That is a straw man. The purpose was to show just how deep the rabbithole goes.
Successfully banning emergent phenomena is generally much harder than someone colluding.
Now asking to prove they “can’t” be regulated is a loaded question. You CAN engage in all kinds of foolish and futile things (witness the war on drugs, for instance, or Prohibition in USA). You can show people you’re “doing something” but in reality nothing much ever changes, after an initial improvement.
Because you can’t win that war against human nature.
Here, tell me how you can make sure banks lend to the people who need the money first, before the people who have better credit.
Tell me how we through regulations can stop investors colluding and investing in the same startups and piling on to the same stocks.
Did you even read my own article? I spoke about GameStop and AMC, and many examples besides that.
No, you very specifically claimed "Their actual mathematical conclusions are what matters" and derided the non-mathematical conclusions in your own link as "platitudes". What are those mathematical conclusions with regards to regulation of naturally arising cartel-like behavior?
Yes the valuable part is what someone mathematically proves. We can use that and cite it in support of a statement. Just because someone says “and therefore, we aren’t sure what can be successfully done about it” doesnt prove what you think it proves, in fact it doesnt prove anything at all. Asking a question is not a proof!
I never claimed they mathematically concluded that cartel-like things that arise naturally can't be regulated.
That’s what makes it a strawman. Nevertheless I already addressed your strawman above and you ignored all of it!
If you mean “promulgate a prohibition about them” then sure. You can ban them.
If you mean “successfully ban them”, ie “eliminate them to nearly zero occurrences” as I meant it, then no, you can’t.
Show me an example where naturally emergent GROUP phenomena that were constantly emerging from widely distributed natural behavior, were successfully banned.
The only way it has ever been reduced is by introducing alternatives that were just as good. Such as making the Impossible Burger widely available rather than banning meat. Or making electric cars instead of banning fossil fuel usage in vehicles.
> Show me an example where naturally emergent GROUP phenomena that were constantly emerging from widely distributed natural behavior, were successfully banned.
Sure, if we're ditching mathematical certainty now. The American auto market, where the emergent group phenomenon of making unsafe cars (and millions of consumers purchasing them) despite things like seatbelts being available was addressed very successfully via regulation requiring those safety features.
Or smoking cigarettes, which was largely eradicated in public without even needing an outright ban.
The cigarettes doesn’t qualify because it was an individual activity, not an “emergent phenomenon” in the way cartels form. You can intimidate each individual into not doing something publicly (but privately they will continue), especially if it’s not something natural (unless you argue smoking tobacco is part of human nature) but thet is not the GROUP phenomenon is what we were discussing.
Now, the idea of creating unsafe cars is maybe closer, since one could argue “cutting corners” is an emergent GROUP phenomenon. So maybe you’re saying government can ban “cutting corners” as a phenomenon across the industry. And not, say, what the pinto did.
I would say that, over time, an industry such as aviation etc. painstakingly builds up improvements, such that there is enough technology that not cutting corners is just as cheap or cheaper than cutting them. For example, square windows led to a plane blowing up so they made them rounded. Eventually things just made it into standards so it’s a lot harder to actually get unsafe windows etc.
You mentioned seatbelts “being available”. That’s the point, it’s just one technology. Anti-lock brakes is another. Industries do this gradually without government “banning unsafe windows.”
For example, the government “banned monopolies” and broke up Ma Bell. Into a bunch of large pieces. But for decades they couldn’t get the cost of long distance calls to get low. If they instituted “price controls” that would be the attempt you’re talking about of eradicating the “emergent cartels” among the phone companies.
But as technology improved, and Voice Over IP used packet switching, costs quickly dropped to zero. What the catalyst really was, was that peer-to-peer file sharing networks initially designed to GET AROUND THE LAW (copyright law) in the form of Kazaa etc. made the government start fighting THAT emergent phenomenon, and the Kazaa developers turned to other uses and founded Skype.
It is that tech that now led to dropping of costs overnight to zero and the explosion of audio and video innovation, webrtc etc.
And now the governments can try to “ban end to end encryption” including in webrtc. And according to you they will be successful.
Maybe they can just mandate that everything cost nearly $0, but mandates and bans are not what made it happen. It was a slow process of technology improving, usually DESPITE government.
Successfully banning emergent phenomena is generally much harder than someone colluding.
Now asking to prove they “can’t” be regulated is a loaded question. You CAN engage in all kinds of foolish and futile things (witness the war on drugs, for instance, or Prohibition in USA). You can show people you’re “doing something” but in reality nothing much ever changes, after an initial improvement.
Because you can’t win that war against human nature.
Here, tell me how you can make sure banks lend to the people who need the money first, before the people who have better credit.
Tell me how we through regulations can stop investors colluding and investing in the same startups and piling on to the same stocks.
Did you even read my own article? I spoke about GameStop and AMC, and many examples besides that.