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Government Regulations and Licensing: Good Thing, Bad Thing, or Necessary Evil?

S

s0me0nesmind1

Lifer
Curious as to what P&N's thoughts are on government regulations and licensing. Note - This is a VERY broad topic, across multiple industries and multiple topics. So I'm not necessarily trying to narrow in a certain one for the overall discussion.

I find government regulations to be a lot like laws in general - say for instance - when a cop wants to pull you over. There are simply so many regulations and rules that you're guaranteed to break or screw up one at some point. Thus if a cop is following you, they WILL find a reason to legally pull you over, because no reasonable person can be expected to follow all of them.

I understand people here are going to be dumb and simplify regulations to simple things like "Don't dump hazerdous materials into public rivers" - but that's not the crux of what I'm talking about.

As an example, I'm sure the book for housing codes are off the charts. Not a single person can be expected to memorize, follow, or check each of the codes. Keep in mind, for most regulations you have to worry about not only federal rules - but also state and localities as well.

At the same time, naturally what happens is lobbying groups will utilize regulations and rules to bottleneck industries in an effort to drown out and/or eleminate competition. For instance, good fucking luck creating a start-up hospital. It would simply be impossible with all the rules and regs involved. Same goes for a Bank. Every single Dodd Frank you pass that requires more and more legal papers and paper-pushing jobs just results in less competition. The number of banks have plummetted - which will ultimately result in all other industries: An oligopoly.

April-26-of-Banks-CUs-chart-1024x698.png



See the video below. Do you really need to go to cosmetology school in order to legally braid hair? Do you really need a specialized million dollar+ license in order to drive and operate a yellow cab in New York?


 
Housing and occupational licensing are two areas where I think we would be well served by significantly lowering regulations. I’ll take my chances with an unlicensed hair stylist and when it comes to housing the cost crisis is primarily due to government prohibiting people from building the kind of houses that people want.
 
fskimospy said:
Housing and occupational licensing are two areas where I think we would be well served by significantly lowering regulations. I’ll take my chances with an unlicensed hair stylist and when it comes to housing the cost crisis is primarily due to government prohibiting people from building the kind of houses that people want.
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You're sounding awfully conservative right about now.... 😉

But yes, I agree with you pretty much in full.

I'll even go out on a limb and say that I agree with regs/licensing on CERTAIN industries - in particular (just as an example) being food (restaurant/groceries)... Namely because what we eat can very much determine disease control, etc. Even still, I'm sure the rules are still overboard.
 
Cabs is one where they have it wrong though. The reason for medallions has nothing to do with qualifications or anything, it is traffic control in response to gridlock caused by zillions of empty cabs that were sitting on the streets cruising for fares.

Also, very important to take anything John Stossel says with a boulder of salt as he has a long time reputation for distorting facts to push his politics.
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
You're sounding awfully conservative right about now.... 😉

But yes, I agree with you pretty much in full.

I'll even go out on a limb and say that I agree with regs/licensing on CERTAIN industries - in particular (just as an example) being food (restaurant/groceries)... Namely because what we eat can very much determine disease control, etc. Even still, I'm sure the rules are still overboard.
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Yes, I would say housing policy and education policy are two areas where I have more in common with conservatives than liberals.

And the hair stylist shit is just retarded.
 
fskimospy said:
Yes, I would say housing policy and education policy are two areas where I have more in common with conservatives than liberals.

And the hair stylist shit is just retarded.
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Yup. If someone sucks at something - people will simply stop booking them as a hair stylist.... Either that, or the hair stylist will get better and improve. It's really that simple.
 
Thebobo said:
Lol Stossel what a gubber.

And yes licensing and regulations are necessary.
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DrDoug said:
Wanker works too...

Licensing and regulations are necessary because too many people are selfish fucks who will gladly screw over others to make a buck.
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So you guys think someone should have cosmetology certification/license in order to braid/twirl hair as a job (or even cut it?)

You think someone should have a license/medallion in order to drive their car around as a taxi?

The point is that it has simply been shown time and time again to be used as a mechanism to prevent competing markets. It is said to ahve been created "for your protection" as a consumer, but the reality is that it is simply used as a way to prop up and increase prices for simple professions.
 
The topic of licensing and regulations is so broad that a general discussion is probably useless.

To put my opinion about such a broad topic requires a broad answer. So, I support some regulation and some licensing. How much? Whatever is necessary to protect people and the environment.
 
ivwshane said:
The topic of licensing and regulations is so broad that a general discussion is probably useless.

To put my opinion about such a broad topic requires a broad answer. So, I support some regulation and some licensing. How much? Whatever is necessary to protect people and the environment.
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Yeah that is kind of why I put the option of "necessary evil" which I believe is where I would fall in it. I think things such as disease control and agriculture related to food is important... But things like the housing code books (enough to crush someone are far overreaching.

Here is my biggest qualm:

The most regulated industries are hands-down the hardest for any competition to enter. This is simply a fact. As I said in the OP - Goodluck creating a new Hospital company. Goodluck creating a new heath insurance company. Goodluck creating a new airline. Goodluck creating a new cable company. Goodluck creating a new telecom company. These are ALL the equivalent of monopolies or ologiopolies. My main emphasis is that the reason for this is because of all the ridiculous rulesets that no reasonable person can be expected to keep up with. Thus, no one will enter the market - thus prices are driven up.
 
Um wrt the chart in the OP Dodd-Frank was enacted in 2010. Consolidation is a vastly under appreciated factor in how many US sectors have shrunk the number of operators. Hospital systems, banks, entertainment, property, communications, etc.
 
K1052 said:
Um wrt the chart in the OP Dodd-Frank was enacted in 2010. Consolidation is a vastly under appreciated factor in how many US sectors have shrunk the number of operators. Hospital systems, banks, entertainment, property, communications, etc.
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All...of...which..... have...substantially...grown....in...regulations...........Thus proving my point entirely?
 
fskimospy said:
Also, very important to take anything John Stossel says with a boulder of salt as he has a long time reputation for distorting facts to push his politics.
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He has his qualms or opinions that I don't care for... just like anyone else would.... Overall I find his points to be overall decently informative.

But you can't tell me you don't agree with a lot of what he has to say - in particular this one:

 
Regulations aren't created in a vacuum, they are usually the result of injury or death. In the event that a regulation was created that doesn't protect people or the environment I'd be happy to look at it and have it removed.

As far as licensing goes, that's a tougher one because in some cases licensing was created to keep out others (businesses or individuals) or as a way to funnel money into entities.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Red-White-and-Gray.pdf

Meanwhile, American society is changing. As Americans have gotten older and more settled, our institutions have also become less dynamic. A coun- try that was once typified by a sense that anyone could be or do anything is now hidebound by an increasingly heavy weight of rules and regulations. While this trend toward more regulation and greater
constraints on regular life can be seen across all walks of life, this report focuses on five main areas:
• Increasing stringency of land use regulations such as zoning,
• Greater prevalence of restrictions on work such as occupational licensing,
• Unusually high incarceration rates given cur- rently low crime rates,
• An education system that forces people to spend more years in school for a higher cost and less value, and
• Growing debt and other financial burdens among households and at all levels of government.
These trends can all be traced back to policy choices made between the 1940s and 1990s. That is to say, while they disproportionately afflict younger generations such as millennials, they are problems created by baby boomers and their parents. If the United States is to have a 21st century as prosperous as its 20th century, these damaging legacies of the baby-boomer generation must be fixed.
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s0me0nesmind1 said:
All...of...which..... have...substantially...grown....in...regulations...........Thus proving my point entirely?
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Lol. I work in an industry that has undergone heavy consolidation over the last 15 years and it wasn't government regulation that did it. They were hardly required since an ocean of private equity money and cheap corporate debt created a frenzy of acquisitions coupled with the desire to reach scale at any cost.
 
Too broad a topic. However, generally speaking, professional licensing protects the licensed industry just as much as consumers. This is why the industry usually creates the licensing standards and requirements.
Regulations are complex, and can be good or bad. IMO they are good when they prevent abuses like fraud or cost externalizing, and can help to ensure a level competitive playing field. But also bad when they unfairly increase the barrier to market entry or are used abusively by corrupt govt regulators/politicians.
 
K1052 said:
Lol. I work in an industry that has undergone heavy consolidation over the last 15 years and it wasn't government regulation that did it. They were hardly required since an ocean of private equity money and cheap corporate debt created a frenzy of acquisitions coupled with the desire to reach scale at any cost.
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Which industry would that be?
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
So you guys think someone should have cosmetology certification/license in order to braid/twirl hair as a job (or even cut it?)
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One of my sisters went to school and trained as a cosmetologist. She's having no problems with licensing in Washington state and has many happy customers she has served for many years. Another went to Gonzaga and became an accountant, which has its own licensing requirements.

If people are going to serve other people then there will be a need for regulation to protect all parties. It's that simple.
 
DrDoug said:
One of my sisters went to school and trained as a cosmetologist. She's having no problems with licensing in Washington state and has many happy customers she has served for many years. Another went to Gonzaga and became an accountant, which has its own licensing requirements.

If people are going to serve other people then there will be a need for regulation to protect all parties. It's that simple.
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Some states have crazy requirements for certain jobs. Like I probably don't need my barber to have more training hours under his belt than the EMT coming to cart me away after a heart attack.
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
You think someone should have a license/medallion in order to drive their car around as a taxi?
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The roads are public assets - why should the public not have a say in who gets to use them, and for what?

Personally I'd greatly reduce the number of taxis allowed on the roads of my city, there are too many of them (they certainly take up a share of throughfare space that is vastly disproportionate to the proportion of passenger journeys they are responsible for, and spend an awful lot of time just driving around with no passengers, or sitting parked in taxi bays).

Why should public resources be used for someone to base a private business on? And if they are to be allowed to do that, there ought to be some control on their numbers.

(Also, a secondary-issue is that unlicenced cabs can be dangerous, especially for single women passengers...having the state do some basic checks - e.g. is the driver a convicted sex-offender - is going to increase trust and reduce crime).

And are you really suggesting there are too many regulations around setting up a bank? Has recent history not suggested exactly the opposite problem?
 
Agree that it's too broad a topic. The libertarian idea that all regulation is defacto wrong, and the blanket desire to have a 'bonfire' of them never seems to turn out well. (It led to the Savings and Loan fiasco, no?). But some regulations probably do exist in good part to protect vested interests.

I suspect general attitudes can swing back-and-forth depending on exactly what kind of disaster has happened most recently.
 
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