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Comment by aviraldg | Hacker News Reader

Can someone help me understand why technologists and entrepreneurs on HN cheer on "ending the tech industry's free reign", when they are part of the very same tech industry?

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Because those closest to a thing can see the bad things it does. If you then conclude that doing the bad thing is game-theoretically rational, then regulation is needed. Hence, you cheer on adding regulation.

One of the problems with the regulation debate framed in terms of "more vs. less" is that it's easy to assume increased regulation will fix what you consider bad and preserve what you consider good, or that deregulation will only cut pointless bureaucracy.

It's distressing that the support is for more regulation in general (which can be easily coopted to support stuff like this), rather than specific policies or outcomes.

It's a response to the conservative voice saying 'deregulate everything'. You first need to argue for regulation per se before you can argue for specific regulations. The nuanced position of 'regulation isn't inherently good, but this specific policy is' is blown away in the public debate by 'REGULATION BAD'.

I have heard several stories about industry groups preferring government regulation to the status quo because game theory made it impossible to self-regulate effectively.

It makes sense to me, no agreement will hold if any one person can violate it with nothing to stop them.

Contrarian voices are amplified. No one writes, or at least upvotes articles saying "everything is pretty ok."

Well that and the fact that everything is not OK. But hey, maybe I'm just a contrarian. /shrug

Whether you're right or wrong, status quo still isn't newsworthy.

I think a lot of the entrepreneurs here are having difficulty in competing on the open market with the FAANGs and not-quite-as-big-as-FAANGs-but-still-big companies. They don't really want to end the tech industry's free reign. They just want to see themselves replacing the current top dogs.

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