Originally Posted by
spacediver
The poor decision being to modify regulations when the landscape changes?
Since I believe that regulations are an important and often necessary tool for the good of society, I don't agree that is necessarily a poor decision to modify regulations.
For example, we have building code regulations for a reason. Suppose that a region's risk of earthquake is suddenly understood to be much higher than previously thought, and that most buildings need to have an expensive upgrade to improve resilience against earthquakes (assume such an upgrade is possible in this thought experiment). Do we rely on the market alone as force to motivate these upgrades? If so, then why have regulations in the first place?
I'm perfectly willing to have my mind changed about the above bolded statement, and am happy to discuss.
I'll even try to steelman the other side:
"yes, in theory regulations might be a good thing. But in practice, governments aren't highly rational actors, and other interests dominate decision making. As a result, regulations are rarely commensurate with the landscape, and tend to accumulate rather than dynamically adapt to new conditions and new information. The harms associated with this outweigh the harms of not having regulations".
Are there any other considerations I should take into account?