Law Commons^™

Roasting The Pig To Burn Down The House: A Modest Proposal, Stuart M. Benjamin

Faculty Scholarship

This essay addresses the question whether one should support regulatory proposals that one believes are, standing alone, bad public policy in the hope that they will do such harm that they will ultimately produce (likely unintended) good results. For instance, one may regard a set of proposed regulations as foolish and likely to hobble the industry regulated, but perhaps desirable if one believes that we would be better off without that industry. I argue that television broadcasting is such an industry, and thus that we should support new regulations that will make broadcasting unprofitable, to hasten its demise. But it …