There are historical instances of self-regulation working. The movie and video game industries control their own content ratings and before the invention of dynamite, nitroglycerin was commonly used as an explosive in construction. Shipping NG is very dangerous because of its instability and many accidents occurred. They industry eventually developed extensive standards regarding shipping that vastly improved the safety of shipping NG.
> movie and video game industries control their own content ratings
Not sure you're helping yourself here. The established movie industry uses its content rating system as a bludgeon against independent filmmakers. The video game industry's content controls are largely a joke, assigned arbitrarily by people who never actually play the game.
Short version: Most cinemas and other outlets in the US won't carry your movie if it's unrated, so in effect those who control the ratings control which movies can get distributed. Also most cinemas in the US won't show NC17 rated movies so the ratings people can also use that as a way to prevent your movie being shown to a large cinema audience if they want to.
In the one case the life of the engineers and not the execs bonuses were on the line. In the other created one of the more potent systems of censorship (it is largely invisible and encourages self censoring the content) and preventing new/small guys from entering.
The difference between PG-13 and R in many cases is completely arbitrary.
The ratings lump many kinds of movies together and says absolutely nothing about their content.
No movie can be NC-17 or unrated because that is a kiss of death. No theaters will play it, no big box stores will sell it. I think what R can get away with has broadened considerably because of that.
If you have appropriate regulations to support self-regulation it can work very well.
For example, here in Indonesia, if I buy eggs at the supermarket I don't really have to worry about them carrying salmonella. Why? Because truth in labelling laws and demand for salmonella-free eggs means that the farms that sell to the big food distributors all get tested so they can label their eggs as salmonella-free.
One really wonders why this hasn't taken off in the US. I can think however of a few reasons (it's not just too much or too little regulation but the wrong regulations).
s/libertarianism/bitcoin/ and I agree with you as a Distributist.
As a Distributist, my feeling is that successful regulation supports decentralization. The problem with the regulation vs deregulation dichotomy is that regulation is usually pushed as a centralizing power, while deregulation is usually also pushed as a centralizing power.
Because that has worked wonders for the other industries -- let's have pharma companies, oil, food producers, just self regulate.