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I read the whole post. You started off talking about good regulation and bad regulation, then got to some considerations of slippery slope dynamics. Is the former part just irrelevant? I was going by Grice's maxims that it did, in fact, have relevance. It seems like it is relevant to the dynamics of slippery slope dynamics. If it's not relevant, please let me know. I'd especially like to know why you don't actually think it's relevant. Do you think that it actually doesn't matter whether something is a 'good regulation' or a 'bad regulation', and that the only thing that matters is the slippery slope part, where you think that all regulations end up in the bad category? If so, it would have been nice if you said something along these lines. I was just trying to go through your considerations in a systematic fashion.
What I think, which I have now stated numerous times, including in my first response, is that the specifics of any particular regulation and how good it is aren't relevant, what is relevant is the tendency of organizations that are allowed and legitimated in producing such regulation.
However reasonable a given rule is of no consequence if it enables unreasonable rules to be made and if unreasonable rule makers necessarily outcompete reasonable rule makers.
Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that this regulation is a good one. It has no effect on the validity of the argument or on my support or opposition to it on the grounds I have stated. Evaluating it alone with this criteria is therefore pointless.
Ok, so "read the whole post" means "ignore the first two thirds and just read the last third". Got it. Violates Grice's maxims and makes you a bad communication entity, but got it.
Ok, so flesh out those "ifs". In your long post, you spoke about power rising up to take power. In this context, it would sound like what you're worried about is cashing out in terms of regulatory capture/crony capitalism. That powerful corporate interests will rise to impose unreasonable regulations to form barriers to entry. This is a totally plausible thing to happen, and perhaps we could consider some reasoning for when this is likely to happen/not happen, and how damaging it is likely to be in a particular domain. Plausibly, this has something to do with the regulations in question or the regulatory bodies in question, or something. Or is this truly just a long-form way of restating, "Once we've crossed epsilon, the worst conclusion in inevitable."
No. This frame of understanding it is much to narrow and presupposes some distinction between the private and public sector which is fictitious and is only a feature of Liberal social theory and its derivatives.
It's not powerful corporate interests that rise up. It's powerful interests of any kind.
It does not. This phenomenon is a feature of all human organizations.
You asked for a full explanation of my position. I've not changed my mind. I'm just explaining why I believe what I believe. And that does include that this epsilon regulation is teologically undesirable.
Fair enough. California already sealed our fate years ago, and I guess this conversation has nowhere else to go.
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