In September 2023, legendary venture capitalist Bill Gurley took the stage at the All-In Summit and delivered what many called the best talk in the event's history. His thesis was simple and devastating: regulation does not protect consumers. It protects incumbents. He had the entire audience on their feet chanting it back to him.
Gurley pointed to Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler, who proved that industries eventually capture the agencies meant to regulate them. The result is predictable. Big companies lobby for complex rules that they can afford to follow but their smaller competitors cannot. COVID tests cost less than a dollar in Germany because 96 vendors were approved. In the US, the FDA approved three, and tests cost twelve dollars. The person at the FDA responsible for approvals had previously worked for two of those three companies.
This song takes Gurley's rallying cry and puts it to music. Regulation is the friend of the incumbent. The next time someone tells you we need more rules to protect the little guy, ask yourself who actually wrote those rules.
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