Yesterday ten tourists died in a fire in a popular Chilean hotel with no in-room fire detectors.
Why do US hotel owners spend good money to buy smoke detectors and install sprinkler systems? Intrusive government regulation of their business practices. The kind of thing nobody would have to contend if right-thinking economists could just shrink government down to a size drownable in the bathtub.
Chile’s economic model is still largely based on policies urged by Milton Friedman and applauded by right-wing economists in the US. But if no law enforces fire safety on all hotels, then pity each individual hotel builder, having to decide whether or not to pay for such an unusual and unproductive extra.
Meanwhile, even right-wing Chilean politicians admit that Chile’s private pension system, once touted as a model for what US Social Security should become, has turned into an unfunded disaster, with pension companies raking off one-third or more of workers’ savings and posting annual profit margins near 50%.
Democrats, please pull our government out of that bathtub.