DucatiMonster696
Diamond Member
- Aug 13, 2009
- 4,269
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Voluntary trades yield the most production, because both sides have fear of loss to check their behavior. In some cases, we sacrifice quality/choice for convenience, like government roads over toll roads. But that's not a very good tradeoff for most things.
Some rules can be benign and worth the cost while others can be completely ridiculous. Most rules are actually created via big companies bribing so-called regulators to pass them because they know they will hurt competitors. That's right, who's regulating the regulators? They are just as greedy as everyone else. The more you accept the idea that someone should save you from your own choices, the more that's going to happen.
Things that could never be choices, such as murder and theft, are far easier to police than things that could. Because choice implies competition, and only a competing body would try and bribe an institution of force (the government) into preventing consumers from choosing competitors.
In cases where you see greed and rampant speculation causing problems, you'll want to look hard at government activity in that area and whether it offloaded risk onto the taxpayer, thereby creating a "win-win" gambling situation. It gets more complex when you realize that the problems of some regulations can be mitigated by other regulations. Glass-Steagall mitigated the problems created by FDIC insurance. Once you remove fear of loss from depositors and banks no longer have to compete on safety of deposits, it becomes necessary to limit what banks can do with those deposits. You can't just have one or the other, but when Clinton removed the restrictions and left FDIC alone, that's exactly what he did. Some socialists are more short-sighted than others.
+1
Nice post. :thumbsup: