A Lesson in Public Choice: Lifeboats and the Titanic

From WSJ:

Governments find it easy to implement regulations but tedious to maintain existing ones—politicians gain little political benefit from updating old laws, only from introducing new laws.

And regulated entities tend to comply with the specifics of the regulations, not with the goal of the regulations themselves. All too often, once government takes over, what was private risk management becomes regulatory compliance.

It’s easy to weave the Titanic disaster into a seductive tale of hubris, social stratification and capitalist excess. But the Titanic’s chroniclers tend to put their moral narrative ahead of their historical one.

At the accident’s core is this reality: British regulators assumed responsibility for lifeboat numbers and then botched that responsibility. With a close reading of the evidence, it is hard not to see the Titanic disaster as a tragic example of government failure.