Yeah, I stumbled over the price-gouging example for similar reasons. After two background examples of inconceivable worlds, the world of that story sounded similarly incoherent to me—I could not write it in 2021.
Mainly, a world where lawmakers frequently ban pricegouging is a world where it’s probably in their interest to do so. So to posit that they ban it because they’re somehow mistaken about the consequences sounds wrong to me.
Rather than the options in the story, in my model they follow Asymmetric Justice, social reality, dysfunctional incentives in bureaucracies, taboo tradeoffs, etc.: voters see an action they don’t like (pricegouging) and respond with outrage, and then lawmakers respond to this outrage by banning the action and getting rewarded by positive press or something. (Whereas if they instead argue against banning the bad action, they’re accused of supporting it.) From the perspective of the lawmakers, it doesn’t matter one bit what happens as a consequence of the ban, because these consequences are in some sense invisible.
For instance, institutions like the FDA provide constant real-life examples of this dynamic, and Zvi’s Covid posts feature multiple such stories every month.
Yeah, I stumbled over the price-gouging example for similar reasons. After two background examples of inconceivable worlds, the world of that story sounded similarly incoherent to me—I could not write it in 2021.
Mainly, a world where lawmakers frequently ban pricegouging is a world where it’s probably in their interest to do so. So to posit that they ban it because they’re somehow mistaken about the consequences sounds wrong to me.
Rather than the options in the story, in my model they follow Asymmetric Justice, social reality, dysfunctional incentives in bureaucracies, taboo tradeoffs, etc.: voters see an action they don’t like (pricegouging) and respond with outrage, and then lawmakers respond to this outrage by banning the action and getting rewarded by positive press or something. (Whereas if they instead argue against banning the bad action, they’re accused of supporting it.) From the perspective of the lawmakers, it doesn’t matter one bit what happens as a consequence of the ban, because these consequences are in some sense invisible.
For instance, institutions like the FDA provide constant real-life examples of this dynamic, and Zvi’s Covid posts feature multiple such stories every month.