Why government regulation is counter-productive

“Competition is a better option than controls in ensuring quality,” writes Premchand Palety in an excellent piece in Mint, “Scrap this regulator for business schools”, in which he explains the damage that government regulation has done to the business schools of this country.

It’s a familiar story across sectors, frankly, with MBA education in India being just one illustration of it. Competition in the marketplace always results in better products and services than well-intentioned government regulation. Imagine, for example, what would happen if the government looked at blogs, found that most of them are terrible, and decided to regulate the blogosphere to ensure quality. That’s a scenario Ravikiran Rao examined in his magnificent post, “Most Blogs Are Terrible,” a couple of years ago. Do read, I think it is hard to disagree with his conclusions.