<story><title>How the Airlines Became Cartels</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/opinion/how-the-airlines-became-abusive-cartels.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>The trick here is defining &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; versus &amp;quot;needless&amp;quot; regulations. It&amp;#x27;s not always an obvious difference. For example: lots of excessive state-level occupational licensing which effectively just creates cartels was passed with sensible arguments about protecting consumers from harm and poor quality. It&amp;#x27;s fairly easy to rationalize lots of regulations that don&amp;#x27;t work very well in practice. So just saying &amp;quot;it should be smart and not mindless&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t really a solution to anything without a rigorous definition of what a &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; regulation looks like.</text></item><item><author>epistasis</author><text>Markets are such an essential tool for our society, but they&amp;#x27;re also easy to get wrong. Markets require regulation, whether it&amp;#x27;s in the form of contract enforcement or setting standardized terms for communication in the market. Any time there&amp;#x27;s a power differential, we need regulation.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why I wish we could get past this mindless anti-regulation political trend into a &amp;quot;smart regulation&amp;quot; political trend.  Whenever I see &amp;quot;regulations are bad&amp;quot; these days it&amp;#x27;s always associated with mindless deregulation; deregulation is a difficult thing that must be done carefully, and it has to be adjusted later on to adjust for all the unforeseen consequences. Regulations are not bad, it&amp;#x27;s needless regulations that are bad.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zeteo</author><text>Right on. The legislators who consult with lobbyists behind closed doors and then produce thousand page bills would argue that they also make &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; regulation. Didn&amp;#x27;t they talk at length to the people who knew most about the issue? Doesn&amp;#x27;t the bill address lots of cases that would never occur to the &amp;quot;dumb&amp;quot; person?&lt;p&gt;Yes, but the bill is totally ineffective for the average person and only helps the big players.&lt;p&gt;What we arguably need is more &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot; (as in &amp;quot;keep it simple, stupid&amp;quot;) regulation. Constitutional Amendments are written in this style; also some antitrust legislation [1]. Complex regulations are vulnerable to&lt;p&gt;a) hidden flaws - that tiny exception in article 57 paragraph 30 might turn out large enough to overturn all 56 previous articles.&lt;p&gt;b) regulatory capture - lobbyists will, of course, introduce as many exceptions as possible if the text is long enough.&lt;p&gt;c) the revolving door - if only a small group of people know the intricate details, they will soon be hired by the affected companies at a multiple of their previous salary.&lt;p&gt;d) compliance cost - only large companies might be able to afford the compliance cost, which ends up concentrating the market further at the cost of the consumer (Dodd-Frank, anyone?).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sherman_Antitrust_Act#Original_text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sherman_Antitrust_Act#Original...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>How the Airlines Became Cartels</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/opinion/how-the-airlines-became-abusive-cartels.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>The trick here is defining &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; versus &amp;quot;needless&amp;quot; regulations. It&amp;#x27;s not always an obvious difference. For example: lots of excessive state-level occupational licensing which effectively just creates cartels was passed with sensible arguments about protecting consumers from harm and poor quality. It&amp;#x27;s fairly easy to rationalize lots of regulations that don&amp;#x27;t work very well in practice. So just saying &amp;quot;it should be smart and not mindless&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t really a solution to anything without a rigorous definition of what a &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; regulation looks like.</text></item><item><author>epistasis</author><text>Markets are such an essential tool for our society, but they&amp;#x27;re also easy to get wrong. Markets require regulation, whether it&amp;#x27;s in the form of contract enforcement or setting standardized terms for communication in the market. Any time there&amp;#x27;s a power differential, we need regulation.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why I wish we could get past this mindless anti-regulation political trend into a &amp;quot;smart regulation&amp;quot; political trend.  Whenever I see &amp;quot;regulations are bad&amp;quot; these days it&amp;#x27;s always associated with mindless deregulation; deregulation is a difficult thing that must be done carefully, and it has to be adjusted later on to adjust for all the unforeseen consequences. Regulations are not bad, it&amp;#x27;s needless regulations that are bad.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>r00fus</author><text>How about stopping the revolving door between those who are regulated and those is the agencies doing the regulation?&lt;p&gt;Conflict of interest appointments result in probably the vast majority of anti-market, cartel-style behavior.</text></comment>