rbreich ,
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

The argument against regulation is always the same: “It stifles growth and jobs.”

But just as tax cuts for corporations have not trickled down, regulatory cuts have not benefited most people.

Big companies enjoy bigger profits. Working people bear the costs.

ethniccanuck ,
@ethniccanuck@ohai.social avatar
Runyan50 ,
@Runyan50@newsie.social avatar

@rbreich Simple regulations are insufficient. We need Doughnut Economics now.

PJ_Evans ,
@PJ_Evans@mas.to avatar

@rbreich
People don't realize that regulations exist because of previous problems. They're trying to prevent bad things from happening.

davidhaynz ,
@davidhaynz@mastodon.nz avatar

@rbreich
The economist Warren J Samuels argued the lack of regulation, or deregulation, was in itself a form of regulation.

Because regulation controls the distribution of sacrifice. E.g. if you deregulate air pollution you shift costs from polluters to people who breathe.

I suppose there could be Kafkaesque regulations that don't affect the distribution of sacrifice, or do anything useful. But I would need convincing.

aadriasola ,
@aadriasola@ruby.social avatar

@rbreich growth like the crypto scammer space, jobs like online trolls payed with crypto

samhainnight ,
@samhainnight@mstdn.social avatar

@rbreich Every Regulation is Written in Blood.
See also the Triangle Shirt Factory
See also the work of Ceasar Chavez
See also Radium Girls
See also the Labor History of the 20th century
See also @workingclasshistory

huntingdon ,
@huntingdon@mstdn.social avatar

@rbreich

Jobs is a throwaway, meant to appease the peasants. Growth is code for enhanced resource extraction and profit-taking, whose costs are to be borne by the peasants, not the bidness that does the extracting.

karlauerbach ,
@karlauerbach@sfba.social avatar

@rbreich Smart corporations use regulation as a cudgel to crush competition.

For example, AT&T achieved its monopoly by seeking regulated status as a way to dominate and exterminate the independent telephone companies of the early telephone era. AT&T used regulation as a weapon in ways that were outrageous - witness the amazing Hush-A-Phone case where AT&T tried to ban what amounted to a mere passive plastic hand that could be attached to a telephone in order to better focus voice into the terrible carbon microphones of the 1940s.

Right now the Internet has relatively loose standards for attachment and interoperation. I fully anticipate that we will be seeing efforts to constrict this on the grounds of security or reliability or whatever, much as the 5G telco universe is largely closed to those who do not dance to the monopolistic tune.

nutmeg ,

@rbreich

Lack of regulations costs lives.

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