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Comment by AequitasOmnibus | Hacker News Reader

This is such a spot on observation. But the incentives aren’t there for business competitors to self-regulate in an ethical manner.

That’s why we as users (and yes, we’re all users to various degrees) should push for more robust regulation. If, as you correctly note, most competitors are only going to operate in the legal-but-unethical space, change the law until the legal avenue and the ethical avenue are the same.

The libertarians will come out of the woodwork to say more regulation is not the answer, but when it comes to alternatives, watch the real world examples of “unregulated ethical businesses” melt away into the realm of the theoretical.

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I don't follow any particular political mindset. I watch patterns, and patterns in government regulation have shown me that there is just as much corruption in regulation as there is in businesses that are unethical.

So I have doubts that regulation is the answer. I would be more comfortable with putting my support behind people or small organizations that actually care about the specifics of this, then with 90% of politicians that mostly want to stay in power, and benefit off of their political position.

> watch the real world examples of “unregulated ethical businesses” melt away into the realm of the theoretical

Try an example of a regulated ethical business. Exxon? Verizon? Amazon? Nestle? UnitedHealth Group? Pfizer? General Motors? DuPont?

Regulation is just as much a pipe dream as libertarianism

Now try imagining those businesses in a world without regulation.

No one has suggested that regulation will produce ethical business. The proposal is to impose regulation to limit the unethical behavior of business, which is something quite different.

> Now try imagining those businesses in a world without regulation.

You’ve brought us back to the theoretical world we were trying to avoid…

Unless you're allergic to the entire concept of modern banking, I think most credit unions would apply. Local restaurants run by good people also would also seem to count.

Regulation reduces unethical behavior in the same way that laws reduce things like people killing each other. They don't eliminate bad behavior 100% but they reduce it by a lot. I grew up in the 70s and I can tell you what positive impact environmental regulation had on the world. It's not perfect but without these rules nothing would have happened. Big business fight every little step tooth and nail.

> I grew up in the 70s and I can tell you what positive impact environmental regulation had on the world. It's not perfect but without these rules nothing would have happened.

I grew up in East Germany and I can tell you what positive impact free markets had on my country. It's not perfect but without these freedoms nothing would have happened

Free market doesn't mean unregulated market

Unregulated market doesn't mean a market with no referees or judges to settle disputes.

When you have judges and referees you need rules. How else would they make decisions?

Funny thing is Adam Smith talks about this extensively despite being the poster child for an unregulated "free" market.

Adam Smith's free markets weren't about not having regulations. He was talking about markets free from the extractive rents going to the landed aristocracy. Rents on the farms meant workers food was more expensive so factories had to pay more to keep the workers from starving.

Smith wasn't an anarchist and didn't believe in a completely unregulated market, but rather that a free market involves careful regulation to ensure a fair playing ground. Yeah, there is also a lot about the problems of rent seeking and I agree there, but my point is that the free market he was referring to isn't the "free market" many people today associate with the term. We have similar issues to his concept of the invisible hand (which was only mentioned once in each book).

I am from the West! Markets certainly had a positive impact on the East but regulations also had a positive impact. You need both and constantly have to work on finding a good balance.

Regulation of these specific companies has saved many lives. We've reduced lead in gasoline which has increased IQ, decreased violence, and improved average well-being. We can find similar effects in each of these markets. While I agree that none of these markets act in a purely ethical manner it is hard to argue that regulation didn't reduce harm that these companies were causing prior to the regulation. If we perform purity tests we just give advantages to those doing the most harm as we squabble about the impossibility of doing no harm in a vastly complex and interconnected world. Instead, focus on harm reduction, which we can continually perform and converge towards a more perfect solution rather than requiring that we go all in or not at all.

Deregulation has saved lives just as regulation has. How many millions have been brought out of poverty and saved from starvation during the globalist revolution? My point is that regulation is not a panacea and sounds great in theory, just like free markets sound great in theory to others. An open mind and a flexible approach are warranted

"An open mind and a flexible approach are warranted"

Of course. You can't just blindly follow an ideology but you have to constantly think about the proper balance of all factors. Overregulation is not good and neither is underregulation.

> Deregulation has saved lives just as regulation has.

I don't disagree. I'm more an Adam Smith guy. Low regulation is good, but that doesn't mean zero. Zero regulation is just as terrible as the government picking winners and losers. These discussions require a lot of nuance. I, and I'm assuming many others, read your comment as a very typical libertarian "free market" (but like communism, has "never really existed"), as your comment doesn't even hint at a nuance. I tried to allude to this in mine with my comment about the incredible complexity of our modern world, but I guess this too was missed. So I hope that is abundantly explicit now.

It sure is. It makes me sad though that, depending on whatever side you are on, many of the commenters here don't seem to be so charitable and just assume zero nuance to the "other side's" position (of course, their side has ALL the nuance, e.g. only the good regulation, none of the bad, exactly the right amount and not too much, etc).

I don't mean to offend you, but reading the comments it was specifically yours where it seemed the nuance was removed. AequitasOmnibus was saying that we need regulation but to do it with care. There's nuance in that. Your comment was pretty reactionary and really just pointed at (near) universally disliked companies and asked how they were ethical. You set the bar for rebuttal pretty low since there simply needs to be a single proof of contradiction. This may not have been the thought you were trying to express but it is clear that I'm not the only one that interpreted your comment in this manner (and I think it should be clear to you what happened here). I want to promote better discussions and it seems like you do too, so I want to give some feedback so we can hopefully have better ones in the future and actually discuss what we want to discuss instead of fighting. I hope this comment helps.

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