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Comment by celeritascelery | Hacker News Reader

I remember learning in college ECON 101 that many companies strive for government regulation because it erects more barriers to competition. I was floored. But you see it happening all around you.

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As someone whose major was in economics, let me warn you that most of what you learn in ECON 101 is not directly applied as policy in the real world. It is not that the concepts are incorrect per se, they aren't, but they are rough approximations, with a lot of assumptions that are not necessarily true in the real world. Econ 101 thinking is generally a good starting point to understand the economics effect of policy, but it is far, far from being complete.

Doesn't mean it's wrong per se - depends on particulars of regulations being pushed for. Competitors aren't a force of good, from customer POV. They're as likely to introduce beneficial innovations as they are to cut corners and externalize costs to improve their competitiveness. The latter is undesirable. Would it be better for relevant regulations to exist before the incumbents became what they are? Sure. But even late regulation is better than no regulation.

Not all competitors are SpaceX. Many are Uber.

From customer POV uber is a godsend. From society as a whole it is not - especially where it has affordable, reliable and safe taxicab service.

I am hard to think of clear example of more competition that has hurt the customer.

Uber is mortgaging the customers long term for its short term. Not sure why it should have that right, nor why it should be considered a godsend.

The long-term solution is still competition. IIUYC you mean that in the long term everyone else fails, and now they can raise prices.

But if competition is allowed to flourish, then the point of monopoly never comes.

Uber has been doing damage to society ever since they introduced the rideshare option. They don't have to be the only player available to be a problem; being a monopoly would just be a cherry on the cake.

Competition is fine, as long as it plays by the rules. That it has to play by a stricter rulebook than the incumbents had when they were starting isn't a bad thing, just suboptimal. "Better late than never".

They don't have a profitable business, it is driving down prices not through any innovation just shit loads of investment. I can only guess the investors are expecting a return as per usual. So how the fuck is that going to happen?

Almost everything people complain about in air travel (other than security restrictions and inconveniences) is a consequence of the relentless competition over price. If we assume the customers are rational actors, then we must assume that this situation is optimal, and it is certainly the case that for a few bucks more on top of the lowest base price, you can often get an experience more suited to your preferences (not so easily, however, if you are taller than average.) Most people do not seem to see it this way, however.

At least regulation has broadly prevented a race to the bottom in trading safety for cost reduction.

People love to complain about airlines, but when it comes to buying the ticket, they always choose the cheapest one, even if it was no carry-on luggage, or a place to stretch your feet.

In Europe, I personally only use budget airlines because they have a variety of direct flights to different destinations, wheras nicer airlines tent to mainly fly through hubs, meaning you would have to have stopovers.

I think this is often the case for other people as well.

Airlines - the food was terrible and the portions too small

People have shown that they value the hard product most - being able to get from A to B fast.

That is optimal. If we increase service people that could afford air travel will decrease. Maybe a good thing for the planet ... but not according to the people being priced out.

First class is extinct beast - since business started to have full flats, there is just no reason to fly first.

except in many places you never had reliable taxi service. they would just drive past you if they did not like how you looked let alone avoid your area if they decided it wasn't worth their time.

let alone the fact many work under conditions no uber or lyft driver would.

if anything taxi companies had to up their game treating both their employees and customers better and they did not want to because they had the service locked down to themselves

There’s some funny circular logic in this article and thread that businesses shouldn’t have regulation because businesses corrupt regulation therefore regulation is bad.

Reminds of me Zuckerberg’s argument that only Facebook is big enough to tackle the problems that Facebook has created by being so big.

Exactly what I thought when I saw the GDPR.

"Does any one else than big, established, companies have the means to really properly comply with that? Heck, I don't even know how to comply!"

It's really not that hard to comply with GDPR. The easiest way is not storing PII, and if you do, only do so with consent and have a way of deleting that data. That's already 80% of compliance.

That way of complying already benefits the companies who hold PII which proves GPS point.

True, and that's my default approach. But what about building a ML dataset and model?

Also, aren't we supposed to gather consent for every use, separately? And not prevent users from using the service should they refuse to share their data?

Or am I just confused, and should just spend more time looking into it, or pay some (supposedly expert) (expensive) lawyer ?

Have you seen new European Medical Device Regulation (MDR)? Especially classification rule 11 for software makes things interesting. Regulatory compliance is going to be difficult/costly for smes...

I was thinking the same thing. The regulation makes sense when purely looking at consumer/patient protection, but it really hurts competition and innovation. I would not be surprised if rule 11 gets revised. If you don't know: rule 11 states that all software that guides decision making on health issues is classified as higher risk. Basically any health related website or app is in scope and will need a certified quality management system. Very expensive to implement.

Oh my. Just when I thought of getting into patient management systems because every doctor and med student around me keeps complaining about those

You still can. There is an exception to MDR rule that says; "Information systems that are intended only to store, archive and transfer data are not qualified as medical devices in themselves."

Subsidiaries of big, established companies.

Econ 101 as part of Gen Ed leads to lots of half truths which are then taken as gospel.

Not sure why they would omit to mention the role of regulation in maintaining competitive markets? Is this done on purpose?

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