I hate to break this to you, but these have to go hand in hand.
Government, and the individuals who make up the government, are balancing a lot of competing demands.
Until one of those demands may include the loss of use of their property, at the very least, then they will always be more incentived to overvalue the perspective of the rich. And the rich will literally say, yeah, it’s bad, but we can slap a bandaid on it - 20% or the cost for 40% of the solution, that should get us by!
Some other overwhelming force will eventually be necessary to change the calculus of what an “acceptable solution” looks like. Because with your market regulation, you will always have people willing to pay the fine instead of following the rules, and if they are allowed to continue externalizing those costs to the rest of us, we will continue to have less room to request less benefit, and we will have to take what they decide to give us. Which I can almost guarantee will be pennies compared to what it costs us in the meantime.
I hate to break this to you, but these have to go hand in hand.
Government, and the individuals who make up the government, are balancing a lot of competing demands.
Until one of those demands may include the loss of use of their property, at the very least, then they will always be more incentived to overvalue the perspective of the rich. And the rich will literally say, yeah, it’s bad, but we can slap a bandaid on it - 20% or the cost for 40% of the solution, that should get us by!
Some other overwhelming force will eventually be necessary to change the calculus of what an “acceptable solution” looks like. Because with your market regulation, you will always have people willing to pay the fine instead of following the rules, and if they are allowed to continue externalizing those costs to the rest of us, we will continue to have less room to request less benefit, and we will have to take what they decide to give us. Which I can almost guarantee will be pennies compared to what it costs us in the meantime.