Regulation doesn't work. It's usually co-opted by the very parties it's intended to regulate, and used as a means to entrench rather than limit their power. In the worst case, it actually makes things far worse by allowing established interests to manipulate regulation to create barriers to entry for competition, produce collusive outcomes that would otherwise be illegal, and replace common-law liability for the actual consequences of their behavior with prescriptive rules that they can comply with performatively.
Regulation works fine - you can observe it working fine in every other first world country directly mitigating and resolving many of the problems still present in the US.
I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances -- I can't see behind-the-scenes corruption or measure superior alternatives that were suppressed in favor of locking in a marginally mitigated version of the status quo ante.
I can, however, see the some of the unintended consequences of regulatory interventions in other countries. For example, Germany's ban on nuclear power made them dependent on Russian oil imports, inadvertently propping up Putin's regime.
> I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances
This sounds like you are observing much of that, and then dismissing the results as superficial appearances.
Dismissing regulation here would be like dismissing a comparison of a correlation between laws against murder and a low murder rate and a correlation between no laws against murder and a high murder rate.
>Dismissing regulation here would be like dismissing a comparison of a correlation between laws against murder and a low murder rate and a correlation between no laws against murder and a high murder rate.
The reality is there is a hint of truth in everything. We must be careful to assign cause where correlation exists.
Let's use Vermont's gun laws for example. Over the last 40 years, the state's approach to firearms has been quite permissive, with relatively few restrictions, but it still maintains a reputation for having one of the lowest gun violence rates in the country. Vermont is one of the few states in the U.S. where people can carry a concealed weapon without a permit. So is it regulation that prevents the gun violence, as many would lead you to believe, or is it a combination of factors. Factors like social stability, cultural attitudes toward guns, and the state's strong focus on community engagement. Those all contribute to the relative lack of gun violence, rather than simply the laws themselves.
But speaking from experience, when we are deep into ego development years (think teens), I would have absolutely killed someone if it wasn't for murder laws. But today, what holds me back is empathy, and not the law.
> Vermont is one of the few states in the U.S. where people can carry a concealed weapon without a permit
That was true for decades, but over the past 15 years, 28 more states have adopted Vermont-style permitless concealed carry laws, so it's now a majority of states that allow this.
