Detroit went from being a world leader in innovation before WW2 to being the center of a metropolis with the most manufacturing output in the world during and after the war. When foreign automobile manufacturers began making substantial gains in market share during the 1970s, then Detroit, The Big Three car makers (and AMC, too), and the unions went protectionist. Though the auto makers have returned to innovation, Detroit has not.

With the corruption of several city administrations since the early 1970s and more recently with criminal charges filed against mayors and officials, Detroit has been mismanaged for decades. Part of the corruption is proven bribes from company people to city government officials, convicted in the courts. The corruption succeeded in placing protectionist laws and ordinances on the books.

In my opinion, the city charter of Detroit should be completely eliminated and a new one formed by public input and debate along with help from outside business and education high achievers. A totally new form of city government should be created. This is the only way for Detroit to have permanent prosperity, in my opinion.

Clinton

This sucks, albeit if you want to have the latest and greatest in burocratic idiocy you really want to try something there.

I was thinking however, you appear to have a rather strange hobby, business plans to test idiotic rules... or perhaps that's a spin off from your actual work?

I'm reading over it, and I fail to see the problem.

You are talking about skilled trades like construction (or deconstruction), machinists, and industrial manufacturing.

Generally the businesses involving the traditional skilled trades require that individuals have experience. This is a good thing.

Usually with small businesses you will see things like "We have 30 years of industry experience", meaning the five people who founded it may have 14 years, 7 years, 4 years, 3 years, and 6 months experience, respectively.

Those key people, the ones with 14 years experience and 7 years experience, are critical to the success or failure of the business. Those are the ones who really know how to do the job. They have the experience to keep things safe. They have the experience to know when things are not quite right, to know what kind of things need to change, and the ability to supervise projects and train the new guys.

In order to get a professional license in those skilled trades you need experience. It is a good thing. Once you are experienced and individually licensed you can start out on your own venture, but until you get the license you are not considered skilled enough to manage and run the projects on your own.

Most of the businesses ideas mentioned require not just professional licensing, but also bonding. That requires further evidence that you can do the job safely without jeopardizing the public.

It is not that they don't want your business. It is that they want skilled tradespeople to do the job, or at least to supervise the work, for everyone's safety.

This is a common them in government, trying to save the citizens/subjects from their own stupidity for their own good. However, regulations are always a bad idea. Free market consumer interaction will always be more efficient and lead to more wealth because it allows greed, the motivation of just about everything great in this world, to do its thing. What do you think would happen if all the regulations were abolished tomorrow. Would we have an epidemic of poorly run and dangerous businesses a few years from now? Of course not, because consumers don't run charities. They want the best value for their money, always. Usually they will want people with experience and a good reputation because their is a smaller risk involved. They also might want to go for the cheapest guy despite him not having a track record (risky). Regardless, they should be able to choose. Government regulations aren't necessary to pick and choose suitable businesses and unsuitable businesses. The consumers can do it much better and without paying paper pushing bureaucrats. Crappy businesses fail and good businesses prosper.

The sad thing is that "protecting the people" isn't even the whole story as people have said above. Reducing competition is a huge factor not only in Detroit but also on a nationwide scale as anyone familiar with the dealings of large corporations and the government will tell you. Disgusting if you ask me

I'm reading over it, and I fail to see the problem.

You are talking about skilled trades like construction (or deconstruction), machinists, and industrial manufacturing.

Generally the businesses involving the traditional skilled trades require that individuals have experience. This is a good thing.

Usually with small businesses you will see things like "We have 30 years of industry experience", meaning the five people who founded it may have 14 years, 7 years, 4 years, 3 years, and 6 months experience, respectively.

Those key people, the ones with 14 years experience and 7 years experience, are critical to the success or failure of the business. Those are the ones who really know how to do the job. They have the experience to keep things safe. They have the experience to know when things are not quite right, to know what kind of things need to change, and the ability to supervise projects and train the new guys.

In order to get a professional license in those skilled trades you need experience. It is a good thing. Once you are experienced and individually licensed you can start out on your own venture, but until you get the license you are not considered skilled enough to manage and run the projects on your own.

Most of the businesses ideas mentioned require not just professional licensing, but also bonding. That requires further evidence that you can do the job safely without jeopardizing the public.

It is not that they don't want your business. It is that they want skilled tradespeople to do the job, or at least to supervise the work, for everyone's safety.

This is a common them in government, trying to save the citizens/subjects from their own stupidity for their own good. However, regulations are always a bad idea.

Even when they succeed in saving the citizens from their own stupidity?

I'm reading over it, and I fail to see the problem.

You are talking about skilled trades like construction (or deconstruction), machinists, and industrial manufacturing.

Generally the businesses involving the traditional skilled trades require that individuals have experience. This is a good thing.

Usually with small businesses you will see things like "We have 30 years of industry experience", meaning the five people who founded it may have 14 years, 7 years, 4 years, 3 years, and 6 months experience, respectively.

Those key people, the ones with 14 years experience and 7 years experience, are critical to the success or failure of the business. Those are the ones who really know how to do the job. They have the experience to keep things safe. They have the experience to know when things are not quite right, to know what kind of things need to change, and the ability to supervise projects and train the new guys.

In order to get a professional license in those skilled trades you need experience. It is a good thing. Once you are experienced and individually licensed you can start out on your own venture, but until you get the license you are not considered skilled enough to manage and run the projects on your own.

Most of the businesses ideas mentioned require not just professional licensing, but also bonding. That requires further evidence that you can do the job safely without jeopardizing the public.

It is not that they don't want your business. It is that they want skilled tradespeople to do the job, or at least to supervise the work, for everyone's safety.

This is a common them in government, trying to save the citizens/subjects from their own stupidity for their own good. However, regulations are always a bad idea. Free market consumer interaction will always be more efficient and lead to more wealth because it allows greed, the motivation of just about everything great in this world, to do its thing. What do you think would happen if all the regulations were abolished tomorrow. Would we have an epidemic of poorly run and dangerous businesses a few years from now? Of course not, because consumers don't run charities. They want the best value for their money, always. Usually they will want people with experience and a good reputation because their is a smaller risk involved. They also might want to go for the cheapest guy despite him not having a track record (risky). Regardless, they should be able to choose. Government regulations aren't necessary to pick and choose suitable businesses and unsuitable businesses. The consumers can do it much better and without paying paper pushing bureaucrats. Crappy businesses fail and good businesses prosper.

The sad thing is that "protecting the people" isn't even the whole story as people have said above. Reducing competition is a huge factor not only in Detroit but also on a nationwide scale as anyone familiar with the dealings of large corporations and the government will tell you. Disgusting if you ask me

You seem to have a very tenuous grasp on how both government regulations and laissez-faire capitalism actually work. "Would we have an epidemic of poorly run and dangerous businesses a few years from now?" Yes, and I will give you a few reasons why.

Imagine that you are someone who controls some scarce, vital resource, like food. Say you run some big agricultural business. You are (according to your own premises) motivated by greed, without any sense of charity. You could try to make your food safer, cheaper, better, etc. in an effort to out-compete other businesses that also produce food. Or you could collude with the (finite number of) other businesses who produce this resource in order to drive the price up, making even more money for you.

Since food production relies on scarce resources, and because people need food to survive, you will always take the latter choice: any time you (or anyone else) feel that you could make more money by offering food at a lower price, the other companies offer a deal whereby the cost of food is increased enough to make you even more money.

Now there's an unregulated monopoly on food (and all other scarce, necessary resources, including fuel, water, etc.). Said monopoly has no incentive, ever, to lower the price of these goods. They have no incentive to make these goods "better," or even particularly safe: as long as it's better to have the monopoly's food than no food at all, the monopoly will be able to increase prices arbitrarily high.

Since this is a completely unregulated society, the people who start out with the most control of these scarce resources are the ones with most of the wealth. Wealth disparity increases to an extreme: at this point, the food-monopoly realizes that it's actually in its interest to increase the price of food so much that most of the world's population cannot eat enough to live, because the richest <50% have most of the wealth which means it's actually more profitable to increase the price of food to a level where those people are paying a large enough share that the majority just dies of starvation.

Maybe this example seems too extreme for you; maybe when you said "regulations are always a bad idea," you didn't really mean always, just sometimes. In that case, here's a slightly more down-to-earth example:

Imagine, again, that you are a producer of food. You could increase your profits if you could make your food cheaper to produce. You discover that by using extremely dangerous pesticides or other chemicals, you get to sell a higher percentage of your crop than your competitors. Your food might be less safe, but you don't know this for sure, and the pesticides might be damaging the water supply, but this does not bother you: government inspectors never come to examine your means of production, and you simply do not reveal what you're doing. In fact, you can just lie, and say that you're not using chemicals at all.

Your competitors could hope that people somehow catch onto what you're doing, but they don't, at least not quickly enough. Your competitors realize that, by the time any detrimental health effects of your food become public knowledge, they will no longer be in business, since your prices are so much lower. To save their business, your competitors realize that they have to start using chemicals, too. Eventually, citizens might discover that the chemicals in their food has devastating long-term effects, but by this time you have made enough money that you have left the food-production business altogether. You live in your mansion while everyone who eats the food you sold them dies of cancer.

The simple fact is that, even the most hardcore, free-market theorists know that regulations are necessary; no one who studies the economy disputes this. There's disagreement as to how much or which regulation is necessary, but any attempt to model an economy that has scarce resources and actors motivated by greed reveals that a completely unregulated market is bad for almost everyone.

I'm reading over it, and I fail to see the problem.

You are talking about skilled trades like construction (or deconstruction), machinists, and industrial manufacturing.

Generally the businesses involving the traditional skilled trades require that individuals have experience. This is a good thing.

Usually with small businesses you will see things like "We have 30 years of industry experience", meaning the five people who founded it may have 14 years, 7 years, 4 years, 3 years, and 6 months experience, respectively.

Those key people, the ones with 14 years experience and 7 years experience, are critical to the success or failure of the business. Those are the ones who really know how to do the job. They have the experience to keep things safe. They have the experience to know when things are not quite right, to know what kind of things need to change, and the ability to supervise projects and train the new guys.

In order to get a professional license in those skilled trades you need experience. It is a good thing. Once you are experienced and individually licensed you can start out on your own venture, but until you get the license you are not considered skilled enough to manage and run the projects on your own.

Most of the businesses ideas mentioned require not just professional licensing, but also bonding. That requires further evidence that you can do the job safely without jeopardizing the public.

It is not that they don't want your business. It is that they want skilled tradespeople to do the job, or at least to supervise the work, for everyone's safety.

This is a common them in government, trying to save the citizens/subjects from their own stupidity for their own good. However, regulations are always a bad idea. Free market consumer interaction will always be more efficient and lead to more wealth because it allows greed, the motivation of just about everything great in this world, to do its thing. What do you think would happen if all the regulations were abolished tomorrow. Would we have an epidemic of poorly run and dangerous businesses a few years from now? Of course not, because consumers don't run charities. They want the best value for their money, always. Usually they will want people with experience and a good reputation because their is a smaller risk involved. They also might want to go for the cheapest guy despite him not having a track record (risky). Regardless, they should be able to choose. Government regulations aren't necessary to pick and choose suitable businesses and unsuitable businesses. The consumers can do it much better and without paying paper pushing bureaucrats. Crappy businesses fail and good businesses prosper.

The sad thing is that "protecting the people" isn't even the whole story as people have said above. Reducing competition is a huge factor not only in Detroit but also on a nationwide scale as anyone familiar with the dealings of large corporations and the government will tell you. Disgusting if you ask me

Maybe this example seems too extreme for you; maybe when you said "regulations are always a bad idea," you didn't really mean always, just sometimes. In that case, here's a slightly more down-to-earth example:

Imagine, again, that you are a producer of food. You could increase your profits if you could make your food cheaper to produce. You discover that by using extremely dangerous pesticides or other chemicals, you get to sell a higher percentage of your crop than your competitors. Your food might be less safe, but you don't know this for sure, and the pesticides might be damaging the water supply, but this does not bother you: government inspectors never come to examine your means of production, and you simply do not reveal what you're doing. In fact, you can just lie, and say that you're not using chemicals at all.

Your competitors could hope that people somehow catch onto what you're doing, but they don't, at least not quickly enough. Your competitors realize that, by the time any detrimental health effects of your food become public knowledge, they will no longer be in business, since your prices are so much lower. To save their business, your competitors realize that they have to start using chemicals, too. Eventually, citizens might discover that the chemicals in their food has devastating long-term effects, but by this time you have made enough money that you have left the food-production business altogether. You live in your mansion while everyone who eats the food you sold them dies of cancer.

The simple fact is that, even the most hardcore, free-market theorists know that regulations are necessary; no one who studies the economy disputes this. There's disagreement as to how much or which regulation is necessary, but any attempt to model an economy that has scarce resources and actors motivated by greed reveals that a completely unregulated market is bad for almost everyone.

I should clarify. When I said "regulations are always a bad idea" I meant government mandated regulations are always a bad idea. As you can see I'm hinting at the fact that quality control is important for consumers, but there is no reason it needs to or should come from the government. Anything provided by the government can be done better by the private market. Food certification boards provided by the free market could impose certain regulations on food producers in order to put a little stamp on their product that consumers trust. Furthermore, because of competition between certification boards and food producers the quality and safety of food would surely increase. Don't you think YOU should be able to choose which products are suitable or not? Or are you the kind of person that believes in the infinite wisdom of elected saviors that will guide us to the promised land? There is nothing special about government apart from the fact that it cannot fail no matter the results it produces.

Once again, on the free market, the incentive to provide quality control (and indeed competition in general) is simply not there when you allow for collusion. Food is a scarce resource: it's great to be able to choose which products are suitable, but this can only happen if consumers a) are informed about what choices they have and b) actually have choices. A monopoly on food has a market incentive not to provide either a) or b).

What's "special" about government is not that it's elected, per se, it's that it does not have a market incentive to allow monopolies on scarce, vital resources. The unregulated free market, alone, cannot provide this.

I already said all of this in my last post: if you want to start some kind of private certification board, that's great, but ultimately, you're better off (economically) just lying about what is being sold, and taking money from the big food monopoly. Again, collusion can always provide a better economic outcome than competition when we're talking about a vital and scarce resource like food, because the price can be increased arbitrarily high.

The only way to avoid this is to have the industry be regulated by someone who is not an active participant in the game. Government does not do this perfectly, but it does it better than no government at all. Again, there's reasonable debate about what the government should regulate and how it should do it, but whether government regulations are necessary at all is not really up for debate.

In American history there have been all kinds of collusion, trusts, and monopolies that were bad for consumers; surely you're not arguing that they were caused by government regulations, so why did they exist in the first place? I claim the answer is that people acting in self-interest who have access to scarce and vital resources have a stronger incentive to collude than they do to self-regulate (in any sense that would benefit consumers), according to roughly every economic theory that doesn't make assumptions that are obviously incorrect.

Nice texts, cowsarenotevil.

Anything provided by the government can be done better by the private market

Hahaha!

No.

Quite everything that should be handled by non profit organisations turned private ends in a clusterfuck for people.

As seen in Germany, railway, electric, water, public transport. People getting f*cked, double f*cked and triple f*cked.

Sorry for the harsh words.

With the business doing things, you fight in court to make change, but with government you vote to make change. In both cases, how you spend your money or boycott is most effective. This is why we all need to be united in taking action against both business and government corruption.

The best case scenario would be for the organization performing the work or service to be owned by its workers, but instead corrupt politicians and CEOs reap the benefits at your expense even if their organization fails. They probably will still get a bonus!

Clinton