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Comment by cabaalis | Hacker News Reader

I hold a belief in small government, but the spam mail I've been receiving since building a house cries loudly for regulation.

They make this stuff look so official. They use IRS fonts. They print it on pink paper. They write "final notice" when that's meaningless. They have your PII from the public records and make it look like it's from your mortgage group.

That kind of business should be treated as fraud. Who knows how many elderly or otherwise have lost tons of money from these garbage "companies." They should be ashamed.

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Regulation exists to protect people, property, the environment, or national interests. It largely comes from a reaction to harms.

That’s not to say things evolve and regulation should keep up (or that it’s ineffective for its goals), but I don’t understand why there’s such a fervent backlash against it, particularly from the right. It largely feels fueled by those who wish to profit from its undermining, and one particular party has let it be known they’re open for business in that respect.

Did these concerns exist in say, the 1960s? 1910s?

> but I don’t understand why there’s such a fervent backlash against it

Because it’s often both overreaching, ineffective, and/or harmful to unrelated things. See: the war on drugs, gay marriage until the last decade, etc, etc.

The more you do at the federal level, the more fallout it’s going to have and the harder it’s going to be to fix.

> and one particular party has let it be known they’re open for business in that respect.

This is a strawman to help delegitimize people who are against particular regulations for philosophical reasons. I don’t recommend repeating it if you want actual discussions. It’s like claiming most of the pro-choice movement is driven by the abortion industry.

Some of this really is pretty wild. I got junk mail within a few weeks of closing that was made to look like fake late/missed payment notices and foreclosure warnings and insurance mistakes and all sorts of horrible lies. I am curious if they maintain the quality of the illusion further into the scam but not curious enough to find out.

It's gotten so bad that I can usually identify the junk by how official it claims to be. Real official correspondence is often pretty simple.

And also looking for presorted first class postage. That's a huge giveaway that you're looking at trash.

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