Today I thought I would share a few short, snappy videos to encourage discussion about some fundamental economic points relevant to the current consensus in the West.

 

 

 

One point in particular resonates with my thinking at the moment: the scarcity of doctors because of restrictions on the number of doctors trained per year and the re-training requirement for doctors from other countries. Training a doctor will always be expensive because of the amount of time and resources involved and necessity to mitigate risk.

This is made even worse by similar factors at work in the legal system. The ability of lawyers to keep their prices high makes it difficult for the average Joe to pursue private law solutions to his misfortunes. This problem causes the government to over-react by increasing the amount of legislation with which employers and practitioners must comply, in order to reduce the risk of negligence. That sounds good at first, but increased regulations result in increased production costs that are passed on to consumers, slower provision of goods and services, and general frustration in the workplace as people intuitively perceive a conflict between “following the rules” and “getting the job done.” To clarify, I do not believe in no regulation whatsoever, but I am continually dismayed by the amount of red-tape and policy documents (both usually long, boring, and difficult to understand) that employers and employees have to deal with.

As always, share your thoughts below.