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Mini: Regulations Gone Good and Bad · Why We Do What We Do

0:03
Speaker 1: You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to Why We Do What We Do Mini. I am
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Speaker 1: your host, Abraham.
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Speaker 2: And I'm your host, Shane.
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Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
0:24
Speaker 1: that humans and non-human animals do. And sometimes we talk
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Speaker 1: about the policies that they make. to make life better
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Speaker 1: or worse for people in a regulatory space, if you will.
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Speaker 2: Yes.
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Speaker 1: Yes.
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Speaker 2: So we are going to talk about all kinds of things,
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Speaker 2: and you're going to be upset.
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Speaker 2: Or thrilled.
0:44
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0:46
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0:56
Speaker 1: That means it's short. It comes out on Mondays. We
0:59
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1:01
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1:07
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Speaker 1: the end of this discussion, but are you ready to
1:21
Speaker 1: jump in?
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Speaker 2: I am so ready.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's start with the fact that the government, and
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Speaker 1: we're talking about the U.S. government, but I think that
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Speaker 1: this statement applies to governments very broadly speaking in all manner, way, shape,
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Speaker 1: and form. But the governments do a lot of things. Now,
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Speaker 1: some people criticize the government for enforcing regulations and then
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Speaker 1: simultaneously saying, while they are like regulations are bad, then
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Speaker 1: they'll also endorse a tyrannical conservative style of government that
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Speaker 1: allows the government to control who we can marry, what
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Speaker 1: we're allowed to believe, and what we can read. So
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Speaker 1: some very dense hypocrisy going on there. But this episode
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Speaker 1: did feel apropos of the fact that tomorrow is election day.
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Speaker 1: And although at the time of this recording, and definitely
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Speaker 1: by the time This episode publishes we have had record
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Speaker 1: turnouts for early voting in person. There are likely going
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Speaker 1: to be many, many people who choose to vote tomorrow.
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Speaker 1: And although it wasn't actually the intention to schedule a
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Speaker 1: politically themed episode right before the election, it kind of
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Speaker 1: feels like a good timing, like a serendipity that we
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Speaker 1: would have these align in that way. So hopefully this
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Speaker 1: will be somewhat useful tomorrow. to people as they're heading
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Speaker 1: to the polls tomorrow.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. So we want you to think about the things
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Speaker 2: you're voting for, the things you're doing, and all that
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Speaker 2: stuff as we go forward. But we are talking about
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Speaker 2: government and regulations, and sometimes we vote on those regulations.
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Speaker 2: We vote on those policies and things like that. And
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Speaker 2: government regulations can have unintended consequences and can cause new
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Speaker 2: problems in the pursuit of solving other problems. It does
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Speaker 2: happen sometimes. And the things that we vote for sometimes
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Speaker 2: do that too. So we will briefly unpack some examples
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Speaker 2: of regulations that have worked effectively And those that haven't.
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Speaker 1: Yes. So let's go ahead and jump into this. If
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Speaker 1: you were to go back 50 or 60 years in
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Speaker 1: the United States, again, probably many other places around the world,
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Speaker 1: you'd notice there are a lot of things missing that
3:17
Speaker 1: we now take for granted. So, for example, many large
3:21
Speaker 1: cities used to be just blanketed in smog. You would
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Speaker 1: go outside and you would have to wear a mask.
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Speaker 1: It would literally darken the sun in those places. And
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Speaker 1: it was something that even if you look at like
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Speaker 1: movies from this time period that you could see this
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Speaker 1: very clearly show on the screen. This resulted in asthma,
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Speaker 1: hospital visits, and a wide range of other health concerns
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Speaker 1: because of how polluted the air had become in areas
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Speaker 1: with a lot of people. And maybe more importantly, a
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Speaker 1: lot of industry.
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Speaker 2: Yes. So in 1972, the Clean Air Act had built
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Speaker 2: in laws that resulted in reduced airborne pollutants, saving an
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Speaker 2: estimated hundreds of thousands of lives and reducing medical visits
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Speaker 2: and hospital bills. The money spent on this preventative regulation
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Speaker 2: is dwarfed by the amount of money saved downstream as
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Speaker 2: a result of the preventative effects of it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean, when they put in regulations like this,
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Speaker 1: they do have to be paid for and enforced, and
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Speaker 1: they're going to cause some extra costs to occur somewhere.
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Speaker 1: And companies who are concerned with the profits that they
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Speaker 1: might lose or that would be affected by this argued
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Speaker 1: that it would cost taxpayers $ 5 to over $ 7 billion
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Speaker 1: if they followed through with the Clean Air Act. So
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Speaker 1: they're going up with this dire warning that this is
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Speaker 1: going to cost a mountain of money. Taxpayers are going
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Speaker 1: to be frustrated and angry. It's going to be so
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Speaker 1: expensive for them. And they implemented it anyway. And an
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Speaker 1: analysis after implementation of the act found that it cost
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Speaker 1: about $ 1. 1 billion in taxpayer money, but saved them over
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Speaker 1: $ 100 billion in medical costs. So it paid for itself
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Speaker 1: at almost a 10 to 1 ratio in money saved
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Speaker 1: versus money spent.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's a cost-benefit analysis at the end
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Speaker 2: of the day, right? And even then, their initial... cost
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Speaker 2: analysis was was wrong yes by like almost five billion dollars.
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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah so when you buy food from the.
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Speaker 2: Store you can generally assume that the food is safe
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Speaker 2: to eat and water and beverages are safe to drink
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Speaker 2: and they usually tell you that in ads Okay, so
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Speaker 2: obviously that was an ad segue if you didn't know
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Speaker 2: that we did those already. But let's get back into
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Speaker 2: what we're talking about. So when you buy food from
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Speaker 2: a store, you generally assume that the food is safe
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Speaker 2: to eat and the water and beverages are safe to drink.
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Speaker 2: That wasn't always the case. And food manufacturers might add
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Speaker 2: chemicals to food for color, for flavor, for preservation, or
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Speaker 2: even just to bulk it up to make it a
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Speaker 2: little bit beefier.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's something that they would do before there was
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Speaker 1: anything to say that they couldn't do this. They used formaldehyde, borax,
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Speaker 1: salicylic acid, and copper. Milk manufacturers added chalk, plaster, or
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Speaker 1: other toxic dyes, and they would do this to mask
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Speaker 1: the smell or off-color if milk was spoiling. so that
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Speaker 1: they could still sell it. They could present it as
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Speaker 1: this fresh white milk, even though it was starting to spoil,
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Speaker 1: because they would put these things in it to make
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Speaker 1: it appear more white. And they're like, eh, what's the
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Speaker 1: worst that could happen? Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 2: So what? We're drinking chalk. Who cares? Now, the Pure
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Speaker 2: Food and Drug Act of 1906 established a system to
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Speaker 2: monitor and audit food manufacturers for safety and establish practices
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Speaker 2: to ensure that things are made safely and that any
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Speaker 2: disease outbreaks are contained as quickly as possible. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: So a lot of this bipartisan legislature, by the way,
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Speaker 1: essentially made it so that you could reliably buy food
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Speaker 1: and expect that it was safe because there were rules
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Speaker 1: in place that said you can't put formaldehyde in your food.
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Speaker 1: You can't put chalk in your milk to make it
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Speaker 1: look white. That is a rule that is a no-no.
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Speaker 1: You can't do that anymore. Right. Because of that, we
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Speaker 1: now generally just assume that our food is safe to eat,
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Speaker 1: but that wasn't always the case, right?
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: Along a similar vein, we now assume that when we
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Speaker 1: buy vehicles that they have some standards for safety that
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Speaker 1: are built into them. You might even think that the
7:17
Speaker 1: car manufacturers thought of those. And I actually will be
7:20
Speaker 1: fair here. There are many innovations that the car manufacturers
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Speaker 1: developed on their own before they were ever regulations or
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Speaker 1: even in spite of the fact that there weren't regulations
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Speaker 1: for those features. So it is something that has happened. However,
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Speaker 1: safety features such as airbags and the three points safety
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Speaker 1: belts came from regulations. And there was actually a period
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Speaker 1: of time where car manufacturers fought hard against being asked
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Speaker 1: to put seatbelts in cars. And they said even specifically,
7:47
Speaker 1: people don't want to be safe. They want to look
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Speaker 1: cool driving their car. And a lot of people who
7:53
Speaker 1: are like, I want to be safe. please.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Sort of quietly raising their hand. And so once they
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Speaker 1: started putting seatbelts in cars, then those are the cars
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Speaker 1: that people bought. Anyway, with these regulations, the number of
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Speaker 1: deaths from car accidents absolutely plummeted, resulting in estimated nearly
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Speaker 1: 1 million lives saved. And again, be fair, car manufacturers
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Speaker 1: have innovated many safety things that were not required to do. That,
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Speaker 1: to me, feel like they should become requirements at this point.
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Speaker 1: There are a lot of cars now that have that
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Speaker 1: when you turn on a turn signal, that a display
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Speaker 1: of your blind spot shows up on your dash so
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Speaker 1: that you can see any cars that might be in
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Speaker 1: your blind spot.
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Speaker 2: Brilliant.
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Speaker 1: Why doesn't everybody do that? Such a good idea. It
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Speaker 1: would reduce accidents even further than they already have. And
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Speaker 1: they've continued to innovate on these things. But some of
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Speaker 1: these major ones, airbags, seatbelts, that's something that we got
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Speaker 1: from regulation.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, of course, there are sometimes
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Speaker 2: unintended consequences and adverse outcomes that can come from regulations,
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Speaker 2: particularly when they are poorly designed or when they are
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Speaker 2: kneecapped by bad actors in the process of making it
9:01
Speaker 2: to vote.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: So like people will just kind of like undercut it
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Speaker 2: or break it down or remove the essential parts of it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so someone might be like, oh, I won't vote
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Speaker 1: for your bill unless you make these changes to it.
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Speaker 1: Then they make those changes, and now it's just not
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Speaker 1: going to be as effective of a law as it
9:15
Speaker 1: would have otherwise been. But there are also other laws
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Speaker 1: that I think are put into place. They're put into
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Speaker 1: place the way that they're designed, and they just don't
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Speaker 1: work that well because they weren't very well thought through.
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Speaker 1: So let's take, for example, jaywalking. There are these laws
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Speaker 1: against jaywalking, and the idea behind them is to prevent
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Speaker 1: people from crossing in unsafe locations that would result in
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Speaker 1: potential injury, death, possibly large car accidents and pileups. However,
9:37
Speaker 1: critics of this have pointed out that these laws essentially
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Speaker 1: criminalize normal human responses to poorly designed streets and crossings.
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Speaker 1: It uses punishment to solve a problem that needs to
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Speaker 1: be prevented in the first place by having better designed
9:53
Speaker 1: street systems so that it's like people who need to
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Speaker 1: cross the street design it so that they can get
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Speaker 1: across the street at places where it makes sense for
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Speaker 1: them to cross the street and in a way that
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Speaker 1: is safe for them to do so make sure that
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Speaker 1: traffic is clear on what's happening so Better design would
10:08
Speaker 1: make it so that we wouldn't need jaywalking laws because
10:10
Speaker 1: people would just cross at safe places anyway. And again,
10:13
Speaker 1: that actually saves more money to design it better than
10:17
Speaker 1: it does to go through and try and spend a
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Speaker 1: bunch of time and effort enforcing these laws that criminalize
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Speaker 1: people doing like very, very, very minor things that are
10:28
Speaker 1: very normal for them to do because they just weren't
10:31
Speaker 1: given an appropriate alternative. Right.
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Speaker 2: Right. Now, another example is occupancy standards in rental housing.
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Speaker 2: So the intention was to promote health and safety by
10:39
Speaker 2: preventing overcrowding. However, the laws don't take into consideration different
10:42
Speaker 2: sizes of housing units, and that is some might afford
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Speaker 2: enough space for a large number of occupants, but would
10:47
Speaker 2: be penalized the same as a small space that can
10:50
Speaker 2: barely fit everyone.
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Speaker 1: In addition, there are some families and cultures that commonly
10:54
Speaker 1: have a lot of people in a family living together.
10:57
Speaker 1: And so this sometimes specifically targets and penalizes cultures who
11:02
Speaker 1: have that as a practice and as a value. And
11:04
Speaker 1: in addition to that, enforcement tends to depend on people
11:08
Speaker 1: complaining and snitching on each other. which means there's this
11:11
Speaker 1: incentive for spying and ratting each other out, and it
11:14
Speaker 1: creates a window of opportunity for racial prejudice for people
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Speaker 1: to specifically complain about certain races that they might be
11:21
Speaker 1: prejudiced against who are living in a way that is
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Speaker 1: like this, even though there might be someone who's of
11:27
Speaker 1: a different race that they aren't bothered by who's doing
11:29
Speaker 1: the exact same thing and just not getting caught for it.
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Speaker 2: Right. So in many states, these laws have been repealed
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Speaker 2: because they have resulted in so many issues and made
11:37
Speaker 2: housing more expensive unnecessarily.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, like it shoots the rent through the roof because
11:43
Speaker 1: like more people are forced to buy more units and
11:46
Speaker 1: therefore there's less demand or there's more demand but less
11:50
Speaker 1: supply versus people who choose to split the rent of
11:53
Speaker 1: a place together because they can have a lot of
11:55
Speaker 1: working people contributing to that rent. then that means that
11:58
Speaker 1: the people have to be a little more savvy about
12:00
Speaker 1: what they're charging. So yeah, these laws have had those
12:03
Speaker 1: unintended consequences. And honestly, there are hundreds more examples when
12:06
Speaker 1: things have worked and many when they haven't. But a
12:10
Speaker 1: general theme I sort of noticed emerging here as I
12:13
Speaker 1: was looking through some of these is that Regulations targeted
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Speaker 1: toward industry and companies tend to result in benefits to
12:22
Speaker 1: citizens and consumers, whereas regulating individual behaviors for things, particularly
12:28
Speaker 1: when they're like things that people are doing for a
12:31
Speaker 1: reason and like are really not hurting anyone explicitly. they
12:35
Speaker 1: tend to create crime out of nothing and incentivize worse behaviors. Right.
12:39
Speaker 1: You know, that's sort of a theme I noticed here
12:42
Speaker 1: is like when it goes after the individual, a lot
12:45
Speaker 1: of these laws, particularly when they're like, they're not violent
12:48
Speaker 1: crimes and they're like, It's sort of like someone doing
12:52
Speaker 1: something you don't want them to do, but again, it's
12:53
Speaker 1: because the system is poorly designed. Right. Those laws tend
12:56
Speaker 1: to not work very well and they tend to backfire
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Speaker 1: versus the ones where it's like people are polluting and
13:02
Speaker 1: destroying the environment and destroying our water resources and like
13:05
Speaker 1: taking up valuable land and destroying the habitats of native
13:09
Speaker 1: creatures and plants. Like reigning in that problem seems to
13:13
Speaker 1: have only helped.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: But going after individuals seems like where the problem exists. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and has ultimately resulted in fines that people can't
13:21
Speaker 2: afford or jail time that we don't have space for
13:24
Speaker 2: or any of those things that are just very unnecessary outcomes.
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Speaker 1: And very expensive. And yeah, and then it ruins people's
13:30
Speaker 1: lives and it's just pointless. And then they're trapped in
13:32
Speaker 1: a system they can't escape and- Like then they're blamed
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Speaker 1: for that when they were doing things that were perfectly
13:38
Speaker 1: reasonable for them to do. They just happened to get caught. Yeah. Anyway,
13:41
Speaker 1: if you'd like to tell us more laws that we missed,
13:43
Speaker 1: you should email us at info at WWD, WWD podcast.com
13:47
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Speaker 1: to hear from you. Take feedback is good. Then also
13:55
Speaker 1: heaping amounts of praise. Also good. Yes. And we're still
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Speaker 1: looking for people to send us some messages about favorite
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Speaker 1: things they liked about the podcast that we can include
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Speaker 1: in our sort of final wrap up. So if you
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Speaker 1: email or message us on social media. Yes. Happy to
14:09
Speaker 1: receive them that way as well. I think that's all
14:12
Speaker 1: we have to say about this topic. Is there anything
14:13
Speaker 1: you'd like to add or that I forgot before we
14:15
Speaker 1: wrap up?
14:16
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so.
14:17
Speaker 1: Perfect.
14:18
Speaker 2: All right.
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14:46
Speaker 1: But I think that's what we have to say about
14:47
Speaker 1: this for now. Is there anything you'd like to add
14:49
Speaker 1: before we say our goodbyes?
14:51
Speaker 2: I got nothing else right now.
14:51
Speaker 1: All right. This is Abraham.
14:53
Speaker 2: This is Shane.
14:54
Speaker 1: Why We Do What We Do Mini is out.
14:56
Speaker 2: Bye. You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
15:00
Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
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Speaker 2: going to www.wwdpodcast.com.
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
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