Regulation/Deregulation
- Thread starter StorkNest
- Start date
Hello StorkNest,
I don't subscribe to Trains but the article sounds interesting. Thanks for the heads up; I'll pick one up today.
As to the idea of reregulation, it sounds looney-tunes to me. Why is it that a government that has never successfully regulated anything, including itself, in the past believes itself perfectly capable of regulating complex systems in the future? Governments, some of them, do well enough waging war, but wars are not designed to generate wealth. Businesses are so designed. If you want people to engage in businesses like railroading and generate wealth, then the best plan, IMHO, is to play to their greed and let them run after profits with minimum hindrance. By making themselves rich, they will inevitably benefit all of us. They just can't help it, and it always works better than trying to regulate them into sainthood. The result is always the same. The regulated take over the regulators and use the agency as a bar to entry of competitors. Result, the industry atrophies, e.g., standing derailments and yards choked with the disused equipment of bankrupt railroads as happened in the late '70s.
I guess the short version of the above is "If'n it aint broke, don't fix it." Corollary: "If you keep fixing something, it breaks."
Good topic.
Bernie
I don't subscribe to Trains but the article sounds interesting. Thanks for the heads up; I'll pick one up today.
As to the idea of reregulation, it sounds looney-tunes to me. Why is it that a government that has never successfully regulated anything, including itself, in the past believes itself perfectly capable of regulating complex systems in the future? Governments, some of them, do well enough waging war, but wars are not designed to generate wealth. Businesses are so designed. If you want people to engage in businesses like railroading and generate wealth, then the best plan, IMHO, is to play to their greed and let them run after profits with minimum hindrance. By making themselves rich, they will inevitably benefit all of us. They just can't help it, and it always works better than trying to regulate them into sainthood. The result is always the same. The regulated take over the regulators and use the agency as a bar to entry of competitors. Result, the industry atrophies, e.g., standing derailments and yards choked with the disused equipment of bankrupt railroads as happened in the late '70s.
I guess the short version of the above is "If'n it aint broke, don't fix it." Corollary: "If you keep fixing something, it breaks."
Good topic.
Bernie
both are equally bad. what's needed is to make the oil and auto industry pay for its own rights of way the way railroads have to, either that, or as long as railroads pay taxes that build highways, while continuing to have to build their own tracks without any such simular support, turnabout would be much fairer play as in taxing oil profits to pay for public transit.
=^^=
.../\...
=^^=
.../\...
But then they'll get rich. One of the greatest evils of capitalism is the unequal distribution of it's benefits.
One of the greatest virtues of socialism is the equal distribution of its misery.
Lets all crawl through the gutters together!Safety regulations are a valuable thing for the protection of bystanders, but regulation of internal policies only hamper the ability of a company to avoid bankruptcy.
Past that I have no opinion yet. I'll have to check out that issue.
Claude