Have you ever noticed that Jane Kelsey (sorry, thaat's Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey to you and I) makes everything to which she's opposed sound better than it is?
Joining in her criticism of the Bill is one Melanie Nelson, who is apparently something called a "cross-cultural consultant." Her concern is that the Bill if enacted would be "constitutional straitjacket" on what government can do.
That's all sounding good so far, right?
Constitutional safeguards should be specifically directed at what government can do, because constitutions are the way by which governments are chained up to do only the things government should be doing: which is to protect individual and property rights.
Far be it from me to carp. But that's not what the bill actually does.
The Bill's co-author Bryce Wilkinson instead says it's about "balance." "What's the balance [?] ... That's an open question."
Good quality regulation to economists like myself [says Wilkinson] is one in which the benefits to people who are affected by it exceed the costs to people who are affected by it. So it's regulation which makes people better off.Read that equation again: to be balanced, it's asserted the benefits to people who are affected by a regulation should exceed the costs to people who are affected by that regulation. So to be accurate, and to correct Wilkinson's mathematics, it's regulation which will by design make some people worse off.
Or to put it another way: if the majority will benefit at the expense of a minority, then (by this equation) that minority can go hang.
And the smallest minority is an individual.
It's hard to see from this equation how on earth individual rights can be assured, not when they may be stripped any time a majority might (allegedly) benefit.
Maybe for once Jane Kelsey is right. Maybe the Bill is dangerous. Not because it protects individual and property rights. But because it won't.
UPDATE:
Kelsey also says she's "worried about the goal of having minimal regulation of everything," citing in particular concerns about the environment and the "public interest," and "the legacy of leaky homes, the deaths at Pike River, and the lack of regulation around finance companies or aged care facilities." All things, I've argued before, that are caused by over-regulation that makes it hard (or sometimes even illegal) to do the right thing.More on those arguments below, but let's first let's acknowledge the only coherent meaning of “the public interest”:
[T]here is no such thing as ‘the public interest’ except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all men—all rational men—is freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of 'the public interest'—not what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundation—and cannot exist without them.The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only coherent form of “the public interest.” More here:
- The state can't protect the environment – markets can
- The myth of deregulation, part #123
- HOUSING: "What regulation has ruined, deregulation can repair."
- The myth of deregulation disasters
- Scandalous Regulators
- Corporate welfare is not dead
- LEAKY HOMES, Part 1: The myth of deregulated building
- Leaky logic on leaky homes
- The Market Doesn't Solve Problems; People Do
- The myth of deregulation, part #124
- Pharmaceutical regulations have killed millions
- Risk, Moral Hazard, and the Moochers of South Canterbury Finance
- Don't blame "deregulation," dickhead
- The 'deregulated' building industry...
1 comment:
This is a good example of how economics alone can never underpin a complete and consistent application of free market principles. Then again, even if by it's flawed terminology, it should at least weed out some of the more egregious regulatory excesses if applied consistently. Often there's no benefit for anyone, nor for the environment in a particular piece of regulation (particularly around resource management), but everyone is locked into it because "thems the rules".
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