Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

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These points of friction are so frustratingly stupid. Successful businesses are rare and delicate things. Every small fee is going to be some genius deciding to stay at their desk job and just take a salary rather than creating a couple of million dollars of value for their community.

And the reasons for all this regulation are fundamentally weak. Regulators tend towards taking no risks. Small businesses are the part of society that are most useful when they experiment and ... take big risks. If the risk is removed, in 20 years there will be a lot less reward than would otherwise have been the case.

But to be realistic about the costs - these regulations were probably put in place because of things like like food poisoning or people getting crushed to death in warehouses. There would be real downsides to removing them. But the crux of the issue is (as can be seen in Asia) it is possible to get economic miracles and build up entire new industries propelling people into a future they did not see coming through steady investment in new industries. People are way underestimating the damage that locking in the status-quo does during this era of miracles. Triggering big economic improvements is worth a lot more than a futile exercise in causing no harm. It is impossible to do no harm, and so these regulations will fail to really achieve their goals while setting communities up for less success in the medium term.

Capitalists routinely wipe the floor with people who don't take enough risk. Risk is necessary to get the best outcomes. Where will the risk taking happen if people try to regulate it out of existence?

This is a strawman argument. The point of regulation is not to prevent all harm, it is to prevent the worst harms. I see no evidence that allowing the possibility of the worst outcomes is necessary to achieve the best outcomes.

For every foodborne illness prevented or permanent disability from an on the job accident avoided, the community saves a couple million dollars.

If you want less friction, then fund the regulators. We slash city budgets and then wonder why health departments rely on fees and inspectors take weeks.

> Every small fee is going to be some genius deciding to stay at their desk job and just take a salary rather than creating a couple of million dollars of value for their community.

I feel you are being dogmatic here rather than evidence based. The markets for restaurants in a given neighbourhood is rather static - and roughly zero-sum in terms of earnings, but _not_ in terms of quality. If you encourage some "fragile genius" who can't follow instructions for fire safety, food hygiene, payroll accounting or plumbing to open a restaurant, you will a vibrant mix of more unsafe restaurants, unhygienic food, unpaid employees and clogged sewers, all of which are a burden on the rest of society.

That isn't really what these regulations would do though; if that is the goal then an inspection program would achieve them more effectively and with better outcomes.

All pre-start paperwork does is filter out people who are diligent at paperwork, because they have to do a lot more to get to the starting line.

> Capitalists routinely wipe the floor with people who don't take enough risk. Risk is necessary to get the best outcomes. Where will the risk taking happen if people try to regulate it out of existence?

This is a straw man argument.

Good entrepreneurship is taking a risk on a new cuisine that is underserved in your city, which no one is regulating.

Bad entrepreneurship is taking a risk on inadequate food safety and fire suppression equipment, which municipalities are indeed trying to regulate out of existence.

In SF, the first half is also regulated since your business can be stalled on the grounds that there are already too many there. For instance, having two ice cream stores on the same block.

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