What an incredibly, idiotically reductionist interpretation of cherry-picked data this is. First of all, he selected a fairly random, non-representative set of goods and services. I can immediately think of a glaringly obvious counter-example that his dataset excludes: energy. It's one of the most highly regulated industries in the US and yet energy inflation has been barely positive over the last 20 years (https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/energy-inflation), completely contradicting Andreesen's hypothesis. So basically all of his conclusions are unsubstantiated and likely false on that basis alone. But there's more stupidity here.
He also does not define "heavily regulated" or how one can measure the level of regulation applicable to a given good or service in a way that allows for apples-to-apples comparisons to other goods and services. But even just taking a colloquial understanding of what the term means, car manufacturing is incredibly highly regulated. Perhaps not so much as medical services, but certainly far more than household furnishings or clothing. And yet the inflation curves for those goods are nearly identical to the one for new cars. If regulation is the sole explanation for the differing inflation trajectories between each of these goods and services, then why is such a highly regulated good performing identically to substantially less regulated goods?
There are many more flaws in his thinking but I won't bother digging into it because this is a childishly stupid article that would never have made it to the front page of HN if it weren't written by an especially wealthy idiot.
He also does not define "heavily regulated" or how one can measure the level of regulation applicable to a given good or service in a way that allows for apples-to-apples comparisons to other goods and services. But even just taking a colloquial understanding of what the term means, car manufacturing is incredibly highly regulated. Perhaps not so much as medical services, but certainly far more than household furnishings or clothing. And yet the inflation curves for those goods are nearly identical to the one for new cars. If regulation is the sole explanation for the differing inflation trajectories between each of these goods and services, then why is such a highly regulated good performing identically to substantially less regulated goods?
There are many more flaws in his thinking but I won't bother digging into it because this is a childishly stupid article that would never have made it to the front page of HN if it weren't written by an especially wealthy idiot.