Free Capitalist Network - Community Archive
Mises Community Archive
An online community for fans of Austrian economics and libertarianism, featuring forums, user blogs, and more.

public regulation vs private regulation.

rated by 0 users
This post has 11 Replies | 1 Follower

Top 150 Contributor
Posts 639
Points 11,575
cab21 Posted: Sun, Dec 16 2012 12:12 PM

the difference that i can see between public and private regulation is ownership.

what i am not seeing so much is when people say that public regulation causes harm while private regulation prevents harm.

public vs private roads for one example. a person said that public road regulation causes harm to people, as if private regulation or non-regulation would prevent harm to people.

what would make private regulation so fundamentaly different on the ishue of safty?

  • | Post Points: 50
Top 200 Contributor
Posts 452
Points 7,620

Because it would appropriate to the level of safety and cost that the market wants to bear. Forced public regulation imposes costs on everyone. Technological and safety advances would come more efficiently and cheaply through the free market.

http://thephoenixsaga.com/
  • | Post Points: 20
Top 10 Contributor
Male
Posts 4,987
Points 89,490
Wheylous replied on Sun, Dec 16 2012 12:44 PM

Succinct.

  • | Post Points: 5
Top 50 Contributor
Posts 2,258
Points 34,610
Anenome replied on Sun, Dec 16 2012 1:50 PM
 
 

cab21:

what would make private regulation so fundamentaly different on the ishue of safty?

Because private law is generated as an agreement between two people, that is to say it is law based on mutual exchange! This fact is so fundamental that it's easy to overlook. Public law, by contrast, is forced on most everyone, meaning that the person subject to it has no ability to veto it or influence its wording or to barter for aspects, meaning it's inherently tyrannical.

Law arising out of mutual exchange is likely to be different in character and quality compared to law forced on you, which gives incentive to influence politicians to certain people's benefit, results in the modern ridiculous circus of special interests and lobbyists, etc. But private law arising between people, both participants serve purely their own interests in the law negotiations.

Thus there is never misaligned incentives. You always have your own interests in mind, and you negotiate laws purely for yourself.

Rule of the self, by the self.

Pure individualism.

 
Autarchy: rule of the self by the self; the act of self ruling.
  • | Post Points: 5
Top 500 Contributor
Posts 257
Points 4,920
Prime replied on Sun, Dec 16 2012 1:58 PM

View it through the lens of monopoly vs no monopoly. Which would you say typically produces better results? For example, currently the FDA is the sole monopolists in determining what medications are available, and which ones are not. Would you say the FDA does a good job? If the FDA were a private company, would they still be in business?

So how should we regulate drugs then? I would argue it is better to have mulitiple firms that all assess medications and may or may not come to the same conclusions. The market would then determine which "regulator" stayed in business and which one failed, based on performance, not mandate.

  • | Post Points: 20
Top 150 Contributor
Posts 639
Points 11,575
cab21 replied on Sun, Dec 16 2012 9:25 PM

take a road for example, any one road needs a monopoly, we can't have one company have people drive one the right side of the road, one company have people drive on the left side of the road, and a third company let people drive on any side of the road they want, and one company cannot negotiate with each driver what side of the road is legal to drive on. this kind of thing has to be take it or leave it i think. a company that let's people drive drunk will likely not be as safe as a company that does not, and the one that does not will likely cost more than the one that lets people go without regulation or has some "anything goes untill you crash, we have zero liability" contract. private road safty and conveniance is something i think would cost more than todays public regulation, but it would mean better service.

  • | Post Points: 20
Top 50 Contributor
Posts 2,258
Points 34,610
Anenome replied on Mon, Dec 17 2012 3:27 AM
 
 

cab21:
take a road for example, any one road needs a monopoly, we can't have one company have people drive one the right side of the road, one company have people drive on the left side of the road, and a third company let people drive on any side of the road they want, and one company cannot negotiate with each driver what side of the road is legal to drive on.

When the market has faced these issues, it has voluntarily developed industry-wide standards. Have you any reason to think such standards would not emerge in a free society? The road owners would get together and choose a side of the road and blue-sky it, and users would prefer this as well. This is a fake objection, not well thought out.

cab21:
this kind of thing has to be take it or leave it i think.

Nah.

cab21:
a company that let's people drive drunk will likely not be as safe as a company that does not

They likely wouldn't let ppl do that because most of their other users won't want to take the risk of dying from a head-on or w/e, plus drunks are expensive because even accidents where no one's hurt still have to be cleared and cleaned and the like.

cab21:
and the one that does not will likely cost more than the one that lets people go without regulation or has some "anything goes untill you crash, we have zero liability" contract. private road safty and conveniance is something i think would cost more than todays public regulation, but it would mean better service.

It may not cost more ultimately unless you wanted premium service, but I'm sure it would be better overall service.

People will avoid and route around roads with a reputation for being unsafe. Such roads will lose money. Becoming unprofitable, they will be sold. New management blue-skys its road and voila, the road is good again.

 
Autarchy: rule of the self by the self; the act of self ruling.
  • | Post Points: 20
Top 150 Contributor
Posts 639
Points 11,575
cab21 replied on Mon, Dec 17 2012 1:03 PM

standards emerge, and those standards will be the policy and rules and regulations not up for negotiation.

a football leage can't have 29 teams where facemasking is a penalty and have a new team have separate negotiations as to whether or not facemasking will be a penalty for their team, other 29 teams would not let it slide for a 30th team to play by a different set of rules and regulations. if a agreement will lose all other clients, a business can't take that agreement, and is forced to make it a deal breaker if the other party insists on the agreement. thus certain rules are not negotiable for new clients and it's up to the business owner to decide what will be a dealbreaker and what the owner will sell.

 

  • | Post Points: 20
Top 50 Contributor
Posts 2,258
Points 34,610
Anenome replied on Mon, Dec 17 2012 5:54 PM
 
 

Realize that all human organization has the effect of limiting the choices of its members. That what organization does.

The difference in a free society is that you will be free to setup rival organizations if you think the existing one sucks. This isn't possible in most countries today, which have protected monopoly organizations.

Thus, to apply this theory to our roads example, if a new road network opened up with different rules, either people locked into org 1 would avoid this new road setup by org 2 with different rules, or they would prefer it.

If they prefer it, it will make more money, and thus draw in the owners of roads out of org 1 and into org 2, resulting in widespread change over time.

 

 
Autarchy: rule of the self by the self; the act of self ruling.
  • | Post Points: 20
Top 150 Contributor
Posts 639
Points 11,575
cab21 replied on Mon, Dec 17 2012 8:28 PM

i doubt someone else could build a competative road to many of the roads already out there, but i  they are free to do it. good luck to them to get the land and material access to build it and maintain it. lets say there are no land regulations from a government, i'm not sure how much that would change current infrastructure the the logic of trying to build a new road or bridge system.

building a new road to compete with interstate 5  and usa route 99 would be a big venture

cost of entry  will be a big ishue here, freedom to compete will not make it profitable to compete.

 

  • | Post Points: 20
Top 50 Contributor
Posts 2,258
Points 34,610
Anenome replied on Mon, Dec 17 2012 9:56 PM

I assume a lot in that post. I assume we're talking about a free society for one thing. The new creators of Org 2 could simply buy existing roads and setup their own rules, which would then compete with Org 1 and its rules, and consumers would decide who wins. It's really not that hard, Cab.

Autarchy: rule of the self by the self; the act of self ruling.
  • | Post Points: 20
Top 150 Contributor
Posts 639
Points 11,575
cab21 replied on Tue, Dec 18 2012 12:33 AM

it would be interesting to see how different the rules of the winning road owners would be.

  • | Post Points: 5
Page 1 of 1 (12 items) | RSS