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Archive of posts published in the tag: regulation

Frozen Contract Terms

In an effort to make housing more affordable federal regulators have done the opposite, but this cost is hidden by the lack of innovation which has locked the market for housing. To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, by subsidizing the markers of success they have raised the cost in ways even they do not understand.  If you cannot afford a house one would be better served to rent than to add debt you cannot handle.  Somebody pays.

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Benign Neglect

Kevin Williamson at National Review- “A great deal of what’s best about the modern world is the result of nerds messing around in their garages: Google, the modern automobile business, rock ’n’ roll. Thank goodness nobody took it seriously enough to try to regulate it, manage it, and direct it — which would only have deformed it.”

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The Other Friction Costs

While tax relief is in the spotlight, we have underestimated the other friction costs, the regulatory growth that wastes valuable economy growing and job creating resources. The stock market boom happened because the beating stopped.

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A Uniquely American Problem

Once a government program is established to provide benefits to a prescribed group, there is soon to follow a movement to expand the definition of that group to include more people (voters).  Lobbyists will form to expand the new institutionalized

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The Critical Difference Between Good and Bad Regulation

Mark Levin is a rabid right wing radio talk show host.  Because I at least scan about any title with the word progressivism in it, I viewed his latest book Rediscovering Americanism: and the Tyranny of Progressivism and was pleasantly surprised at

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Corporate Progressives

from Why Corporate Leaders Became Progressive Activists by Kevin Williamson: If you have not read it, spare a moment for William H. Whyte’s Cold War classic. In the 1950s, Whyte, a writer for Fortune, interviewed dozens of important CEOs and

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Bureaucratic Opportunism

from Holman Jenkins, Jr. at The Wall Street Journal, Regulation vs. The American People Mr. Obama wanted to be a “transformational” president like Reagan, but transformational presidents both lead and listen to the public, and they get their mandate through the

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Regulatory Rent Seeking

from David Goldman at The Asian TImes, Deplorably, Trump is going to win That’s not why Trump crushed the Republican primaries. He won because Americans are tired of an economic elite that ignores them. Americans know the game is rigged against

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A Veneer of Public Purpose

From John Cochrane at The Grumpy Economist, Micro vs. Macro: The cause of sclerotic growth is the major economic policy question of our time. The three big explanations are 1) We ran out of ideas (Gordon); 2) Deficient “demand,” remediable

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The True Costs of Compliance

from Daniel Yergin at the WSJ, Markets Run Into Skepticism—and Regulators There had been a shift in the balance of confidence—the respective weighting in people’s minds between the role of markets and government, between the invisible hand and the visible one.

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Capitalization vs Regulation

While the left claims the greedy 1% led us to financial ruin, years of reflection indicate that wrongheaded regulation and policy had much to do with magnifying the depth of the recession. Deregulation was not the problem, wrong regulation was

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Dodd-Frank and Slow Growth

From The Wall Street Journal, Bernanke and the Slow-Growth Crew by Peter Wallison The regulations and restrictions on small banks have most acutely affected small businesses, particularly startups. Though most new employment in the U.S. economy comes from small business,

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Regulations at Cross Purposes

Economist John Cochrane wrote a 10,000 word essay, Economic Growth.  Scott Grannis blogged some excerpts here:  a few of them: The popular debate is about “more” vs. “less” regulation. Regulation is not more or less, regulation is effective or ineffective, smarter or dumber,

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The Accumulation of Friction Costs

from the Wall Street Journal, The Golden Goose is on the Run by Bob Funk: There is a disconnect today between what government experts say about the economy when they crunch the numbers and what employers throughout America say when

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Innovation vs Regulation

from Sultan Knish, The Technophobic Democrats Excerpts: Democrats like technology the way that they like science in general, as an inspiring progressive idea, not as the messy uncertain reality that it really is. But applying their logic of “settled science”,

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Fortress vs Frontier

Robert Graboyes writes Why We Need to Liberate America’s Health Care Excerpts: Since World War II, the health care debate has been a struggle of left versus right. The left has tended to favor federal solutions, plus increased public provision

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A Lack Of Imagination

From Today’s American Thinker, my article Uber Libertarians Excerpt: There are similar commercial communities among iPhone users, Amazon customers, and other enterprises.  Such modern businesses scale up remarkably fast, creating huge commercial communities, quickly threatening the regulatory agencies, and empowering

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The Uber Factor

I  flew into Houston Hobby Airport a few days ago, touched the Uber App (i had set up some time ago).  I put in the destination and It said there was a ride two minutes away.  I learned that even

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The Illusion of Competence

The fallacy of technocratic solutions is that competence alone can improve or perfect a tragically flawed construct of how the world works.  For years the monumental failures of socialism, communism and even fascism were excused by supporters who blamed the

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Centralized Failure

“Because we believe that the way to achieve optimal organizational performance is to allow individual employees to use their minds effectively, we operate with a highly decentralized organizational structure. One problem for the large banks that had regulator-driven risk-management systems

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