Race to the bottom
One of the more historically illiterate notions that many academics and commentators are fond of is the race to the bottom. The notion that if you have competitive jurisdictions, governments will be driven to have weaker and weaker standards in a "race to the bottom".
It is one of those intuitively "obvious" notions that is much invoked. Pity, because there is almost no evidence for it whatsoever.
Indeed, the historical evidence is overwhelmingly the other way: that competitive jurisdictions encourage better public policy performance. Which, if one stops and thinks about it, is hardly surprising. Competitive jurisdictions means much greater capacity to learn what works and what doesn't. Much greater capacity for new ideas to be tried. Much greater pressure on regulators to perform.
The notion that competitive jurisdictions = race to the bottom is based on extraordinarily dubious presumptions. That the best set of rules is already known. That new arrangements do not need to be trialled. That the effects of rules is always clear. That rules only have an upside, so tighter is always better. That the performance of regulators is improved by not having any competitive check. That monopoly jurisdiction (or a jurisdictional cartel) is a better arrangement.
A set of extremely dubious ideas with not only little empirical evidence to support, but a great deal of empirical evidence against. But a set of ideas that likely to appeal to the but we just know brigade. Particularly ones who regard commerce as inherently amoral, vulgar and corrupting and therefore requiring tight control (if it can't actually be abolished).
But it is a persistent pattern in history that possessors of intellectual capital not themselves involved in commerce typically regard commerce as amoral, vulgar and corrupting and are very prone to but we just know mindsets. Modern progressivist politics is just the most recent exemplar and is, unsurprisingly, very strong in academe.
It is one of those intuitively "obvious" notions that is much invoked. Pity, because there is almost no evidence for it whatsoever.
Indeed, the historical evidence is overwhelmingly the other way: that competitive jurisdictions encourage better public policy performance. Which, if one stops and thinks about it, is hardly surprising. Competitive jurisdictions means much greater capacity to learn what works and what doesn't. Much greater capacity for new ideas to be tried. Much greater pressure on regulators to perform.
The notion that competitive jurisdictions = race to the bottom is based on extraordinarily dubious presumptions. That the best set of rules is already known. That new arrangements do not need to be trialled. That the effects of rules is always clear. That rules only have an upside, so tighter is always better. That the performance of regulators is improved by not having any competitive check. That monopoly jurisdiction (or a jurisdictional cartel) is a better arrangement.
A set of extremely dubious ideas with not only little empirical evidence to support, but a great deal of empirical evidence against. But a set of ideas that likely to appeal to the but we just know brigade. Particularly ones who regard commerce as inherently amoral, vulgar and corrupting and therefore requiring tight control (if it can't actually be abolished).
But it is a persistent pattern in history that possessors of intellectual capital not themselves involved in commerce typically regard commerce as amoral, vulgar and corrupting and are very prone to but we just know mindsets. Modern progressivist politics is just the most recent exemplar and is, unsurprisingly, very strong in academe.