“Someone ought to do something about that!”*

When there is a big story in the news about corruption or systemic abuse, you will undoubtedly hear the refrain above from friends, family, coworkers, and overly-opinionated strangers.

The refrain has a devious meaning however.

When they say “someone”, who they’re talking about is “Government”; and when they say “do something about” they actually mean “regulate”.

”Government ought to regulate that!”

On the face of it, that doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea

Obviously, we as a society don’t want corrupt people abusing others and the system behind closed doors. And Government is supposed to be “for the people.” So naturally, if people are doing bad things in secret, send in the regulators and make sure everything is on the up-and-up!

The problem is that Government itself is corrupt and abusive. So you can’t trust the results of government regulation to be any better than the results before the regulation -- in fact, in many cases, things end up worse, because when the Government assumes power to regulate things, those with money will pay off Government agents in their favor, which creates monopoly and systemic national abuse.

The other option

We can’t trust the abusers, and we can’t trust the watchmen, so…

Who watches the watchmen?

Well, the obvious answer is: everyone

Transparency > Regulation

This is a PandaCam:

Besides being fun to watch, the PandaCam presents an interesting security feature. Anyone can check in at any time and have some sort of proof of the well-being of these pandas. There is less need for regulation because there is transparency.

Central Bank Regulation vs Bitcoin

This example should be obvious to most of you.

When it comes to central private banks, their books are not made available to the public at any time. We have no idea about the transactions they are processing, the loans they are giving, the money they are creating out of thin air, or if their practices are leading to a Government bailout scenario.

But with Bitcoin, the blockchain ledger is available to all at any time. We can personally verify every transaction, we can trust that money is not being double-spent or that funds are counterfeit, and even if there was a desire to “bail out” Bitcoin, it wouldn’t be possible because there is no central point to bail out to.

Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, are transparent. That’s better than regulation.

The meat industry example

I hate a lot about the meat industry.

I hate most of it, actually.

Sure, it makes products that people want to consume. But those product comes from bodies of other living creatures, so there’s a moral element there.

This industry is sick with animal abuse. I’m sure you’ve seen the videos. Every so often an animal rights activist group will break into a processing warehouse and secretly record how animals are being treated, how deplorable their environments are, and how sand their existence is.

Whenever a big one of these things comes out, there’s a big public stink about regulation. “They must be watched and MADE to do the right thing!” people say. And invariably the Government steps in and erects some regulations that do little-to-nothing to solve the problem.

Well, what if, instead of inviting in the force of the State to creep its foot ever more deeply into our private lives and liberties, we just demanded as market consumers that these facilities installed 24 hour live streaming cameras that anyone could log onto at any time?

If a facility doesn’t have these cameras, then they don’t get customers -- thank you very much, but we don’t trust you unless you volontere access to within your walls to anyone at any time via live-streaming video.

Just imagine how this could work

What if we, the consuming public, demanded transparency of our industry providers and manufacturers?

Regulation, even when uncorrupted, is terribly inefficient. Remember that scene from Ratatouille where the sous chef calls the dead-eyed health inspector, who is buried in a pile of paperwork, and informs the caller that he’ll get around to it when he can? That’s actually pretty true to form.

This regulation concept is just impractical when we have technologies and market forces that would make the need for them obsolete because transparency is so much cheaper, easier, more honest, and accessible.

What do you think?

Am I onto something here?

What are your thoughts on regulation vs transparency? Tell me in a comment below.

Follow me @shayne