2012-01-19
Explanation
A boy who used to earn three dollars a week for bringing in the mail learns that his younger sister has been born and is now willing to do the same chore for $2.50. Outraged, he appeals to his father to "regulate mom" for driving down the price of labor in the household. The father, acting as a regulator, sets the price of mail services at three dollars a week. But two weeks later, the boy discovers his pay has been cut to two dollars, and when he knocks on his parents' door demanding to know where the oversight is, the final panel asks: "Are you familiar with the concept of regulatory capture?"
The comic is a clever domestic allegory for real-world economics and regulatory failure. The boy's situation mirrors how incumbent workers or businesses react to competition from cheaper labor (immigration, outsourcing), and his appeal to his father parallels lobbying the government for protective regulation. The punchline introduces "regulatory capture" -- the well-documented phenomenon in which regulatory agencies end up serving the interests of the industries they are supposed to oversee. Here, Dad (the regulator) was presumably co-opted by Mom (the industry), resulting in an outcome even worse for the boy than free-market competition would have produced.