My claim is that we would be better off having regulations that do exactly two things:
- Require some specific disclosures related to whatever we currently prescribe, rather than prescribing the behaviors themselves.
- Have teeth to revoke charters or otherwise blow away any company that fails to meet the disclosures in a timely and truthful manner.
I’ll be writing more about this in the future, but for now I’ll just say that I’d be very happy/curious to hear arguments against my claim or examples that show it’s wrong. Note that I mean that instead of a law saying, “you cannot sell baby cribs made out of gremlins,” it would say, “you have to tell people exactly what your cribs are made out of.”
Obviously, I’m going with the idea, “if people know the cribs are made out of gremlins, they won’t buy them, and the crib maker will start using marshmallows instead.” Does this bear out? More later.