From: koumis@husc4.harvard.edu (Anthony Koumis)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Regulations
Date: 13 Apr 92 03:02:45 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

In article <1992Apr12.175907.14179@athena.mit.edu> solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky) writes:
>In article <1992Apr12.112658.10988@husc3.harvard.edu>, koumis@husc4.harvard.edu (Anthony Koumis) writes:
>|> No has perfect information and without some neutral (but not alwys since
>|> gov't is too influenced by big business) standards no one could judge
>|> what they were buying.
>
>Once again, the cost of being free is avoiding ignorance.
>
>Compare and contrast these two scenarios:
>
>1) The government has agencies that regulate things. It spends [begin Carl Sagan
>mode] billions and billions of dollars on these organizations every year.
>Everything must comply with certain minimum levels of quality. This causes a
>deadweight loss and will at any given time be responsible for 2-3% of the
>unemployment weight due to a similar loss in the labor market.
>
>2) Since many people don't want to have to worry about eating things which are
>poisoned, and buying automobiles which are safe, they subscribe to an infromation
>company, and for a couple of hundred dollars a year this company tells them which
>restaurants and cars are safe, ect. This could be run by a company for profit. It
>is likely, however, that because some people fear the power of companies, that
>many such information agencies would be run as cooperatives, where everybody puts
>in the same amount of money, and has the same say in how the cooperative is run.
>It is extremely likely (due to the profit involved) that larger corporate
>information agencies would be willing to sell information to these cooperatives.
>Consequently, it would only take a few hundred people to make one of them work.
>
>The key advantages of the second way are:
>
>1) You don't HAVE to get these services. You could take care of everything on
>your own. and...
>
>2) In the latter option, the cooperatives, and agencies are run by people
>interested in saving money, so it costs much less than the equivalent government
>agencies take in tax dollars.
>
>Jason W. Solinsky



I am replying to JWS reply to me.

This idea is just replacing the gov't regulations with lots and lots
of private companies.  SO instead of gov't regulations you have private
ones.  However, most large companies would rather have one set of
safety regulations to meet b/c that is easier to rely on  (and influence)
so  I am sure they could get in and make a monopoly (like the credit bureaus
have pretty much today in terms of investigation).

This idea ends of with everyone replicating each other efforts and
no one overseer for the standards and nothing necessarily to rely
on by the companies.  It is more inefficient than the govt and there
is not increase in freedom.  Companies would try to meet some
standards and then influence them to their liking (even more so
probably than now in terms of the gov't) and the consumer would
be worse off and no more free.

Instead of so-called coercion by the govt it would be coercion by
private industry which is not accoutable to the people (like the
govt should be) but to the bottom-line.

Koumis's wife  (as all the postings under his name have been as I 
have said before)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections