There’s an issue at play here that I think we’re not confronting enough. America has been on a steady march of deregulating in the name of corporate greed. Some of the most functional countries in the world are also the ones with the strongest regulatory bodies (granted they’re also largely petrochemical profiteers, I do have criticisms even of countries that I think are doing better than the US) because there’s a presumption built into the system that if left unchecked, the forces of greed will violate the liberties of the populace. Its not a coincidence that the only countries that faced major Y2K bug issues were the UK and the US. Germany, Nordic countries, and Benelux countries all ALSO faced this bug, but in those countries the consequences for fucking up banking data was fines. In the US and UK, the consequences were someone might sue in civil court. Much less scary for banking institutions so they continuously acted like the problem was someone else’s problem until the last minute.

My point is this: regulations work. We have case studies in other countries that they work. We don’t implement them not because they don’t work but because they require long view systems change and the political system we live in doesn’t encourage thinking long term. Political funding efforts encourage thinking of policy in 2-6 year terms instead of the actual 30 year time frames it requires to plan them. Its much easier to pull a quick grift with political power weakening the overall system than it is to FIX the system. It incentivizes corruption. THAT is the issue that needs addressing and one we should really be trying to assess what the Benelux countries are doing so well