Talk:Deregulation

This source: "Gary T. Schwartz. The Myth of the Ford Pinto Case. Rutgers Law Review, 1991. Page 1022." seems to dispute your last example. Have you read it?

The fishy examples of the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks as successful deregulation
I've added a to the claim that the less severe effects of the 1979 oil crisis was due to deregulated oil prices. It seems to me to be a clear case of correlation does not imply causation, because: A better example would be the deregulation of the airline sector, although today's cheap tickets come with plenty of hidden costs (cutting corners on safety while exploiting and underpaying the aircrews etc.), or the mobile communications sector which has seen consistently declining prices and, as far as I know, less of the rampant cut-throating practised by discount airlines. ScepticWombat (talk) 11:13, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) The 1979 downturn in oil production was simply far smaller than in 1973.
 * 2) The 1973 oil shock had already led to some efforts at avoiding a repeat, meaning that a future oil shock was less likely to hit as hard.
 * 3) There actually were queues at gas stations in 1979 (although not as long ones as in '73)
 * 4) The price controls in 1973 didn't cause the queues, but were a response to the scarcity. Letting the prices float wouldn't magically have meant plenty of oil for everyone, and perhaps not even done away with the queues, but would simply have meant a lot of stranded motorists (i.e. all those unable to afford the even higher prices that would have been the inevitable result of letting things work themselves out in a scarcity situation involving a strategic resource such as oil - it's essentially analogous to rationing during wartime).