Regulation

Most liberals seem to think we have too little. Most conservatives seem to think we have too much. Who’s right? 

Both.

Actually, it isn’t regulation per se that conservatives should fear. A free market is not an unregulated market; indeed, it’s impossible to have a free market without regulations. I’ve long thought the important distinction is between regulation creating a level playing field and regulation that tries to create “fair” outcomes.

Anyway, Manzi suggests that

Most obviously, government ownership of industrial assets is almost a guarantee that the painful decisions required for international competitiveness will not be made. When it comes to the auto industry, for instance, we need to take the loss and move on. As soon as possible, the government should announce a structured program to sell off the equity it holds in GM.

and

Our reforms should establish “tiers” of financial activities of increasing risk, volatility, and complexity that are open to any investor — and somewhere within this ­framework, almost any non-coercive transaction should be legally ­permitted. The tiers should then be compartmentalized, however, so that a bust in a higher-risk tier doesn’t propagate to lower-risk tiers. And while the government should provide guarantees such as deposit insurance in the low-risk tiers, it should unsparingly permit failure in the higher-risk tiers.

and

It would be foolish to imagine that we can simply educate everyone in America to be globally competitive. In a nation where about 40% of births occur outside of wedlock, many children will be left behind. Nonetheless, schools remain one of our primary policy instruments for enhancing both social mobility and our competitive position. They are essential to the task of balancing innovation and cohesion. To function effectively, though, America’s schools need to be improved ­dramatically. Our basic model of public schooling — ­accepting raw material in the form of five-year-olds, and then adding value through a series of processing steps to produce educated graduates 12 (or more) years later — reflects the vision of the old industrial economy. This worked well in an earlier era, but improvements that might have kept this model up to date have been stalled for decades. We now need a new vision for schools that looks a lot more like Silicon Valley than Detroit: ­decentralized, ­entrepreneurial, and flexible.

But vouchers, Manzi  maintains, are a useless gimmick. Finally

Fourth, we should reconceptualize immigration as recruiting. Assimilating immigrants is a demonstrated core capability of America’s political economy — and it is one we should take advantage of.

It’s not whether we have immigration, but of whom. None of this tired, poor, huddled masses business. I’m not sure that was ever a really accurate description of the bulk of our immigrants.

I don’t know that I fully agree with Manzi, but at least he’s given me food for thought.