That's a good thing, not a bad thing. It means your regulators are paying attention to events elsewhere and are trying to proactively prepare for them, rather than flailing about in reaction to complaints and problems. When the scooters come, your jurisdiction will be ready for them, rather than having to ban them just so they can catch up.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/companies-pull-scooters-off-sf-str...
> but over here we tend prefer for the government not to swing its weight around until there is clear evidence of a problem.
There is clear evidence of a problem: SF banned scooters to give itself time to figure out how to regulate them: http://www.sfexaminer.com/companies-pull-scooters-off-sf-str.... There is no reason to think SF is particularly unique and that other municipalities won't have similar experience.
And even before SF banned scooters, there was clear evidence of problems with dockless rentals in China: sidewalks became bike parking lots with little room left for actual walking.
This idea that governments should only regulate if there's a manifested problem in their particular jurisdiction is pretty stupid, frankly. It's like saying you shouldn't make up your mind about crack cocaine before you've actually tried it and experience the problems it causes.
The prevailing issue being, politicians - under the false pretense that they paid to be "leaders" (read: look at me! look at what I can do!!) instead of problem solvers - grab their hammer and do what they already do...pound away.
How's that working out for us?
Note: I'm not suggesting a solution per se. Simply acknowledging that we have a problem, and the general nature of that problem.
There is not as much disagreement as it can sometimes seem, between those particular groups, as ID'ed using that jargon.
The American Conservatives and the American Liberals both think that laws should be the knee-jerk reaction to certain sets of problems. Their differences lie in which problems those are: by and large, the Conservatives say that those are the social problems, and the Liberals say that those are the economic problems.
But you are right, there are many who think they should be a last-resort measure in all-but-every case: the American jargon calls them Libertarians, and the American first-past-the-post voting system calls them personae non gratae.