Comments on: The Coming Regulatory Revolution

By: A.J. Sutter

A.J. Sutter — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:59:48 +0000

A view from abroad: much as I cringe at the way “neoliberal” is flung indiscriminately as an epithet the way “fascist” used to be 30 or 40 years ago, I can’t help thinking that it’s sometimes pertinent. Stories like this make it seem as if US policymakers are truly getting sucked into some sort of ideological vortex.

A benefit of moving overseas is that alternative points of view, e.g. from Europe, aren’t so easily obscured out as they are when living in the US. But rather than wholesale emigration, more comparativism among US policymakers — and among the scholars who aspire to be them or to influence them — might help to put America country onto a better track. Japan is hardly a country where regulatory transparency is a norm, and its current government more like a kangaroo baby than mere lap dog of the US, but even here people consult a wider range of models for reform.

By: Mark Seecof

Mark Seecof — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:33:04 +0000

Prof. Cunningham,

I seem to have misunderstood the tone of your remarks and I regret that. I am pleased, in fact, to find that I got it wrong, because I have been happy to learn from your remarks on other topics.

Now I suppose that you may have intended to faintly mock the “revolutionary” quality of some of the delegated-regulation proposals. I think the passage (beginning with “Critics of”) which I quoted partly before suggested that you really were an uncritical advocate for those ideas, however– so you may wish to write a little less subtly in future to help us poor slobs in the hinterland receive your message clearly.

For what it’s worth, I think much more highly of deregulatory proposals than proposals merely to shift regulatory power to less accountable organs.

By: Lawrence Cunningham

Lawrence Cunningham — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:33:45 +0000

Mark Seecof’s substantive jottings are good notes to Treasury and blueprint’s authors and devotees; the tenor and use of words “you” and “your” suggest that my post’s stylistic spirit may have been too subtle.

Thanks to Elizabeth Brown for the conference reference.

By: Elizabeth Brown

Elizabeth Brown — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:18:23 +0000

AEI held a conference yesterday on “The Future of Insurance Regulation” in which participants discussed not only the costs and benefits of creating an Optional Federal Charter for insurance but the Treasury Blueprint. The papers from that conference are available here: http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1719,filter.all,type.upcoming/event_detail.asp

By: Mark Seecof

Mark Seecof — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:10:46 +0000

Perhaps you will recall something of the history of the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration?

We’ve tried your “delegate regulation to industry groups” scheme before. As you might expect, that just authorizes an orgy of anticompetitive, rent-seeking regulation by industry players eager to exclude new entrants, raise and fix prices, u.s.w..

Before you burble gleefully over “a revolutionary new approach that is simple, uses principles, makes compliance optional, and has built-in competitive edges” you might want to spend five minutes thinking back to your high-school history lessons or make a cursory web search…

(Oh, yeah. There’s never gonna be such a thing as “compliance optional” regulation.

(Also, it’s no reply that “industries will capture government regulators anyway.” They certainly will, but not as swiftly or completely as they will corrupt “delegated” powers.)