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Comment by troydavis | Hacker News Reader

> "Laws are unlikely to change without a bit of violation"

The flaw with that argument is that something like 99 of 100 laws exist because, basically, they should. They benefit society, so essentially the whole population wants them.

Someone will disagree with almost every law, and some subset of them will violate it in protest. No single person knows which law is the 1 in 100 that shouldn't exist - even someone who thinks they know. Often, the people who so passionately think a law shouldn't exist that they're willing to break it are actually the least representative of society.

(I'm completely ignoring whether space launch access is or isn't a worthwhile law; it's moot.)

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> The flaw with that argument is that something like 99 of 100 laws exist because, basically, they should. They benefit society, so essentially the whole population wants them.

That's very much debatable. It's not even clear how to count the number of laws, even if we are only considering Federal law in the US. (see https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43056.pdf )

Certainly there is no one who knows all the laws, and unlike in coding, there's no commitment to DRY or modularization, which leads to very common unintended consequences.

You're arguing the 99/100 case, but I'm sure it would be easy to find someone to credibly argue the 1/100 case.

The 99/100 case (in this argument) is mostly tragedy of the commons laws.

Where every person would individually benefit from breaking them, but the community as a whole would be worse off.

E.g. environmental regulations

Disagreeing with the law just because it would personally financially benefit you to break it is pretty weak sauce. I think a much stronger argument could be made that many laws — and particularly regulations — fail even at their stated purpose.

There was an article on the front page last week [1] about the total cost to the economy from licensing “professional” work which can clearly be done safely and effectively without a license, for example, hair weaving.

While the direct cost of obtaining licenses and completing the educational requirires (which often provides no actual benefit in increased skill or earnings), is relatively low… If you factor in the cost to the economy of people who aren’t able to work at a more profitable profession because they are restricted from entering it due to the licensing, the cost was extraordinary.

I think any analysis which covers all the myriad misguided attempts government makes to micromanage our lives is going to blow far past 1/100 of laws and regulations being damaging rather than helpful, even when considering the general populace.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18682946

The florist example reads as the most egregious: https://ij.org/report/blooming-nonsense-2/

You have to pass a written and practical test (aka subjective test) - administered by other licensed florists (aka your competitors).

Licenses should be about public safety. There's no reason to have a subjective test when it comes to this.

Licenses should be about public safety.

It seems though in some industries (not all), as you allude to in the floral industry, that licensing is just another manifestation of rent seeking and ever encroaching regulatory capture.

Would you concur? Curious to hear what you think there could (or should) be done about it in your opinion? In the case of selling floral products-caveat lector: I know nothing about flowers other than they are pretty and smell nice-would it make sense to replace licensing with some sort of rating system for businesses to aid consumers in deciding who they want to procure professional services from based on assessed expertise and past services rendered (not Yelp, an assessment from your industry peers)?

Imho, licenses should only be used in situations where (1) there are cost externalities to be considered that the free market doesn't expose+ or (2) it's better for society as a whole if supply is managed (e.g. capped licenses / quotas)

+ E.g. a cheap electrician using aluminum wiring that may short in 10 years and burn the house down. But of which the customer may not be aware / informed.

We have codes and laws about what wiring you are allowed to use, and independent inspections to ensure that things were done right. (even the best person makes a mistake). Adding a license doesn't really do much. I can teach a smart person how to write a house in a couple days (this includes looking up what size wire to use on the charts - the NEC is actually very readable once you figure out which section applies), from there on some experience will make you faster. Yet to become licensed requires years of experience, mostly to keep people out of the job.

Hypothetically we have code enforcement. In reality, the chance of getting caught on a non-obvious building defect is much lower than certain.

I see licensing as buying into the system and aligning interests. Suddenly, it's in a tradesperson's personal interest to follow regulations, as they otherwise risk their right to practice.

That said... as was mentioned upthread, there's a happy balance. If there's limited long term harm, it's probably not justifiable to require licensure.

Some hair weaving involve first relaxing the hair with chemicals that can cause severe burns if done incorrectly in order to ensure the weave and the natural hair blends properly. Some weaves are attached with adhesives that can also cause damage if used incorrectly. In both cases there is a potential for hair loss and disfigurement.

I think that's a good example of a field where lack of knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. I'd have thought like you until having seen first hand what some such hair products can do.

I'm sure there are unnecessary licensing. But I'm equally sure a lot of the licensing that seems pointless actually has reasonable justifications that are just not obvious if you don't know the field.

Your link to the Congressional Research Service report, was that included to highlight how difficult it is to enumerate the number of Federal laws?

Because if so, so far reading this, it seems the Federal government has a pretty solid, and measurable grip on that very activity, just from the text of the report, and it doesn't seem remarkably difficult for them since they've come up with seemingly multiple ways to delineate the different types of Federal rules from each other, and have been able to point to various methods used to come up with their final assessment totals.

None of it seemed overtly complicated or difficult, and I'm about as far removed from "well read" on government reports as a person can get.

So, how many federal laws are currently in effect?

And can you say for certain that you didn't break a law today?

Always a good link: https://twitter.com/CrimeADay

This is not even a law, it's a regulation from an agency that tries to assert itself as a regulator of communication satellites. This has strategic implications for US and it's probably a good idea anyway from a space collision point of view - but nonetheless is a regulatory land grab from other international bodies.

As a general rule, these type of moves can only be controlled by breaking them and testing then in court. The agencies have a strong incentive to go for a maximal interpretation of the relevant statues and increase their influence and funding.

Governments have a mandate to regulate what happens in their own country. It’s how the entire world functions. And so it makes no sense that enforcement should be considered a land grab from other international bodies.

And we don’t control crimes like murder by allowing people to break the laws and then testing them in court.

> And we don’t control crimes like murder by allowing people to break the laws and then testing them in court.

I usually err on the side of constructive conversation, but I have to say that is a ridiculous straw-man - and you know it.

Regulations are laws where the details were left to the bureaucrats by the politicians who drafted the laws - it allows for implementation flexibility.

But they are still backed by actual laws, and are not lessened by being regulations - if anything they are better because you can always apply to the implementing authority to change things without going the whole parliamentary route.

There's a downside in less well developed countries without a tradition of a non-political civil service (like the US) where an incoming politician installs their political flunkies can change the regulations to suit their donors

This is an interesting comment. My interpretation is that your reasoning rests on the intuition that the tens of thousands of laws you know nothing about and created by strangers whose motivations may or may not be shared by you must be just 99% of the time. Further, that this view is shared by the rest of society. Does either idea seem likely?

Should the violence of the state be brought to bear on citizens because it is known that "most" laws are good? Would we benefit from a higher standard? Could we instead renew and expire laws?

re: "The flaw with that argument is that something like 99 of 100 laws exist because, basically, they should. They benefit society, so essentially the whole population wants them."

Sometimes yes. But other times, the laws exists (and more than 1 of 100) to "protect" some industry (from competition from another industry) and not necessarily because it's a benefit to society / general public.

Not to get off topic, but this is the crux of the argument of (e.g.,) The Brothers Koch. That is, it's not gov they are against per se. But the fact that the gov leads to rules & reg that (too often) end up offering advantages to some and disadvantages to others - which is __not__ what should happen if benefit to society were the true goal. Put another way, they're not against gov per se. They're against the uneven playing field the gov is so fond of creating.

Note: I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with them. I only wanting to point out this finer-point is often lost when people scream "OMG...The Kochs...The Kochs...". The reality is, there's a fair amount of evidence / validity to their POV.

Everyone thinks that laws they don't like are bad in the general case and laws they do are excellent examples of good governing.

Personally, I'm reasonably happy laws against assault create disadvantages to some people.

Can you clarify how assault is relevant in the context of the current thread? Private rocket launches, general biz, etc.? I think I'm missing your point and would feel better if you would clarify.

A better example would be laws that benefit the solar and wind energies, sometimes at the expense of the fossil fuel industry. Good governance to those who think a fossil fuel world is a dead end to nowhere, an example of picking winners and losers to the fossil fuel industry and its ideological allies.

Laws about solar and wind energy benefit producers of the equipment at the expense of the society. Solar energy wouldn’t be price competitive with fossil fuels if it wasn’t for tax breaks and other forms of government subsidies. Why won’t we just wait until technology advances enough so that solar wins on free market?

This is super tangential, but regulation around space access is (ideally) there to prevent congestion, collision, and space debris. It's not hard to imagine a world where space access is abused and bad things end up downwind (Kessler syndrome[0] is a classic example).

To your original point, I'd say that yes, a lot of laws exist because they solved some problem at the time they were introduced (or because someone acted corruptly, but let's ignore that for now). I believe in questioning laws, but when the argument is "it'd make our private endeavors more effective," then I'd carefully consider why the laws were there in the first place.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

> The flaw with that argument is that something like 99 of 100 laws exist because, basically, they should.

This doesn't pass the smell test. You actually believe that over the history of the United States that legislatures had a 99% success rate at passing good legislation?

This United States has a history of civil disobedience for a reason and it's part of what makes the country great. The law isn't something to be venerated, it should be treated with respect up to a point and that point ends when the law ceases to be relevant.

Case in point look at how people from the migrant caravans are being treated, ICE and Border Patrol are following the law by the book, can you tell me that law is good?

> it should be treated with respect up to a point and that point ends when the law ceases to be relevant

Everyone has a different definition of which laws are “relevant”.

> ICE and Border Patrol are following the law by the book

Are they? I was under the impression that most of the outrage was around officers circumventing Constitutional checks and abusing their power.

How do you know it's not 80 of 100, or 40 of 100?

And even if it is 99 of of 100, does that mean we should ignore the 100th, which could be causing untold harm?

99 out of 100 laws might have been a good idea at the moment of their conception, but a much larger proportion of laws are outdated or irrelevant or just completely wrong. FATCA is an example of such a law. The Patriot Act might be grouped in as well.

Laws and government programs should have expiration dates. Government can choose to renew said laws and programs, but an expiration date (aka Sunsetting) is good policy because it forces government to stay currently relevant.

No single person knows.

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