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Comment by testhest | Hacker News Reader

The unintended consequences of laws often vastly outweigh the benefits. I am a big proponent of time limiting laws as well as requiring higher levels of support upon renewal, that way laws that have serious unintended consequences will be removed automatically.

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If we had functioning government, this could possibly work.

Instead, in the current national regime, it has a tendency to ossify current laws. Most legislation can only pass when the stars align (one party has house/senate/president), so even fine legislation would regularly ‘expire’ and not get renewed.

Business planning is also thrown by self destructing legislation. A stable regulatory regime allows businesses to invest appropriately and optimally. Changing regulations more often (via expiring laws that might or might not renew) will necessarily introduce inefficiency.

Business planning is also thrown by new laws

> Instead, in the current national regime, it has a tendency to ossify current laws

Housing is hyper-local. And California (or all the places with housing crises for that matter) tend to have a de-facto one-party government. So it has nothing to do with national regime or aligning stars. Voters just don't want affordable housing.

You're describing sunset clause or sunset provision!

A law requires further legislative action for it to not disappear on a certain pre-set date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision

Another variation I think I read about is where the law is implemented with an explicit goal that must be achieved by a certain date, and if the goal is achieved, the law becomes a regular law; if the pre-defined metric is not met by the certain date, the law disappears.

If a software team just argued about what software to build, finally came to an agreement on what they should build and then built it saying it was done without getting any feedback from the users of the software would not be successful. Likewise government shouldn't release a law and expect to never have to tweak it. In fact they should be prepared to make changes until they get a satisfactory result.

There also needs to be a firm consensus on how those changes get tweaked. Guiding principles that don't get changed with the legislation.

This is how laws work in the US though, it’s called rule making authority. For example, the clean air act doesn’t specify any of the levels or pollutants, it empowers (or in that case creates) the Department or Agency to make rules within some often quite broad guidelines. That agency will then conduct research, hold public meetings that nobody goes to, and then make rules which are enforced under the law.

Edit: those laws sometimes get amended by congress and sometimes extended or have their enforcement deprioritized by the executive.

That how its done, said the King. Been to plenty of stakeholder meetings where the outcome was pre-determined and the meeting was simply a rouse to demonstrate public involvement.

Survey asks: Rate the benefits of this plan

- Its good

- Its great

- Its awesome

99% of respondents said this plan is good or better

There is no chance that those were the three options at a federal public meeting, primarily because that type of survey is not how public meetings work.

It’s certainly the case that public meetings are not binding on the agency, nor should they be. We already have a process for determining the will of the people and it’s not “turf the problem to the 5-10 people who showed up to this meeting on a random Tuesday”.

Public meetings are one part of a larger process.

> the clean air act . . . empowers (or in that case creates) the Department or Agency to make rules within some often quite broad guidelines

I think the SCOTUS disagrees. This evidence among others:

https://nypost.com/2022/06/30/scotus-restricts-upholds-epas-...

Your claim is how I thought we all believed government worked for many decades, though.

I mean, that is how it works, but sometimes agencies overstep their delegated authority and are overruled by the courts. Then they have to go back to the congress and get their authority amended or not.

I think its a lack of guiding principles as to how new legislation gets drawn up. It leads to stubborn refusal to do anything. Most people don't mind change, so long as the change is predictable and their neighborhood doesn't get worse.

Plus a lot of the fears are based in the wave of public housing that was constructed in the 70s. Tenants with no investment in their dwellings will shoot a community into a death spiral. Look at Detroit and numerous other cities. There are other issues involved, but that was significant factor.

> often vastly

Well, there are two exaggerations.

But time limiting laws won't work. There will not be enough time to review them before they expire, so they'll all be extended en masse. It'll just be another bureaucratic step that costs time and work.

> I am a big proponent of time limiting laws

Like the assault weapons ban?

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