Though, as long as we're just talking about "red tape" in the abstract, and not even specific regulations, we're not even dealing with Chesterton's Fence. We're dealing with Chesterton's Vague Unspecified I-Don't-Even-Know-What.
No the regulation system as a whole is analogous to the fence. You're asking them to point to a specific picket and explain why it's there. But that's very obvious: it's part of the fence. We're still left with understanding the goal of the fence & its suitability for that, and deciding what to do about it.
The fence analogy kinda breaks down here. The sum total of regulations are like a collection of Chestson's Fences, each one added to the legal code for specific edge cases and the outcome of removing any individual one will have different results.
It doesn't mean anything to talk about reducing regulations without being specific about which rules you actually have an issue with, but it can provide the illusion of consensus.
I mean, you agreed on something, which is the bloat of a system, you just disagree on the "how to fix it" part.
If I said "We need a crane that can lift 3000lbs" and you agree, and you come up with a design that uses an electric motor system, and I come up with a design that uses a diesel engine, we still agreed on something, just not the implementation of how to do it.
I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but if you and I could agree on some bad consequence of "too many regulations" (e.g. the prices of healthcare are too high as a result of the regulations), that is some common ground. The question then comes down "which regulations would be best to cut to lower costs?" and reduces to an optimization problem.
> I mean, you agreed on something, which is the bloat of a system, you just disagree on the "how to fix it" part.
Unfortunately, the "how to fix it" part is the part that requires building political consensus. Getting agreement on X being too expensive is easy; everyone always wants everything to be cheaper.
> If I said "We need a crane that can lift 3000lbs" and you agree, and you come up with a design that uses an electric motor system, and I come up with a design that uses a diesel engine, we still agreed on something, just not the implementation of how to do it.
> I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but if you and I could agree on some bad consequence of "too many regulations" (e.g. the prices of healthcare are too high as a result of the regulations), that is some common ground. The question then comes down "which regulations would be best to cut to lower costs?" and reduces to an optimization problem.
The problem I have is that using "too many regulations" as the foundation is inevitably doomed. Lets say we find some collection of regulations that could be cut. Well, any solution is going to, at a glance, look like an additional regulation to the layman. And that's before the parasites that are profiting from the existing inefficiencies start spinning narratives about how this is another government overreach and how we're killing America.
That's the most conservative interpretation of Chesterton's Fence I have ever seen. Each rule is critical because it is included in a set of rules which are intended to help, and removing any means breaking the whole fence?
I guess you could get even more conservative and assume that the absence of a law is also intentional and we should maintain the status quo forever. I'd argue that even that would be preferable to a system where you can only add restrictions.
That's not quite what I'm pointing at here, and I also agree with the other commenter that the metaphor is stretched too far to be useful.
But if we're going to stick with it, it's very likely the fence will still work for its purpose if you remove some of the pickets. But to figure out which ones, and how many, you need to have a clear conception of the fencemaker's goal and how it currently accomplishes them or fails to. The significance of any specific part isn't a sound basis for an argument about the purpose or usefulness of the fence per se.
Do we have any indication that TXSE is arguing against the purpose or usefulness of the fence, or that they won't make thoughtful decisions about which pickets to remove? This article just calls the diversity rules, which have (afaict) no bearing on the integrity of the market.
But, for context, all I was trying to do when I accidentally started this whole side tangent was suggest that unbounded speculation that isn't tied to concrete, specific things is unlikely to be fruitful.
As far as I can tell, the only specific thing that's been mentioned is not having an equivalent to NASDAQ's board diversity rule. Which doesn't seem like a _huge_ differentiator given that NYSE doesn't have one either?
TBH though my first instinct is to say that I doubt their rules will be egregious, and in a market as large as the USA having a third national stock exchange probably wouldn't be a terrible thing. Markets generally benefit from healthy competition, even when some of the individual competitors aren't everybody's favorite.
But it's not always a good reason.