Assuming that free trade is the most efficient system of international commerce, the impact of an absurd overabundance of compliance and regulation on cost of living is staggering.
In the Philippines, depending on where you live, you can walk to the street and get a trike to drive you 10 minutes at a cost of less than $0.50. In the US, the minimum you'd pay for the same level of mobility would be at least $10.
A trike wouldn't be legally allowed on the road for passenger purposes, perhaps due to thousands of pages of legislation on road safety, insurance regulations, business permits, and so on. Cost of a sedan (taxi) compared to a motorcycle with a welded carriage: additional ~500-1,000%.
In many localities the taxi would need to purchase a medallion, perhaps costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to operate legally. This would have to be averaged over the lifetime of the taxi and included in the fare price.
Perhaps a better example is the cost of running a storefront. In the Philippines, many people sell random goods out of the side window of their home. The cost of having the business is only the cost of replenishing their stock.
In the US, most likely you'd be looking at a standalone store front building that would have to be built to fire, electrical, plumbing, and other myriad building standards. The building would have to exist in a specifically zoned area, and would likely be built to a relatively large minimum size. You would need to pay the lease (cost of land) which is inflated due to all the costs of building and preparing the unit. You would need the proper permits, accounting compliance, legal compliance, labor compliance, and so on. The minimum amount of revenue that would need to be generated just to stay solvent would be considerable, rendering a myriad of potential entrepreneurial activities moot from the get go.
Many of those same considerations (cost of land, cost of rent, etc) of a rent seeking based economy that's been forcibly created through government regulation will force everyone to spend considerably more in order to afford the basic necessities of life. This drives up the cost of labor, (not to mention the unseen costs of labor, such as social security, medicare, health insurance, etc), rendering an even greater number of potential businesses financially unfeasible.
For the common man, they suffer by having their labor eroded on a grossly elevated cost of living. They must work unnecessarily long work weeks, and retire much later than necessary just to survive. Governments benefit by having a highly productive captive labor force (whose productivity they can steal in the form of elevated taxation) that would otherwise be satisfied to reach a minimum level of subsistence. Schemes like property taxes and forced consumer activity (healthcare) make it impossible for people to reach independence and fully remove themselves from the treadmill.
In my amateur opinion, it seems to me that aside from gross imbalances in the supply of labor and jobs, regulations (environmental, safety, labor, legal, financial, etc) are responsible for the vast majority of price differential in large countries.
__________
As far as I know, fusion is a theoretically feasible energy source. The Sun is undergoing fusion within it's core, producing an incredible source of energy by converting hydrogen into helium. It does not violate the 1st law of thermodynamics.
Zero point energy seems to violate the 1st law of thermodynamics. How would that be possible? Is our current understanding of physics incorrect?
In the Philippines, depending on where you live, you can walk to the street and get a trike to drive you 10 minutes at a cost of less than $0.50. In the US, the minimum you'd pay for the same level of mobility would be at least $10.
A trike wouldn't be legally allowed on the road for passenger purposes, perhaps due to thousands of pages of legislation on road safety, insurance regulations, business permits, and so on. Cost of a sedan (taxi) compared to a motorcycle with a welded carriage: additional ~500-1,000%.
In many localities the taxi would need to purchase a medallion, perhaps costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to operate legally. This would have to be averaged over the lifetime of the taxi and included in the fare price.
Perhaps a better example is the cost of running a storefront. In the Philippines, many people sell random goods out of the side window of their home. The cost of having the business is only the cost of replenishing their stock.
In the US, most likely you'd be looking at a standalone store front building that would have to be built to fire, electrical, plumbing, and other myriad building standards. The building would have to exist in a specifically zoned area, and would likely be built to a relatively large minimum size. You would need to pay the lease (cost of land) which is inflated due to all the costs of building and preparing the unit. You would need the proper permits, accounting compliance, legal compliance, labor compliance, and so on. The minimum amount of revenue that would need to be generated just to stay solvent would be considerable, rendering a myriad of potential entrepreneurial activities moot from the get go.
Many of those same considerations (cost of land, cost of rent, etc) of a rent seeking based economy that's been forcibly created through government regulation will force everyone to spend considerably more in order to afford the basic necessities of life. This drives up the cost of labor, (not to mention the unseen costs of labor, such as social security, medicare, health insurance, etc), rendering an even greater number of potential businesses financially unfeasible.
For the common man, they suffer by having their labor eroded on a grossly elevated cost of living. They must work unnecessarily long work weeks, and retire much later than necessary just to survive. Governments benefit by having a highly productive captive labor force (whose productivity they can steal in the form of elevated taxation) that would otherwise be satisfied to reach a minimum level of subsistence. Schemes like property taxes and forced consumer activity (healthcare) make it impossible for people to reach independence and fully remove themselves from the treadmill.
In my amateur opinion, it seems to me that aside from gross imbalances in the supply of labor and jobs, regulations (environmental, safety, labor, legal, financial, etc) are responsible for the vast majority of price differential in large countries.
__________
As far as I know, fusion is a theoretically feasible energy source. The Sun is undergoing fusion within it's core, producing an incredible source of energy by converting hydrogen into helium. It does not violate the 1st law of thermodynamics.
Zero point energy seems to violate the 1st law of thermodynamics. How would that be possible? Is our current understanding of physics incorrect?