Regulatory Capture Sauce

Wednesday 9 June 2010 - Filed under Dumbassery + Regulation

An anonymous editorialist in The Wall Street Journal:

In the better economic textbooks, regulatory capture is described as a “government failure,” as opposed to a market failure. It refers to the fact that individuals or companies with the highest interest or stake in a policy outcome will be able to focus their energies on politicians and bureaucracies to get the outcome they prefer.

Perhaps if liberals read more conservative economists, they might understand that this is a common consequence of the regulatory state that they have so diligently constructed over the decades. It is also a main reason that many of us are skeptical of the regulatory solutions routinely offered in response to every accident or business failure.

I’ve never quite understood why libertards instinctively blame corporations rather than the government officials who willingly and happily accept handouts or incentives.  It’s as if government officials are somehow genetically wired to accept lobby cash, and therefore incapable of any culpability by doing so.  It’s essentially the same as the age old, highly misogynistic argument which states that women are to blame for male sexual temptation.  It seems that Demotards actually believe in their deregulated theory of free market failure, rather than regulatory failure in a tampered-with free market.

2010-06-09  »  madlibertarianguy