What an incredibly, idiotically reductionist interpretation of cherry-picked data this is. First of all, he selected a fairly random, non-representative set of goods and services. I can immediately think of a glaringly obvious counter-example that his dataset excludes: energy. It's one of the most highly regulated industries in the US and yet energy inflation has been barely positive over the last 20 years (https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/energy-inflation), completely contradicting Andreesen's hypothesis. So basically all of his conclusions are unsubstantiated and likely false on that basis alone. But there's more stupidity here.
He also does not define "heavily regulated" or how one can measure the level of regulation applicable to a given good or service in a way that allows for apples-to-apples comparisons to other goods and services. But even just taking a colloquial understanding of what the term means, car manufacturing is incredibly highly regulated. Perhaps not so much as medical services, but certainly far more than household furnishings or clothing. And yet the inflation curves for those goods are nearly identical to the one for new cars. If regulation is the sole explanation for the differing inflation trajectories between each of these goods and services, then why is such a highly regulated good performing identically to substantially less regulated goods?
There are many more flaws in his thinking but I won't bother digging into it because this is a childishly stupid article that would never have made it to the front page of HN if it weren't written by an especially wealthy idiot.
He also doesn't acknowledge that regulations exist for a reason. Sure, there are some onerous or silly regulations. But TVs are cheap/unregulated and medical devices or aviation equipment are expensive/regulated for very good reasons.
His interpretation of “industries that are allowed to innovate vs those where it’s illegal” is laughable.
Has Marc considered that there might be some other fundamental difference between the inflation-positive sectors of health, education, food and housing, vs the inflation-negative ones of TVs, cars and software subscriptions? I’ll give you a hint Marc: some of these are essential to life and society and some are not.
Because housing is essential to life does not mean it should double in price every ten years.
Because education is valuable it doesn't mean the amount of student debt in the country needs to double like it has in the last two decades.
At least in these two examples, these "industries" are flying off the charts in the last two decades not because of how essential they are, or how technologically progressive they are, or how the value they bring to people's lives has correspondingly doubled just now (nope, same essential value as before), but because there are large groups of people who have figured out how to milk the shit out of these parts of society, and technology (which didn't start with ChatGPT yesterday) doesn't seem to be helping with that.
> Because education is valuable it doesn't mean the amount of student debt in the country needs to double like it has in the last two decades.
If we change the basis of our model to financial pain, for things that are purchased with significant leverage, the cost going up as the interest rates go down would keep the financial pain relatively constant.
> Because housing is essential to life does not mean it should double in price every ten years.
I agree, and didn’t mean to imply that the price rising is inherent to these services. What I should have spelled out is that a capitalist market can only self regulate when the buyer has the ability to say no. Largely a customer of health, housing and food has limited ability to opt out.
They're not though - the regulations keep getting stricter. Housing (building), for instance is expensive because the requirements tighten to match what people can afford. Remember when single glazed windows were legal? 2000 standard healthcare would probably be cheaper today if we were allowed to use it. But now we have newer more expensive (and better) treatments. Cars go like that too with safety growing.
> energy. It's one of the most highly regulated industries in the US and yet energy inflation has been barely positive over the last 20 years
Because the USA is still using oil and petroleum derived products to produce energy, shale oil is the single best source of energy in the USA... regulations barely had to be updated, only for shale oil.
Compare that with Europe where they stopped using petroleum derived forms of energy.
Specifically, compare the natural gas prices in both regions:
He also does not define "heavily regulated" or how one can measure the level of regulation applicable to a given good or service in a way that allows for apples-to-apples comparisons to other goods and services. But even just taking a colloquial understanding of what the term means, car manufacturing is incredibly highly regulated. Perhaps not so much as medical services, but certainly far more than household furnishings or clothing. And yet the inflation curves for those goods are nearly identical to the one for new cars. If regulation is the sole explanation for the differing inflation trajectories between each of these goods and services, then why is such a highly regulated good performing identically to substantially less regulated goods?
There are many more flaws in his thinking but I won't bother digging into it because this is a childishly stupid article that would never have made it to the front page of HN if it weren't written by an especially wealthy idiot.