So, whadda ya want? More equality or more regulation?

It’s a fairly standard assumption these days that more equality, less inequality, is better. We’re not sure we share that idea but there we go. We’re also insistent that inequality is very much lower than it is regularly measured as. But again, there we go.

It is also a fairly regular assumption these days that everything must be regulated. We can’t just leave things be, there must be rules over who can do what about which and to whom.

There’s a certain tension between these two:

In the last several decades, despite widespread concerns about rising income inequality and increasing federal regulations in the United States, only a small group of researchers have tried exploring and understanding this relationship to date. Relevant empirical studies, overall, find regulations to exacerbate income distribution, thereby increasing income inequality within an economy. Recently, a similar association has been reported for the U.S. However, the existing analysis lacks evidence of a causal effect. Here, I unravel the causal impact of federal regulation of industries on income inequality across the U.S. states for the time span 1990–2013.

The reasoning should be obvious enough. As with large companies positively lusting after their own industries being more highly regulated in order to defeat any market insurgencies. Regulation keeps those in privilege in privilege. The more normal turnover of economic position that results from changing technologies and entrepreneurial adventure becomes constrained by the regulation which, umm, constrains the both of them.

Which leads to an interesting question. Which do you want? That regulatory state or a more equal one? Because you cannot have both.

This is, of course, delightful for our side of the argument. Kill the regulatory state as we wish anyway and gain also what everyone says they want, more equality. But it is also a bit of a killer for the way we’re actually governed, which is that all say they desire that less inequality while still passing regulations by the library-load.

But it does all lead to the possibility of a plan. We can increase equality in Britain by burning half the legislation and firing half of the bureaucrats. Some would say that this faces a problem, which half of each? But here’s what’s really bad about the current position - we don’t think it matters which half of either, things will still improve.