Adumbration

David Brooks "Temerity at the Top" column in the NYT motivated this rant.  In it, Brooks makes some excellent points about how the character traits that drive economic innovation are not necessarily the touchy-feely ones, as illustrated for the case of Elon Musk.

The reason capitalism has a bad rap in many circles is that people who achieve economic power and influence so often use it to twist the regulatory process in their favor.
 
I do not believe that most of the economically successful people fit in this category.  However, the people who end up influencing regulatory policy are almost exclusively also economically successful.  Those are the people who have the time and resources required to go to DC and sit with the regulators and get their preferences and arguments heard – they are the ones with the most to gain (and lose, for that matter) from the outcome of the regulations.  And their payoff is huge, considering the investment of time and energy.
 
Meanwhile the rest of us are facing economic losses of much smaller magnitude, losses directly related to the regulatory outcomes that restrict competition, or enable subsidies, or retard technological development by favoring certain technologies.  But those losses, small on an individual basis, swamp the scales when taken for the overall population.
 
What is most irritating about this situation is that the whole process is sold to the public as being for their own good, for safety, for consumer protection, or to preclude an economic meltdown.
 
Far preferable, and leading to far better outcomes, would be to hold people accountable (liability), protect their property (trespass and damage), and uphold contracts (fraud).  In short, we don’t need “government policies that boost them along”.