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Comment by _Understated_ | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea why you are being downvoted... perhaps FB zealots fear the truth.

Regulation is exactly what large corporations want. Regulation prevents competition from ever getting started.

What's an extra £30 million a year for regulatory compliance to someone like FB, or Google, or any billion dollar corp? It's literally zero. Nothing at all. The (insignificant) cost of doing business.

For a startup? It's certain death right at the idea stage...

I would put money on FB actually helping government draft regulations _against_ FB themselves knowing that they won't be financially affected by them and that they will help kill any potential competition from ever getting started.

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Is this a specifically american thing, that regulations are bad? Thats exactly what FB would say. Next you tell me, that "trickle up economics" are bad, and we should try "trickle down"

Regulation tends to protect incumbents everywhere.

Whether or not you consider that bad depends on how much you value progress over stability. Stability often seems fine for the first decade or too, until one day you pause to wonder why you’re still connecting to the internet using acoustic coupler modems, or paying hundreds of dollars per month for insulin.

I'm a fan of regulation where it's necessary. For example, when it comes to things like building sites they are incredibly safe now, thanks to many regulations. I'd argue that they're an absolute necessity.

However, for some things, like website I visit on the internet, the regulation should be all but nonexistent (for the most part, there are likely some things like child porn and generally illegal stuff that should be covered).

And I'm in Scotland, not the US

Everyone wants to have regulations "where its necessary". This boils down to "rules for thee but not for me". If you work in construction, you want more building site safety. If you are the own who uses his money to construct one building after another, you want to have it cheaper, so less safety. Democracy is the process of finding a nice middle ground.

Nowadays, it seems that common people are mostly convinced by the rich to vote against their own interest.

> This boils down to "rules for thee but not for me"

I don't believe that. Taking the building site example, I'd rather work on one that's got a bunch of site posters up and does all the right safety stuff than one ran by a bunch of cowboys with no regard for my safety...

> Nowadays, it seems that common people are mostly convinced by the rich to vote against their own interest.

Perhaps, but the rich have control over the propaganda machines like social media and MSM so it's no wonder people are convinced that they're doing the right thing.

It is very American, and seem to see people speaking out about it more there, but I don't think it is quite limited to the US.

It does go hand-in-hand with the failed thinking of trickle-down economics: In other words, conservatives use this talking point. I think it is louder in the US simply because the trust in government that you would find in, say, Norway simply doesn't exist and you get a few more "regulation in print only" there, it seems.

And of course some regulations limit who does some things, but in a lot of cases, we probably wouldn't want folks that refuse to follow regulations - particularly when they deal with health and safety.

Its basically in every country where people vote against their best interest because rich people told them to do so, but it isnt as celebrated as much. I agree that if the government misuses the population in every way possible, that you start to lose trust in it. But how can it be that people think the solution to this is less democracy, more power to companies? It looks like some weird form of masochism.

Every law creates and restricts freedom. Food safety laws restricts the freedom of restaurants: need to clean kitchen, remove all the cockroaches etc., but gives the people the freedom to eat food everywhere without getting sick.

More regulations on FB restricts its freedom to misuse the attention of the population to make more money, but also gives citizens the freedom to consume less fake news.

Yeah this pretty much sums up the the corporate playbook. Build a regulatory moat which makes it impossible for startups to compete... Use the government to reframe honest entrepreneurs as criminals (who are in breach of regulations) in order to protect corporate interests.

These days you can't take a crap without a license...

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