Rampant in the US. The EU has managed to avoid the worst of it so far.
They’re easy to spot as news/entertainment all mocks them for being “mean”
There is also the plainspeak people. Law written so that average people can understand them. Lawyers less needed.
Often after a dictator takes power they do a crackdown on ‘corruption’ which has popular support. What their actually doing is consolidating power, but if you call it a corruption crackdown then it sounds like a great thing.
What you want is someone that says something specific not platitudes which can mean anything, and are impossible to hold people accountable. Remove a single regulation and they can call it a win. But fail to go to the moon, build a wall, reduce spending etc, and they just failed.
Simplified tax goals.
Fairtax was a great attempt at this. One tax rate. Everyone got a check so that poor people didn’t suffer.
Millions of tax attorneys and government would need to find something else to do.
Fewer can mean keeping the bad ones while getting rid of the good ones.
One tax rate sounds like junk to me. A progressive tax rate that applies to all things that get you money: income, gains, loans, etc makes more sense. Along with some way of getting taxes when money leaves local borders.
... And you need subsidies for the things you want to promote. Always doing that as explicit subsidies makes sense though. If you want people to take out loans, you can grant subsidies for their loan repayments
That goal is lost while regulatory capture is the norm.
Others say "better regulations protecting people should be the goal"
That goal is lost while regulatory capture is the norm.
Whatever our cause, without reform of the norm of regulatory capture, our cause is lost.
I'd much rather reform that corruption and the "other side" win power than "my side" win with the corruption raging on.
I'd love it if most people felt the same way about it and were willing to switch voting from Sanders style democratic socialism to Amash style libertarianism to get it done. Or the other way. I'm not sure what's more important politically right now. The corruption disease rages on with a change in ruling party.
Add to that more transparency in corporation ownership, especially in trade deals, and strong controls on what regulators are allowed to do during and after their time working as regulators.
But those are the people who are usually focused on removing consumer protections more so than removing regulations based in corruption.
Regulatory capture is utterly rampant right now and a huge threat to democracy. This is true regardless of one's personal politics or beliefs about big vs small government or political party of preference. It's a cancer and more dangerous than people think.