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Mark P Xu Neyer's avatar

> - sort of convergent evolution of systems

evolution only works when animals fail to reproduce, and get selected against.

the pressure against under-regulation here is obvious: political fallout from a catastrophe that should have been prevented.

but what selective pressure prevents regulatory regimes from over-regulating?

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ChuckInVista's avatar

Who are these "elites" of which you speak? Taking aircraft as an example…do you mean like “experts”? Like veteran pilots and the folks from the NTSB? The ones that dissect crashes and make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to me? I’ll take all of that “elite” I can get, thank you. The only “elites” I see in that industry are the big airlines that love to hire cheap, overwork, and scrimp on maintenance. They are the last to “pressure" anyone to regulate, and actually actively conspire against regulation.

“It seems to me that we instead have a strong world culture of regulators, driven by a stronger world culture of elites. Elites all over the world talk, and then form a consensus, and then authorities everywhere are pressured into following that consensus.” Not so much. What you have is a cycle in which something bad happens and politicians and regulators are pressured into “doing something” so that it “never happens again”. In the case of aircraft, this mostly comes from relatives of families and tort lawyers, who band together out of grief and avarice respectively. I don’t think I would call these folks “elite”.

As for “conformity” don’t you think that regs in most industries will naturally trend toward some kind of best practices - sort of convergent evolution of systems? Many industries are like small town where everyone knows everyone.

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