> what happens when markets are constrained by laws/bureaucracy and the best and brightest seek more permissive places to set up their businesses and simply up and leave.
To a place where they are free to process spodumene, extract lithium, and just leave megatonnes of acid and radioactive by products pooling in unregulated dams that burst and pollute downstream?
Zero regulation is just a little bit too much Silent Spring surely?
It's clear you didn't absorb ideas from Atlas Shrugged unthinkingly, which is exactly my point: it made you think about the extremes (i.e. heavy regulation; no regulation).
The key idea isn't that all regulation is bad, but that there is some cost to regulation. Hyperbole is used to exaggerate the cost so it's clear and a more fun read.
I was stunned by how little an economics degree touched on the costs of regulation beyond the deadweight loss of taxation. The degree didn't go into depth on the negative human impacts of regulation (i.e. on both entrepreneurs and consumers). That is, if regulations get too burdensome, entrepreneurs will find it too onerous to create and run businesses, and will either leave the economy or find other hobbies, which, in some cases (e.g. inventions, industries where the second best producer is lightyears behind the best) will come at significant (and often silent) cost to society.
The fact Atlas Shrugged got me thinking about this at all was a win, considering an entire economics degree kinda failed to do so! (beyond deadweight loss)
I read it when I was 14 or so and thought of it as a very silly book.
Meanwhile, in the real world, I was surrounded by primary industry, mining, cattle stations, etc. and it was pretty clear what happened without some form of both regulation and proportionate repurcussions.
When I did arrive at high school economics it was a stain on my otherwise unblemished acedemic record as I stubbornly told an Econ. Honors graduate with a teaching degree that almost all the assumptions being taught in high school economics (perfect knowledge, rational actors, etc) had no place in real world models .. with the result that I got sent to the Principals office and was caned.
Still gives me a chuckle to this day, it didn't particularly hurt my undergrad | postgrad work in STEM as basic economic assumptions don't have many fans and it apparantly falls under acceptable rebel with a cause .. :)
I'm no fan of overly complex regulation that has strayed from some simply stated core raison d'être, but I hold that even Adam Smiths "Free Market" had rules and that stock exchanges must have transparent disclosure and penalties for false infomation, etc.
To a place where they are free to process spodumene, extract lithium, and just leave megatonnes of acid and radioactive by products pooling in unregulated dams that burst and pollute downstream?
Zero regulation is just a little bit too much Silent Spring surely?