I can see two problems causing the pain described here, which I will discuss shortly. But the article seems to stretch that experience too much into the 'regulation is bad' territory. Regulations exist for a reason. They aren't created for the power trip of government officials. This is the same US where companies dump PFAS into drinking water sources with impunity, has some of the highest fees for the worst quality interest access, where insulin is unaffordable and corporate house renting is a thing. There are many such areas where regulation and oversight is woefully inadequate, much less any 'overregulation'. Regulations are practically the only thing standing between the rich and the powerful and their incessant attempt to drive even more wealth into their own pockets at the expense ordinary people's health, wealth, future, welfare, housing, etc.
Now let's look at the specific problems here with a much narrower scope than 'regulations'. The first problem is the type of regulations. Some regulations are too arcane and don't reflect the current state of technology. Others affect the unprivileged people disproportionately. The solution for that is to amend these regulations fast enough - not deregulation. It's also important to assess the negative impacts of loosening these regulations - something I don't see discussed in this article.
The other important requirement is to increase the staffing of the regulatory agencies so that their individual workload doesn't become a bottleneck in the entire process. There is a scientific method to assess the staffing requirements of public service institutions. According to that, a significant number of government departments all over the world are understaffed. Regulatory agencies and police departments top that list. Increased workload on their officials lead to poor experience for the citizens availing their services (this is very evident in policing). Yet those same experiences are misconstrued and misrepresented to call for deregulation and defunding of these institutions - the opposite of what's actually needed. (PDs need more staff and more training in empathy. Not defunding, nor militarization.) This is exactly what I see in this article. An attempt to target regulations as a whole using a sob anecdote.
In large part due to regulation. Reflexively adding more regulations to deal with the negative effects of existing regulations is like "fixing" a bug by adding special-case logic for inputs which trigger the bug, without understanding why the bug actually occurred. Just like code, regulations should ideally be simple and elegant with a minimum of special cases.
The EU also has regulations, but somehow it does not make insulin as expensive as in the US. Maybe the existence of a regulation is not the issue here.
Existence of specific bad US regulation and overregulation caused this.
Bad EU regulations and overregulation caused other problems. For example it is illegal for me to throw old socks full of holes into trash, I am supposed to take it to recycling centre on other side of the city.
Oh yeah, because in the absence of regulation, the insulin producer would sell it at negligible margins, sure!
As for the socks - my city has like ~5 locations where old textiles can be recycled, the closest one in slightly less than 1km from where I live. I see no problem with going there twice a year :)
With lack of regulations, the theory is, there will be many competing manufacturers of insulin, dropping the cost down. Probably not as simple as that, but that's the idea at least
Now, that's all just regulations. What are regulations but laws that restrict/govern the way to do commerce? Anti-slavery is part of that, just like every other concession we've had to pry from the hands of capitalists over the last 100 years, like no child labor, no locking workers into factories, PPE, etc...
You're free to call contract law and private property law "regulations", but recognize that these branches of law have very different properties, history, and functions than what we traditionally refer to by regulations. Traditionally, when people talk about regulations they are talking about legislation, i.e., rules and decrees created by a legislative body, voted into law by some parliamentary body or created by an executive agency to support decrees of a parliamentary or similar body with the power to declare law. You can think of this as legislation or declaratory law.
Contrast this with contract and property law. These laws were created primarily out of common law, a long evolutionary process arising out of series of decisions from a judiciary attempting to reconcile conflicts between the parties. This is judicial or conciliatory law.
Crucially, most if not all the advances and the rise of extreme productivity from capitalism that supports populations in excess of 8 billion as opposed to about 0.5 billion, have come from emphasis and pre-eminence on the latter kind of law and the smashing of the former kind of law, i.e., the destruction of the guild system of privileges, removing or minimizing protectionist laws, etc. And the former kind of law has either been nominal, merely codifying the advances caused by the latter law like in the case of child labor, or it has been reactionary and hampered the progress of the latter sort of law.
Yes, insulin producers would! It is illegal to compete, and insulin producers enjoy a legally backed monopoly. Yes, removing the regulations which support that monopoly will reduce prices. Any other option merely exists to support and uphold the special privileges that the current regulatory regjme grants to insulin producers.
I don’t know where they live, but I’m 100% that it’s not an EU regulation, because I could throw socks into landfill/generic bins legally in the EU countries where I lived. Even the new EPR schemes about this is not about what’s mandatory by users, but what’s mandatory by textile manufacturers.
I don't think there is a simple explanation, that's why I used the word "morass".
"From when insulin is produced by the drug manufacturer to when it goes to a pharmacy, profit is extracted at every step of the way. The insulin market is dominated by three large drug manufacturers—Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk—that, with little competition, have raised their list prices in lockstep. But there are other players besides the Big Three that are contributing to the problem. Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, contract with insurance carriers and act on behalf of the insurer to negotiate the price of insulin with the drug manufacturers. In negotiating the price, PBMs place a drug higher or lower on their tier of preferred drugs and receive rebates based on a percentage of the list price. This kind of system incentivizes high list prices, which determine the amount of co-insurance patients pay. And if patients have a high deductible or are uninsured, they might pay the entire list price."
> Government capture by big players who promote heavy regulation in order to eliminate smaller competition?
This is a meaningless statement without specifics. It has absolutely nothing concrete in it that would actually inform someone about what drives insulin production. It's a wrong and overly simplifies.
Are you really saying the regulations regarding the actual production of insulin is what drives up costs? We've been manufacturing insulin for > 100 years now.
And can you find a single resource that agrees with your assessment?
When you say "big players", you mean the top 3 right? Would regulating monopolies in the pharmaceutical industry maybe be a good thing?
Why do other counties pay less if it costs so much to make? Why does regulation in the US make US consumers pay more but not Europe, for example?
Do you think PBM's have any part to play in this? What about over-zealous patents by the monopoly at the top?
Do you have any actual experience in this field or are you just parroting talking points?
I worked for a large company that did devices used in surgery. They regarded FDA regulation as a moat that kept out all but large, established competitors.
Note that I am not saying that they tried to push (or worse, capture) regulators to achieve that end. I'm just saying that they didn't mind.
Yeah but EU regulation makes other things expensive and inefficient (like the labour market, housing, building new companies because incumbents protect their interests trhough regulation).
The fact is that with insulin the regulation issues comes from the patchwork system of healthcare the US developped through political concesssionns and lobbying from private firms, which makes the developpment and the subsequent commercialization expensive relative to Europe where centralized national bodies negotiate with the pharma companies.
Regulation can be good or bad, in our era it is ineffective because politicians are boomers disconnected from the issues or in the EU a pseudo-technocratic (not really listening to technocrats recommendations) body far from reality
> EU regulation makes other things expensive and inefficient (like the labour market, housing,
Unlike the US, where federal minimal wage remained flat since 2009 or where Black Rock is buying all available housing to keep the prices as high as possible.
The real minimum wage is also stuck in many parts of Europe relative to 2008. For example in Spain the average salary didnt increase adusted to inflation.
The blackrock thing seems like a myth, but private entities are also buying housing en masse in Spain for exammple
The minimum wage doesnt mean much in general, many European countries either dont have it or recently instated it (Germany). What matters is the Median and quintile salaries in which, the US fares much better anyways
Many other countries have official minimum wages and a big % of people working black, unreported because the minimum wage is to high relative to the average (Spain, Greece, Italy)
The bug occurs because of the power discrepancy of those who have the demand and those of who can supply. For some reason, the problem if insulin prices and absurd health costs only exist in the US. I wonder why.
We don’t need competition in insulin production. It is a know quantity with fixed and closed quality parameters. Fix the price and let suppliers compete on cost.
The problem in USA is that producing insuline is so regulated that setting up and maintaining production is obnoxiously expensive.
Note that if you cause by regulation or stupid laws something to be expensive to produce/import and then make it illegal to sell above that price - then you will get shortages.
As noone will want to produce insuline if required paperwork costs more than it's selling price.
Note that even if currently adding more regulation to solve problems caused by more regulation will not cause it, it may happen in future.
US healthcare regulations are on Nth round of that.
> setting up and maintaining production is obnoxiously expensive.
This is what I meant by compete on cost. The manufacturers that are best at cutting these costs will make the most profit. That’s where competition should be focused on such generic items.
None of this is while insulin is so expensive in the US. None of it.
We've been producing insulin for 100 years now. You guys are just making things up and it's wild.
I don't think a single person who is claiming that regulation is driving up insulin prices has even Googled it to make sure what they're saying makes sense. Spoiler alert: It's not.
The cost of insulin is a result of monopolies, pharmacy benefit managers, patents, and most importantly: a LACK of regulation on drug prices.
> The problem in USA is that producing insuline is so regulated that setting up and maintaining production is obnoxiously expensive.
i don’t buy it. no other oecd nation has insulin prices as absurd as the us. this is a greed problem.
the only people to blame when the government starts producing insulin will be the pharmaceutical companies and their refusal to be decent members of society. if they were even a tiny fraction more decent they wouldn’t be in the mess they’re directly causing.
far too often companies are directly to blame for regulation as they repeatedly absolutely refuse to self-regulate and be decent pieces of society.
Greed explains nothing. People will be greedy when they are incentivized to be greedy, and thrifty when they are incentivized to be thrifty. There are plenty of incentives, I might add, for regulators to be greedy though.
Which may also be expressed as an expectation for a particular quality at a particular cost. There are no deadweights to exploit in insulin production. It seems to some people that regulation is the deadweight but without that quality guarantee you’re dependent on suppliers which duplicates the cost of “self regulation” across the sector.
We will have to wait see where it goes, but California is trying to make their own insulin, so starting January 1st, 2025 you can buy a pack for $55 a as a resident.
> The problem in USA is that producing insuline is so regulated that setting up and maintaining production is obnoxiously expensive.
This has absolutely nothing to do with insulin costs. Nada. Zip. Nil.
> As noone will want to produce insuline if required paperwork costs more than it's selling price.
Where are you getting this information from? I've been in the industry for a bit now and this is a first for me. That the reason why insulin is so expensive in the US is because it costs money to make????
There are many kinds of insulin variants on the market. The easy way to differentiate them is by release rate and duration. Gone in an hour for some and 24hours for others. There are other factors as well that make them incompatible with each other.
Nothing has fixed and closed quality parameters. At least not if your concern is quality as understood by the people who want or need insulin as opposed to whatever arbitrary standard a bureaucrat could make up.
You do know these people are scientific experts and have teams of scientific experts working for them, right. It’s not some blazing skulls stuffed shirt lol
No amount of scientific expertise will turn a subjective thing (which is what product quality is) into an objective thing. Credible, ethical, and well-trained scientists should be able to recognize that and desist from dressing up their preferences into scientific dress and passing it off as the results of objective science.
The quality of a product is subjective to the user of that product. This is a scientific fact of economics, and insistence otherwise is science denial.
That’s why we have regulation LOL toxicity is not subjective
Oh Lordy what has become of HN a load of fresh dummies with no grounding in the basic principles of libertarianism. All the fire none of the intellect.
Sometimes the results of science are unintuitive, but they are facts all the same. The toxicity is an objective feature of the chemical properties of a substance. Whether, to what extent, and how people value such a substance due to its toxicity, and how this plays into their activities which might have assumed its nontoxicity is a subjective matter. The latter is what the manufactuerer is interested in when producing their product; if they consider the former objective fact, it is because the latter subjective evaluation makes the objective fact significant.
That would ensure that it is extremely unlikely we get innovation in insulin production as it removes the financial incentive to take the risk with innovation.
The barrier for entry is primarily capital these days: have a moat, prevent competition, extract money, cease R&D. And if a competitor does come up, just buy them outright. This is the current economic model, as it is practiced by Private Equity.
Power has become infectious and capitalism has changed. The game is about power and extracting more and more money from the productive economy, making it less competitive. Who wins? Those who already have excessive capital.
The only one who would have enough legal power is exclusively the state. It’s no surprise the state is under attack from so many fronts.
You could make an argument that the problem is entirely due to bad regulation, because the regulations haven't mandated effective enforcement.
I don't know if this applies to insulin production, but in several other areas enforcing anti-monopoly regulations is lacking at such a degree that the regulations are almost completely ignored.
> The power to charge what you want comes from lack of competition
Competition alone is never good enough to make price down, because companies and shareholders hate competition and will happily “consolidate” competitive markets into much more profitable oligopolies (when it's not straight monopolies).
Power discrepancy is not a category of pricing. The price is high because the supply is constrained relative to demand. And in this case, regulations cause a restriction of supply.
If you are an European, regulation also has the benefit to induce soft protectionism from countries that are less keen on consumer and environment protection. This is the heart of the debate about Mercorsur, as it creates an unfair competition by lowering regulation (in theory european regulation applies but in practice it's harder to verify), and also an internal debate in France related to some pesticide that other European countries can use. Some argue that we should allow the pesticide, some that we should stop importing products that are exposed to it.
Realistically, the reason the EU is a customs union and not a trade union is because they need to implement protectionist policies to prevent their imdustry from being outcompeted by countries which don't suffer from these regulations.
Maybe because people don't have unlimited amount of time to keep up-to-date on all data and research on toxicity, negative health effects, safety, etc on tens of thousands of products from a couple hundred countries.
Any product could apply for regulatory approval in the country where it is being sold. If the product does not get regulatory approval, it could be sold in a special shop, so customers are aware that they are taking a risk. That lets customers choose for themselves whether they want to take the risk.
Because people don't look at country of origin. They are mostly price sensitive.
If you allow imports from countries with looser regulations, you are basically putting your own sectors at a competitive disavantage in your own market. It's akin to killing it basically.
It's obviously extremely stupid but in the case of the Mercosur agreement, predictably Germany doesn't care because the agribusiness is in France and they themselves will be able to export their cars.
Generally speaking, Germany never cares about deeply shafting the rest of the union when it gives them a small advantage. See also how their economy is deeply unbalanced, they have under invested for decades and they only survive because they are part of a monetary union devoid of a fiscal union giving them the tremendous advantage of an undervalued currency at the expense of basically every southern members. See also how they made joining the currency union mandatory for entering the common market and are pushing for adding more poor eastern countries to exploit which also conveniently vote for the EPP and dillute any chance the southern countries could ally to oppose them.
Obviously, the currency union has no clear path to exit it.
1. More euro using countries with weaker economies ensure the euro stay as low as possible which is insanely advantageous for Germany, a country which has built all its economy on exports. Plus it provides a new outcome for the German excess savings via credits which will amplify the unbalancing created by the monetary policies and add a vicious extractive cycle on top.
2. These countries tend to prioritise their immediate safety from Russia to any economical considerations and are strongly NATO aligned. They have historically voted for parties which are close to the EPP, the currently dominant European party which is itself controlled by and subservient to German interests. See how Von Der Leyen was basically saved by Poland in 2024. This ensure the EPP remains the dominant force in Europe and significantly dilutes the voices of countries strongly disavantaged by how the eurozone is working and which could be tempted to ally to try to push reforms (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, France). Generally, expension strongly favours the current status quo, itself extremely favourable to Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
I'm confused, Europeans on HN are always telling me how NATO is a big scheme the US uses to keep the dollar strong. Now you're telling me the EPP is a big scheme from Germany to keep the euro weak. Something's not adding up.
This requires some actual history, not just memes and conspiracy theories.
Originally, it was the French during Mitterrand times who pushed for a unified European currency. Kohl granted it to them in exchange for their consent to unify Germany, but wasn't happy about it, because he knew that conservative German voters were attached to the strength of the Deutsche Mark.
Nevertheless, 15-20 years on, it actually turned out that a weaker euro was a problem for industry in places like France and Italy, while supporting German exports. Germany had a streak of really strong exports.
Nowadays, it does not matter anymore, though. Aging of the population, expensive energies, bureaucracy gone wild and bad immigration policies have made Germany a sick man of Europe again. When it comes to raw industrial growth, the strongest player in the EU is now Poland, which does not even use the euro.
The EPP is a political party not a scheme but yes, Germany benefits immensely from a weak euro as a net exporter and the way the eurozone is structured, as a monetary union without a fiscal union, and how it operates, roughly with transfers being very limited, a big no no for the population of the advantaged countries if not an impossibility considering the historical rulings of the German constitutional court, ensure it stays this way.
I have no personal opinion on NATO being a big scheme to keep the dollar strong. I personally think its creation had more to do with limiting the spread of the USSR and ensuring the former European empires remained in vassal positions following the second world war. Still, as a net importer, the USA generally benefits from a strong dollar. The dollar is in a fairly unique position anyway as it remains the internation reserve currency.
I fail to see what's not adding up here personnaly.
Replying to inglor_cz here because dang rate limited me because one of my post about Rust was apparently grounded but written in what dang considers a "flamebaity" way while being highly upvoted:
To me, that's a deep misrepresentation of the systemic issue at stake.
Germany didn't magically happen to have strong exports while it became an issue for France and Italy. That's a structural feature of the monetary union. The euro was always going to be weaker that the DM and stronger than the Lira. That gives an inherent advantage to Germany and conversely deeply disavantage Italy. That's why there never was a currency union without transfers in history before the euro. It plainly can't work.
What Mitterand and Delor did was take a gamble. They pushed for an unsustainable currency union hoping it would extend to a fully featured fiscal union when a crisis inevitably came. Sadly, that's not what happened when said crisis came and we are now stuck with a setup which is either slowly erroding the competitivity of the periphery or forcing it into pro-cycle austerity in the name of a political doctrine it never chose while it favors a few core countries widely misallocating their excess savings while pretending to be virtuous. Our saving grace
It's obviously completely unsustainable hence the constant rise of extremist parties in the perepheric countries but like a good quasi-neocolonial setup, you will see a lot of people actually defend it with arguments which are roughly the same as the one the empires used to use: leaving will be economical ruin, the alternative is chaos, you obviously can't manage your economy without us.
It's no surprise the strongest industrial player in the EU is becoming Poland. It is because they are out of the euro. Look at how while they are theorically forced to join by the treaty, they are doing everything they can to stay out.
Amusingly, we might all end up being saved by Trump because tariffs on top of two decades of systemic underinvestements have put the German economy so out of balance, we might finally witness the end of ordoliberalism.
>Still, as a net importer, the USA generally benefits from a strong dollar. The dollar is in a fairly unique position anyway as it remains the internation reserve currency.
I would say the causality goes the other way, we are a net importer because foreigners need dollars since they are the reserve currency.
The euro being undervalued is a relative statement. It’s undervalued for Germany in the sense that considering Germany current policies and trade balance, an equivalent German only currency would be considerably stronger. That’s a significant part of how Germany remains competitive despite investing so little in their productivity.
Conversely, it’s extremely overvalued for the economy of the periphery. If you look at their trade balance and policies, their own currency would be far weaker. Paradoxically this would be a boon for them. Sure it would impact their ability to import but it would make their exports far cheaper in relative terms.
Adding country with economy pulling down the value of the euro is therefore extremely advantageous to Germany at the expense of the periphery. This is by design. A currency union can’t work without transfers.
That’s why it’s extremely unfair to impose the euro as part of the criteria for joining and why you see country like Poland doing its best to not join. Sadly, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy are stuck in. I personally can’t refrain from strongly resenting the union every time I see someone from the advantaged core pretending to be morally virtuous while being the direct beneficiary of one of the most unfair transfer setup since decolonisation and pretend the south should just go with austerity which is the exact reverse of what’s actually needed (investment and devaluation).
I somehow understand how we got there and the weight the completely botched unification of Germany in 1990 carries in it. It doesn’t really make the pill easier to swallow.
The EU already has country of origin requirements. They still had to specify things like "X% of the product has to be made in country Y to be qualified for the 'made in Y' label". And even that can and does get muddy.
For the purpose of this discussion, the % made in country Y doesn't matter--the important thing is whether the product is compliant with regulations in country Y.
Using the same idea, are you personally for legalizing all drugs as well or not requiring doctors to be licensed? Because I think there are lots of things forbidden/regulated across the world, mostly because people do not to make (or are not able to make due to lack of information) the best decisions for them, and then society suffers as a whole.
Me personally, if I have to choose between food 10% cheaper that will give 1 in 1000 people a cancer, or eating something more local/boring I prefer the latter, even if I would never buy it myself.
I already stated in this thread that I'm in favor of smart regulation, not zero regulation. For example, instead of government licensing of doctors, I would be interested in a more elegant solution like requiring all doctors to carry malpractice insurance and publish information about the insurance rate they're currently paying. If graduating from a particular medical school is truly associated with reduced malpractice rates, that should be reflected in lower insurance rates for those doctors. Insurers would design their own exams which would probably be better than government licensing exams since insurers have skin in the game.
The problem is the "root of trust". Someone has to decide if it was "malpractice" or not. The doctor (and the insurer) have the interest to say "it was the best service we could provide", and even if you involve a lawsuit/judge/etc., they will have no clue who is correct. And if you have a "root of trust", they can directly test/manage the doctors (the current system).
Returning to the topic to which I responded: I prefer some organization responsible to make and check a set of rules about food, rather than each person to have to do their own research (and the first does not exclude anyhow the second). I find that smart in the sense that it will reuse knowledge of some people and will not require a lot of people learning a lot of things. I have the impression that I do care about food quality more than the average, so I am not at all worried about too strict requirements.
You don't let customer to decide if they love pesticide or not, their are basic functions even to a minimal state and environment and health protection is among them.
When most people think of insulin, they think it's the same medication isolated over 100 years ago and it's just big Pharma sticking it to people by charging anything more than a couple of bucks. There are side effects and downsides to insulin, and all of these expensive versions are attempts at reducing/eliminating side effects.
In 49 US states, you can walk into a Walmart with $25 and walk out with a vial of insulin, no prescription necessary. For $75, you can get a much newer Novo Nordisk analog insulin.
Wait, what? With this type of claim I was sure you were going to back it up with at least some evidence but apparently I was wrong.
I'm sorry, but the irony in this comment too much. The reason insulin is so high is because of a lack of regulation.
If the government took a stronger stance towards monopolies in the pharma industry, this wouldn't be happening.
If the government REGULATED insulin prices, it wouldn't be so high.
If the government reigned in PBMs, it wouldn't be so high.
IF the government reigned in patents and the tricks drug companies play with them, it wouldn't be so high.
I don't think that price fixing by government should be allowed in any situation. Reducing barriers to entry and a tough stance on monopolies has the result of lowering prices without distorting the market with an artificial set price.
> I don't think that price fixing by government should be allowed in any situation
You're confusing fixing with negotiating.
The govt provides healthcare. They pay for the meds. Are you saying the government shouldn't be allowed to negotiate what it pays for it's own insurance????
I was responding to a comment that said "regulating insulin prices". Regulating and negotiating are not the same. Regulation is the government using its power to dictate the price a seller is allowed to sell a product for (price fixing). Negotiation means the pharmaceutical company can just say no if the government offers a price that is too low.
Or maybe you are thinking that government force is "negotiating". Something along the lines of give us this price or we make it illegal for you to do "x". Or, alternatively, we will allow you to do "x" if you give us this price. While that is technically negotiating it is malignant government behavior known as coercion.
Regulations exist for different reasons, not one reason. Some of those reasons are good reasons, like regulations against dumping or against contract killers or for food safety. Some of those are bad reasons, like regulations of parking minimums implemented to appease the property owning class. Some of those are for bad reasons pretending to be for good reasons, like the regulations that block renewable energy which are allegedly for the environment, but the true motives are more about aesthetic displeasure or ideological hostility.
> like regulations of parking minimums implemented to appease the property owning class.
Due to current market conditions we can sell all apartments without any parking spaces, therefore regulation defining a housing unit with foresight for future market conditions is bad.
> the regulations that block renewable energy
Can you name one regulation that outright blocks renewable energy generation specifically and not externalities created by developments, that sometimes happen to be renewable energy?
> like regulations of parking minimums implemented to appease the property owning class.
This regulations are crucial for preventing cities from being littered with cars (more than they already are). If developers were allowed they would build only very limited parking space and then people living there would have to park in public space burdening everybody. If anything it's a regulation against property owning class.
Are you suggesting that less “free” (cost-bundled) parking spaces would lead to more cars? Or do you just mean from an aesthetic perspective more street parking would be used when you say cities would be more littered with cars?
We’ve ended up with such car-centric cities (in the U.S.) thanks in part to the presence of ample free (subsidized) parking thanks to parking minimums and free street parking. If the cost of parking was actually borne by car owners, it would reduce car ownership thanks to higher cost. This is less true today thanks to car ownership being near-mandator, but with the right investments that can change. I’d describe parking minimums as a regulation against non-car owners as they still pay in part for the parking spaces required by their apartment/home/every business they visit in most cases.
As an aside, have you looked at how parking minimums are often set? It’s only loosely correlated with the goal of sufficient parking.
> Or do you just mean from an aesthetic perspective more street parking would be used when you say cities would be more littered with cars?
Yes, but I'm more concerned about practical aspect than esthetics. Blocked walkways, lower visibility for drivers, longer distance between place of living and the car, and the car you had to park far away on the crowded street snd your business. This are all costs that developers love to externalize to all members of society instead of passing them to the future owners of the property they are building.
I'm not really talking about situation in US where people live so sparsely that they have plenty of space to patk their car when they are at home. Parking minimums I'm supporting are for medium to high density residential intermixed with conmercial zones. That is pretty much majority of spaces in European cities.
I'm sure that mininum parking requirements for businesses in US in purely commercial zones might be too high.
The problem is that the regulators themselves are insanely corrupt - how else would you explain the emergence of proposals like (thrice-resurrected) Chat Control, that clearly is harmful to every citizen of the EU, and I have yet to see a single individual supporting it.
Every governing decision and rule is either fully made by powerful shadow interests, proposed by said interests and is only thwarted (for the time being) by some politicians on the other side or made out to be benign or even beneficial but is in actuality compromised in some major way.
>Every governing decision and rule is either fully made by powerful shadow interests, proposed by said interests
The Useful Idiots(TM) will be along shortly to tell you how you're technically wrong because the rules are "only" 99% made/proposed by shadow interests.
> Regulations are practically the only thing standing between the rich and the powerful and their incessant attempt to drive even more wealth into their own pockets at the expense ordinary people's health, wealth, future, welfare, housing, etc.
Try to rethink how money is created and how money gets its value and how and by whom that wealth is distributed. Regulation as in "make rules" does not enforce rules, which is the definition of (political) power.
> The other important requirement is to increase the staffing of the regulatory agencies so that their individual workload doesn't become a bottleneck in the entire process. There is a scientific method to assess the staffing requirements of public service institutions. According to that, a significant number of government departments all over the world are understaffed.
Why are you claiming "There is a scientific method" and do not provide it? Governments do (risk) management by 1 rules, 2 checks and 3 punishment and we already know from software that complexity in system is only bounded by system working with eventual necessary (ideally partial) resets.
Ideally governments would be structured like that, but that goes against governments interest of extending power/control.
Also, "system working" is decided by the current ruling class/group. Besides markets and physical constrains.
Money is created and distributed via 1 banking system and 2 government.
Are 1 rules, 2 checks and 3 punishment enforced against the banking system and government or only to stabilize and extend those systems?
I'd argue the introduction of (arbitrary) rules are often just the excuses to amass power, but enforcement of checks and punishments decides who holds (political) power.
Money is printed out of thin air by the FED and then loaned out to the government for them to spend, so it enters the economy. Something along those lines.
Now let's look at the specific problems here with a much narrower scope than 'regulations'. The first problem is the type of regulations. Some regulations are too arcane and don't reflect the current state of technology. Others affect the unprivileged people disproportionately. The solution for that is to amend these regulations fast enough - not deregulation. It's also important to assess the negative impacts of loosening these regulations - something I don't see discussed in this article.
The other important requirement is to increase the staffing of the regulatory agencies so that their individual workload doesn't become a bottleneck in the entire process. There is a scientific method to assess the staffing requirements of public service institutions. According to that, a significant number of government departments all over the world are understaffed. Regulatory agencies and police departments top that list. Increased workload on their officials lead to poor experience for the citizens availing their services (this is very evident in policing). Yet those same experiences are misconstrued and misrepresented to call for deregulation and defunding of these institutions - the opposite of what's actually needed. (PDs need more staff and more training in empathy. Not defunding, nor militarization.) This is exactly what I see in this article. An attempt to target regulations as a whole using a sob anecdote.