Self-Regulating Industry Regulates Self Out of Existence in Record Time

The American Association of Autonomous Commerce, a voluntary self-regulatory body established by libertarian business owners as an alternative to government oversight, has voted to dissolve itself after an internal audit revealed that all 23 member businesses were in violation of the association's own code of conduct — a document the members themselves had written to be, in the words of its preamble, 'maximally permissive.' 'We designed the code to have essentially no restrictions,' explained association president Layla Arbitrage. 'The only rules were: don't commit fraud, label your products honestly, and don't sell anything that is actively on fire. We thought those were reasonable minimums. We were wrong.' The audit, conducted by a third-party firm that the association hired and then attempted to fire mid-audit when preliminary findings proved unflattering, found that fourteen members had engaged in what the auditor diplomatically termed 'creative product descriptions,' seven had sold items that were 'on fire or recently on fire,' and all 23 had committed at least one act that met the legal definition of fraud. 'The market was supposed to punish bad actors,' said Arbitrage. 'But it turns out that when bad actors are the only actors, the market just sort of adjusts its expectations downward.' Critics have noted that the association's collapse mirrors the trajectory predicted by regulatory advocates, who argued that voluntary compliance without enforcement mechanisms tends to produce precisely this outcome. Arbitrage disputes this characterization. 'We didn't fail because self-regulation doesn't work,' she said. 'We failed because we didn't self-regulate hard enough. Next time, we'll write even more permissive rules, and I'm confident the results will be different.' She has already begun recruiting members for a successor organization, the Even Freer Market Alliance, whose code of conduct consists of a single sentence: 'Try not to.'