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Comment by cmsonger | Hacker News Reader

> An industry can only be disruptive for so long.

I think another thing people tend to forget: regulations are often there for a real reason. Especially in the US there's a vocal majority who thinks that regulations are the problem. It's true sometimes. The reasons for the regulation were either bad in the first place, or have "aged out." But a lot of times: the regulation in the way of some business is there to protect consumers.

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I fully disagree. I view regulation like opioid painkillers. Sometimes they're necessary to solve a problem. Sometimes the problem is temporary. If a society gives them out at the drop of a hat there will be negative consequences far and wide. Regulation is dangerous and is very easy to abuse but it performs a necessary function in society. We need to be careful not to over-prescribe it though because every regulation is at its core a limitation on individual liberty and when we trade away individual liberty the utmost scrutiny should be applied to ensure we are getting a good deal.

Do you have any examples of such negative consequences, regulations for problems that went away (that became inconvenient after the fact), or dangerous and abusive regulations? Your objection sounds dogmatic, but if it's founded I'd love to hear on what.

I submit as evidence

a) pretty much every case where a "may issue" permit is required to engage in business (these mostly happen on the state and local level and incentivize corruption).

b) Regulatory capture (e.g. the current FCC).

c) The war on drugs (I can come up with other examples of unnecessarily criminalizing things if needed).

And on the other side, the movies/music/video games/tv rating system sure isn't perfect but it's a great example of an industry coming up with a solution that doesn't involve regulation. Various other professional organizations (ones that are not given special protection via legislation, i.e. not doctors and lawyers) are also good examples. The AWS comes to mind as a pretty good one.

Legislation is hard to get right and harder to change and I'd rather only use it when other options have been exhausted (e.g. I support making ISPs utilities and a public option for healthcare).

Personally I find the knee jerk reaction to legislate whenever anything bad happens quite dogmatic.

"Regulating whenever something bad happens" is problematic, but it's a bit of a straw man. You should be regulating wherever people are incentivized to do bad things, which happens quite often when you don't offer any oversight whatsoever. Especially when you are unwilling to even regulate the reporting of misbehavior.

>but it's a bit of a straw man.

Knee jerk legislation is not a straw man. It happens all the time. The CFAA is a knee-jerk law. Here[1] is a more recent example.

[1]https://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-gov-andrew-cuomo-bans-stretch-l...

And the last paragraph of the article mentions banning long vehicles, which itself is a knee jerk response to when a drunk t-boned a limo on Long Island awhile back.

I agree about regulating incentives though.

c) The war on drugs (I can come up with other examples of unnecessarily criminalizing things if needed).

You're conflating actual criminal law with regulations in order to make your argument.

I think that's intelectually dishonest.

edit : spello

It sounds like more people should be interested in regulatory reform. I'm a huge fan of refactoring regulations once the problems they've been made to fix have been solved.

The problem is most "bodies of laws" are so complex and have so many competing stakeholders that it's a lot like a method that everyone's afraid to touch so they just comment "#DO NOT TOUCH!!"

The other problem is the "policy people" who create regulations are rarely the subject matter experts. They are good at managing the process to the successful conclusion: a new published regulation. They are not good at deciding what a good regulation is.

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