Some of these things are not like the others. I for one do not want to live in a world without occupational licensing, ISO standards, or a Bar Association. As is often said, ‘regulations are written in blood,’ and organizations such as these were created to pull order out of chaos, to separate con artists from the legitimate.
And presenting the electrical grid in this list as if it were something bad? Makes no sense. Its existence, pieced together over decades of painstaking work, is what allows the modern world. We’ve only recently—as in the past few years—even been able to contemplate moving away from a full grid as a model to deliver power, much less implement something else. Civilization would quite literally collapse overnight without it. And ‘duplicate infrastructure?’ Much of the modern grid’s frailty is due to not enough duplicate infrastructure. Nothing made by mankind lasts forever. Engineering resilience by definition requires some duplicate infrastructure. There’s no way around that.
Gatekeeping and regulated monopolies aren’t ALWAYS bad. They can absolutely serve a purpose for the greater good, with enough oversight.
By ‘well regulated monopolies’ I’m specifically thinking of the pattern common in the U.S. to run power and water as municipal monopolies. We’ve seen firsthand what happens when you deregulate power.
Enron’s ghouls strip-mined California wealth in record time, and the state quickly rolled back the deregulation when the company destabilized their entire power grid.
Some of these things are not like the others. I for one do not want to live in a world without occupational licensing, ISO standards, or a Bar Association. As is often said, ‘regulations are written in blood,’ and organizations such as these were created to pull order out of chaos, to separate con artists from the legitimate.
And presenting the electrical grid in this list as if it were something bad? Makes no sense. Its existence, pieced together over decades of painstaking work, is what allows the modern world. We’ve only recently—as in the past few years—even been able to contemplate moving away from a full grid as a model to deliver power, much less implement something else. Civilization would quite literally collapse overnight without it. And ‘duplicate infrastructure?’ Much of the modern grid’s frailty is due to not enough duplicate infrastructure. Nothing made by mankind lasts forever. Engineering resilience by definition requires some duplicate infrastructure. There’s no way around that.
Gatekeeping and regulated monopolies aren’t ALWAYS bad. They can absolutely serve a purpose for the greater good, with enough oversight.
It’s a list of what institutional capture is, it’s not about it being good or bad. It’s a pattern. It can be used for both.
At the risk of arguing on the internet, the examples I listed are not what institutional capture even is.
By ‘well regulated monopolies’ I’m specifically thinking of the pattern common in the U.S. to run power and water as municipal monopolies. We’ve seen firsthand what happens when you deregulate power.
Enron’s ghouls strip-mined California wealth in record time, and the state quickly rolled back the deregulation when the company destabilized their entire power grid.