is worth drawing a distinction between these two types of expertise — the kind people question, and the kind people don’t. In short, people value expertise in closed systems, but are distrustful of expertise in open systems. A typical example of a closed system would be a car engine or a knee joint. These are semi-complex systems with ‘walls’ — that is to say, they are self-contained and are relatively incubated from the chaos of the outside world. As such, human beings are generally capable of wrapping their heads around the possible variables within them, and can therefore control them to a largely predictable degree. Engineers, surgeons, pilots, all these kinds of ‘trusted’ experts operate in closed systems.

Open systems, on the other hand, are those that are ‘exposed to the elements,’ so to speak. They have no walls and are therefore essentially chaotic, with far more variables than any person could ever hope to grasp. The economy is an open system. So is climate. So are politics. No matter how much you know about these things, there is not only always more to know, but there is also an utterly unpredictable slide towards chaos as these things interact.

The erosion of trust in expertise has arisen exclusively from experts in open systems mistakenly believing that they know enough to either predict those systems or — worse — control them. This is an almost perfect definition of hubris, an idea as old as consciousness itself. Man cannot control nature, and open systems are by definition natural systems. No master of open systems has ever succeeded — they have only failed less catastrophically than their counterparts.

May 9, 2018

Freedom of the Press … except where prohibited by (British) law

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Wednesday is a critical day in the history of Britain, in the sense that a long-established freedom is at risk of being curtailed:

Press freedom is hanging by a thread in Britain. Tomorrow, the House of Commons will vote on the Data Protection Bill, and Labour MPs have added amendments to it that would effectively end 300 years of press freedom in this country.

That this profound affront to liberty had almost passed under the radar, until spiked and others began making noise about it over the weekend, shouldn’t surprise us. This vote is the culmination of a slow and covert war on the press that has been waged for the best part of a decade.

This story begins with the Leveson Inquiry, an effective showtrial of the press that sparked dozens of spurious trials of journalists and barely any convictions. Since then, press-regulation campaigners have had to find new and underhand ways to push their agenda on an industry and a public who clearly see right through it.

In the wake of Leveson, a new regulator, Impress, was established and given official recognition. It was an historic moment, in the worst possible sense: this was Britain’s first state-backed regulator since the days of Crown licensing. But it was also a stunningly bad bit of PR for the press-regulation lobby, in that Impress was staffed by tabloid-loathing hackademics and funded by tabloid-loathing millionaire Max Mosley.

No national newspaper signed up to it. And so the Hacked Off brigade has been pushing over the past few years for Section 40, a law that would force publications to sign up to a state-approved regulator, which at the moment means signing up to Impress. Those publications, like spiked, who would refuse on principle, would be required to pay the legal costs of any case brought against them, even if they win.

As such, Section 40 would be a gift to the powerful and the begrudged. It would enable anyone to launch lawsuits aimed at shutting down publications they dislike. This is an opportunity that people who have been exposed by the press would take in a heartbeat. It would undermine not only press freedom, but also natural justice.

And it isn’t just the press who are concerned about this. In 2016, the government opened a public consultation into press freedom, asking members of the public if it should implement Section 40 and commence the second part of the Leveson Inquiry. Out of a huge 174,730 responses, 79 per cent said No to Section 40 and 66 per cent said No to Leveson 2.

Update, 10 May: The vote was too damned close, but it was defeated by a nine-vote margin. Guido has the list of MPs voting in favour of muzzling the press here.

May 5, 2018

Canada is #1 in the world! In the ripping-off-the-wireless-user sweepstakes!

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

This is the sort of thing that isn’t really surprising — if you’re a Canadian wireless data user — but puts it into a sad, sad perspective:

The sad state of Canadian wireless pricing is old news for consumers and the government, but a new report graphically demonstrates how Canadians face some of the least competitive pricing in the developed world. The Rewheel study measured pricing in EU and OECD markets by examining how many gigabytes of 4G wireless data consumers get for the equivalent of 30 euros. This chart from Rewheel says it all:

Canada is at the far left of the chart with consumers getting less for their money than anyone else. While many countries offer unlimited mobile data at that price, the report says Canadian carriers offer a measly 2 GB. The smartphone data plans aren’t much better, with nearly all countries offering better deals and many shifting to unlimited data at that price.

[…]

In addition to outrageously expensive wireless data plans, Canadians also face huge overage charges (more than a billion dollars per year generated in the wireless overage cash grab) and steadily increasing roaming charges. Yet when it came to introducing greater resale competition, the CRTC rejected new measures that it admitted could result in some improvement to affordability.

QotD: Making decisions for other people’s “best interests”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Confession: ever since I began to study economics as an 18-year old, I’ve always had difficulty understanding the thought processes of people who fancy themselves fit to intervene into the affairs of other adults in ways that will improve the lives of other adults as judged by these other adults. I understand the desire to help others, and I also understand that individuals often err in the pursuit of their own best interests. What I don’t understand is Jones’s presumption that he, who is a stranger to Smith, can know enough to force Smith to modify his behavior in ways that will improve Smith’s long-term well-being. Honestly, such a presumption has struck me for all of my adult life as being so preposterous as to be inexplicable. I cannot begin to get my head around it.

I cannot get my head around Jones’s presumption that he knows enough to forcibly prohibit Smith from working for an hourly wage lower than one that Jones divines is best for Smith. I cannot understand Jones’s presumption that he ‘knows’ that Smith meant, but somehow failed, to bargain for family leave in her employment contract. I am utterly befuddled by Jones’s presumption to know that the pleasure that Smith gets from smoking cigarettes is worth less to Smith than is the cost that Smith pays to smoke cigarettes. I cannot fathom why Jones presumes that he knows better than does Smith how Smith should educate her children.

Yet this presumption is possessed by many, perhaps even most, people. Why?

Don Boudreaux, “A Pitch for Humility”, Café Hayek, 2016-08-05.

April 28, 2018

Lab-Grown Meat Is Coming to Your Supermarket. Ranchers Are Fighting Back.

Filed under: Business, Food, Health, Science, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

ReasonTV
Published on 26 Apr 2018

The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association petitioned the USDA to declare that “meat” and “beef” exclude products not “slaughtered in the traditional manner.”

April 12, 2018

Alex Tabarrok profiled in the Washington Monthly

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Alex Tabarrok is a friend-of-a-friend (does that make us “friends once removed”?) I’ve read lots of his blog posts and watched many of his videos, but I’ve never actually met him in real life, so this profile was quite interesting:

Tabarrok came by his libertarianism early. When he was growing up in Toronto, his family would debate political and ethical issues over dinner every night. One evening the Tabarroks were debating the moral value of rock and roll. “I said, ‘Well, look at this band, Rush: they even quote this philosopher Ayn Rand in their songs,’ ” he recalled recently. “My mother said, ‘Oh yeah, you’d probably like her,’ and I felt embarrassed because I was using this in an argument and I actually hadn’t read any Ayn Rand before.” Tabarrok thinks his mother probably regrets her suggestion to this day.

Tabarrok made his way to the U.S. for graduate studies at George Mason, returning there as a professor in 2002. He now directs its Center for Study of Public Choice and is the economics chair at GMU’s Mercatus Center, a research institute heavily funded by Charles Koch and cofounded by Richard Fink, a former Koch Industries executive. The center, which boasts ties to prominent right-wing groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, funds research to promote free-market policy solutions and the rollback of regulations. (Mercatus is Latin for “market.”) The Wall Street Journal has called Mercatus “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of.”

A few years ago, Tabarrok got a new toy to play with. Until recently, there was never great data available for researchers who wanted to empirically study the effects of regulation. But, in 2014, two other Mercatus Center research fellows developed a new public-use database called RegData, which captures everything published in the Code of Federal Regulations each year. Measuring regulation has always been surprisingly tricky, because when an agency puts out a rule, it can contain any number of new individual legal requirements. RegData addresses that problem by scrubbing the Code for key words such as “shall,” “required,” and “may not.” The theory is that this more accurately measures the number of regulations than simply counting the total number of pages in the Code, as past studies tended to do. RegData also uses artificial intelligence techniques to predict which industry each regulation will affect. The upshot is that, for the first time, economists could more confidently measure federal regulations over time and by industry. In theory, that would make it easier to build the case that regulations were hurting the economy.

April 10, 2018

Structural Unemployment

Filed under: Economics, Europe, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 8 Nov 2016

Unemployment comes in many forms. Sometimes, like we saw with short-term, frictional unemployment, it can actually indicate a healthy, growing economy. But what about persistent, long-term unemployment? That’s not so good.

When a large percentage of those who are considered unemployed have been without a job for a long period of time and this has been true for many years, it’s considered structural unemployment.

Structural unemployment can result from shocks to an economy that drastically alter the labor market. These shocks are not all bad – the rise of the Internet is one such example. Regardless, it can take a while for an economy to adjust to big changes.

These adjustments tend to happen faster in the United States than in Europe. This is most likely due to differences in labor regulations, and how those regulations affect a country’s ability to respond to shocks.

The United States’ employment law known as the “at-will doctrine” makes it so that an employee can quit, or an employer can fire, at any time for any reason. It’s legally much harder to terminate an employee in many European countries. This makes hiring riskier in Europe, resulting in a less dynamic labor market that isn’t able to quickly respond to shocks.

As you might guess, structural unemployment tends to count for a higher percentage of total unemployment in Europe than in the United States. This remains one of the most serious issues facing many European economies today.

April 7, 2018

Car rental agencies look to government to quash upstart “personal vehicle sharing” companies

Filed under: Business, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Steven Greenhut discusses yet another entrenched industry trying to get the government to protect them from disruptive competitors:

Real capitalism is a tough sport where entrepreneurs risk their capital in hopes of winning customers.

The “crony” version of it involves politicians rigging the rules to assure that the “right” people are winners. We see this ugly process on high-profile national issues, such as when Donald Trump promotes tariffs to boost steel makers at the expense of companies that use steel products. But most of this nonsense proceeds quietly in legislative committees, without garnering any headlines or vocal opposition.

One awful but illustrative example popped up recently in the California state Capitol. Assembly Bill 2246, by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, apparently is part of a national effort by rental-car companies to snuff out a burgeoning industry that just happens to be threatening its business model. The bill would redefine “personal vehicle sharing” companies as “car rental companies” — and then slam them with reams of new regulations. Similar measures have been proposed in Idaho, New Hampshire, Maryland and Maine.

Rental-car companies are facing the same challenges as other established business models in this internet and app-based age. Capitalism — the real sort — is defined by “creative destruction,” as economist Joseph Schumpeter called it. New companies are free to offer better products and services that appeal to customers. This is creative as new ideas flourish and consumers get a broader choice and lower prices thanks to competition. But it’s also destructive. Complacent old companies suddenly are forced to improve their offerings or shut their doors. The consumer is king.

For example, I recently grabbed a taxicab rather than my usual Uber and noticed the oddest thing. The cabbie had a modern app-based system for taking my credit-card payment. Until recently, paying by credit card was a hassle because cab services didn’t really want to take your card. I’ve also noticed a fleet of nice new cabs around my city. And the cab I took even sent an email with a receipt and a rating system. Sound familiar?

April 5, 2018

QotD: ESR’s “Iron Laws of Political Economics”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Mancur Olson, in his book The Logic Of Collective Action, highlighted the central problem of politics in a democracy. The benefits of political market-rigging can be concentrated to benefit particular special interest groups, while the costs (in higher taxes, slower economic growth, and many other second-order effects) are diffused through the entire population.

The result is a scramble in which individual interest groups perpetually seek to corner more and more rent from the system, while the incremental costs of this behavior rise slowly enough that it is difficult to sustain broad political opposition to the overall system of political privilege and rent-seeking.

When you add to Olson’s model the fact that the professional political class is itself a special interest group which collects concentrated benefits from encouraging rent-seeking behavior in others, it becomes clear why, as Olson pointed out, “good government” is a public good subject to exactly the same underproduction problems as other public goods. Furthermore, as democracies evolve, government activity that might produce “good government” tends to be crowded out by coalitions of rent-seekers and their tribunes.

This general model has consequences. Here are some of them:

There is no form of market failure, however egregious, which is not eventually made worse by the political interventions intended to fix it.

Political demand for income transfers, entitlements and subsidies always rises faster than the economy can generate increased wealth to supply them from.

Although some taxes genuinely begin by being levied for the benefit of the taxed, all taxes end up being levied for the benefit of the political class.

The equilibrium state of a regulatory agency is to have been captured by the entities it is supposed to regulate.

The probability that the actual effects of a political agency or program will bear any relationship to the intentions under which it was designed falls exponentially with the amount of time since it was founded.

The only important class distinction in any advanced democracy is between those who are net producers of tax revenues and those who are net consumers of them.

Corruption is not the exceptional condition of politics, it is the normal one.

Eric S. Raymond, “Some Iron Laws of Political Economics”, Armed and Dangerous, 2009-05-27.

March 29, 2018

Google, Facebook, anti-trust laws, and the Network Effect

Filed under: Business, Economics, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Google and Facebook (and other, lesser, social media companies) have a lot of information on you. Lots and lots and lots of information on you. Many people are coming to the conclusion that this is bad, bad news and “something must be done”. Politicians and activists share a tendency to respond to such demands by pushing “something” they already favour as the solution to the popular demand for action. A few days ago, the “something” seemed to be some form of anti-trust action over the social media giants.

In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall explains why an over-the-top anti-trust offensive is likely to leave everyone in a worse state than the status quo:

Which brings us to the tech companies of today:

Big Tech May Be Monopolistic, But It’s Good for Consumers

Quite so, thus no antitrust actions should or need be taken.

At the first level there’s the simple point that Facebook, Google a little less, Microsoft, e-Bay, they benefit from network effects. The more people who use them the more attractive they become to the next user. Meaning that size, in and of itself, creates yet more size. That’s just what we mean by network effects.

In turn that also means that the efficient size of an organisation here is that global monopoly. It isn’t true in most cases because there are diseconomies of scale as well as economies of it, but another way to describe network effects is just that we’re insisting that the -economies outweigh the dis- at scales up to and including 7 billion people.

In that first reading of antitrust that would mean they gain economic power and thus government must step in. In our second reading that’s not enough.

Firstly, the monopolists must exercise that economic power they have. Something not greatly in evidence as just having power doesn’t mean it can be exercised. For when you do try to, say, raise prices can someone come in and try to undercut you? If so you’ve got contestable economic power, or even a contestable monopoly. As an example, think the Chinese and rare earths. They were producing some 97% of the world’s supply. So, they decided to play silly buggers, exercise that power. It took a couple of years but two new mines opened, China’s share of rare earths fell and prices halved, below their original point. People contested that Chinese economic power when China tried to exercise it. China didn’t win either.

If Google tried to raise the price of adverts then business would flow away from them. If Facebook started charging for access then there wouldn’t be a Facebook. They’ve got contestable monopolies.

[…]

Sure, we should keep a wary eye open and if the consumer is being gouged then we could and should do something. But while we’ve got efficient companies, monopolies or not, benefiting consumers then the correct response is to get the hell out of the way.

Unless you’re a politician who simply wants to expand the powers politicians have over society – something which explains most politicians – but then we can tell them to go boil their heads. Only the exercise of economic power to the disbenefit of consumers justifies intervention.

March 24, 2018

Today in bad ideas examined – Time to [nationalize | regulate | break-up] Facebook?

Filed under: Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Facebook is having a particularly bad moment right now. Earlier this year, it was the Republicans in the US demanding that “something must be done” about Facebook. Now, after discovering that the Trump campaign did exactly what the Obama campaign did in 2012, it’s the Democrats insisting that “something must be done”. In Britain, it’s both the Tories and the Corbynistas howling for action. Well, [nationalizing | regulating | breaking-up] Facebook is something, and here’s why we shouldn’t do it:

The latest bright idea from Paul Mason is that Facebook must be regulated or changed in some manner to make darn sure it does what Paul Mason wants Facebook to be doing.

There are lots of problems with the Corbynista columnist’s idea. They include: not understanding how the internet or corporate law works; ignoring how innovation happens; and the political problem of allowing the government to control a social network, real or digital.

That’s not to mention the broader point that the people best placed to control Facebook are the 2 billion users of Facebook, who can choose to use the service or not. But such free-market liberalism isn’t quite the fashion de nos jours, is it?

[…]

Mason, along with far too much of the British Left, is pretty relaxed about repeating Soviet mistakes, but there’s no reason why the rest of us have to go along with it. That rather covers the regulation and ownership aspects. As to breaking the company up, we find more in his thread of tweets on the subject.

He points to the UK corporate registration as proof that we can control the local bit, or break it off from the whole. Such a conclusion is hard to square with the complaint about the Facebook profits HMRC struggles to tax. The reason Facebook doesn’t pay UK corporation tax on all the money collected from the UK is that the UK company just does some engineering bits, and doesn’t actually run the service. That engineering could be done from elsewhere just as the ad sales are. And the design. And there’s absolutely no one at all who has insisted that there must be a UK company out there before signing up for the service, is there?

We then come to what is arguably Mason’s silliest claim: “Next comes the f***wittery about ‘we don’t want the state owning our data.’ Me too. Hence I proposed a public owned digital ID service.“

There might be some manner in which “public owned” and “state” are different, but I’m absolutely certain that this wouldn’t be the case in modern Britain. As even Gordon Brown ended up agreeing when he revealed that the BBC license fee was indeed just another tax all along.

March 22, 2018

Unaccountable federal agency refuses to answer to the senator who wanted it to be unaccountable in the first place

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Perhaps this is a teaching moment for Senator Elizabeth Warren, says A. Barton Hinkle:

If Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren had taken a page out of Virginia Delegate Nick Freitas’ book, she might not be in the pickle she is today.

Warren is spitting mad at Mick Mulvaney, the Office of Management and Budget director who does double duty heading up an agency whose creation Warren championed: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB’s previous director was an ideological ally of Warren. Since Mulvaney took over, Warren has ripped the agency’s decisions. Warren said Mulvaney is giving “the middle finger” to consumers, and she railed at Mulvaney’s indifferent response to the 10 (!) letters she has sent him demanding answers to more than 100 questions.

The other day she tweeted that she is giving Mulvaney “one last chance.” Yet as The Wall Street Journal points out, she has only herself to blame for her apparent impotence.

Time and again during debate over the CFPB, conservatives and libertarians warned that its powers were too great and that its accountability to the other branches of government was too limited. But that was just the way Warren and other supporters wanted things. Neither Congress nor other political forces could influence an unaccountable regulatory agency. Now Warren finds herself thwarted by the very lack of oversight she championed.

Be careful what you wish for.

[…]

Philosopher John Rawls famously invented a mechanism for doing just that: the “veil of ignorance”: If you are designing the rules for a society, you should assume that you know nothing about your place in that society. If your race, age, physical abilities, mental prowess, and so forth are all a complete mystery, then you are likely to design a political-economic system that is fair to all. Just in case you wind up at the bottom of the social pile.

Having a president who makes policy through signing statements, his “pen and phone,” and other forms of executive action, for example, seems brilliant when the opposing party controls Congress. It seems less so when the opposing party controls the White House.

Should intelligence agencies keep tabs on Islamists who might pose a threat of domestic terrorism? Then don’t be surprised if a different administration turns the focus to right-wing militias.

February 26, 2018

QotD: Regulations in the EU

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As for the idea that the individual should be as free as possible from state coercion, this is regarded as the ultimate Anglophone fetish. Whenever the EU extends its jurisdiction into a new field — decreeing what vitamins we can buy, how much capital banks must hold, how herbal remedies are to be regulated — I ask what specific problem the new rules are needed to solve. The response is always the same: “But the old system was unregulated!” The idea that absence of regulation might be a natural state of affairs is seen as preposterous. In Continental usage “unregulated” and “illegal” are much closer concepts than in places where lawmaking happens in English.

Daniel Hannan, Inventing Freedom: How the English-speaking peoples made the modern world, 2013.

February 22, 2018

QotD: The importance of defining your terms

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

If you don’t understand these [gun-related] terms already, why should you care? You should care because when you misuse them, you signal substantially broader gun restrictions than you may actually be advocating. So, for instance, if you have no idea what semi-automatic means, but you’ve heard it and it sounds scary, and you assume that it means some kind of machine gun, so you argue semi-automatics should be restricted, you’ve just conveyed that most modern handguns (save for revolvers) should be restricted, even if that’s not what you meant.

It’s hard to grasp the reaction of someone who understands gun terminology to someone who doesn’t. So imagine we’re going through one of our periodic moral panics over dogs and I’m trying to persuade you that there should be restrictions on, say, Rottweilers.

Me: I don’t want to take away dog owners’ rights. But we need to do something about Rottweilers.
You: So what do you propose?
Me: I just think that there should be some sort of training or restrictions on owning an attack dog.
You: Wait. What’s an “attack dog?”
Me: You know what I mean. Like military dogs.
You: Huh? Rottweilers aren’t military dogs. In fact “military dogs” isn’t a thing. You mean like German Shepherds?
Me: Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody’s trying to take away your German Shepherds. But civilians shouldn’t own fighting dogs.
You: I have no idea what dogs you’re talking about now.
Me: You’re being both picky and obtuse. You know I mean hounds.
You: What the fuck.
Me: OK, maybe not actually ::air quotes:: hounds ::air quotes::. Maybe I have the terminology wrong. I’m not obsessed with vicious dogs like you. But we can identify kinds of dogs that civilians just don’t need to own.
You: Can we?

Because I’m just talking out of my ass, the impression I convey is that I want to ban some arbitrary, uninformed category of dogs that I can’t articulate. Are you comfortable that my rule is going to be drawn in a principled, informed, narrow way?

So. If you’d like to persuade people to accept some sort of restrictions on guns, consider educating yourself so you understand the terminology that you’re using. And if you’re reacting to someone suggesting gun restrictions, and they seem to suggest something nonsensical, consider a polite question of clarification about terminology.

Ken White, “Talking Productively About Guns”, Popehat, 2015-12-07.

February 21, 2018

QotD: Regulation

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… “regulation” could also be described as high-handed and ignorant interference in the mutually advantageous deals contracted voluntarily among the miserable serfs of the state, interference at best inspired by antique theories of natural monopoly and using antique policies appropriate to obsolete technologies, and at worst by conspiracies to benefit existing rich people, backed by state violence. Much of regulation, looked at coldly, would fall under such a definition, if not immediately on its passage, then after a few years of technological change or regulatory capture.

Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality, 2016.

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