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Comment by computerthings | Hacker News Reader

No, it's because it's not true, we actually like the things because they make life better for regular people, and not just the rich who exploit them. Universal healthcare, social welfare, consumer protection, environmental regulations. It's not a foreigner saying it, it's a clueless outsider who wants to get rid of protections for others he doesn't need to make more profit. That touches a nerve because hands off. We SEE the countries that have no regulations and we don't give a fuck about their total size of the economy. Thanks, but no thanks. We saw the sheer brain worms that lead to Brexit, too.

If the EU is so terrible why not leave us alone instead of trying to subvert us? Let us live in squalor and do your super shiny mega success stuff that works so well for you.

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What he said about regulation in the EU is so outrageous that this is the EU Commission's plan for the next 5 years:

"we will radically lighten the regulatory load for people, businesses and administrations in the EU. To boost prosperity and resilience, the Commission will propose unprecedented simplification to unleash opportunities, innovation and growth." [1] (Published this very morning!)

Hmm... DOGEU?

[1] https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-making-process/planning...

I doubt that includes no longer wanting to look into X and election interference, which Musk probably counts as one of those more pesky regulations, while with the other side of his mouth talking about transparency. No, DOGE would be more like, say, pointing at the title of a project from 20 years ago and go "woke! I don't know what this is! far leftist! wasteful!" while persecuting anyone who looked into fishy things about Tesla and SpaceX, kinda like Trump fired FBI agents who investigated Jan 6th.

We don't do that here. That's banana republic stuff. If private security barred politicians while some script kiddies rifle just copy private records, while some dude talked about getting rid of the Department of Education, there'd be a whole other state of emergency in most countries in Europe, certainly in Germany.

> Universal healthcare, social welfare, consumer protection, environmental regulations.

This is a strawman. Musk isn't attacking these things.

What he is attacking is excessive regulations imposed on new technology, often pre-emptively or without significant demonstrable harm. Regulations that aren't solving any real world problem but exist for political reasons. To allow politicians to message "we'll protect you from the Americans" and to allow regulators to continue having a reason to be employed.

Why is Musk attacking these things in the EU? Why does he care what we do?

Why did he start DOGE? To enrich, empower or to actually fix something?

Given recent news: the steal money from New York. Very empowering.

Most big picture thinkers are like this.

They see problems that exist and want to fix them, regardless of whether they are occurring in their own backyard or more broadly.

His companies also employ tens of thousands of people in Europe. 11.500 in Berlin alone, and many multiples of that within the supply chain.

He isn't a big picture thinker, he's not even a thinker. Show me a coherent "big picture" thought of his. Or I could show you many things he thinks are very deep any moderately bright teenager would be ashamed to claim.

And he acts the opposite as you describe. His factory is causing problems because he didn't even think about where to get the water from.

https://tnfd.global/knowledge-bank/teslas-reliance-on-ground...

No one asked for his assistance. No one accepted it. At that point it isn't assistance, it's pestering. Maybe even harassment depending on how long it occurs

If Musk wants "zero regulations as a baseline" for the US you can call that an educated prediction.

And he seems to be just generally attacking all sorts of things he has no clue about, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996385

And every time I have heard him talk it was just a gish gallop, not to mention the utterly idiotic (and false) stuff he boosts on Twitter. I haven't even seen anything that would lead me to believe he could seriously think about these things, not to mention showing any evidence he ever did.

Zero regulations is a sensible baseline. You then add any regulations with a clear demonstrated need.

Otherwise, you're saying the baseline should be to keep regulations even if they aren't needed.

> “Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”

> we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation

"we can always add it back in" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976708

That sounds.. obvious?

Regulations should need to justify their existance, they shouldn't just exist by default without a reason.

they don't "exist by default" or without reason

Zero regulations is an asinine position. The vast bulk of regulations that were added over the past hundred years were in response to demonstrable harms. If someone wants to get rid of an existing regulation, it is up to them to show why it is no longer needed.

>You then add any regulations with a clear demonstrated need.

The US has, for 300 years. I'm sure countries within the EU have an even longer history of that.

>you're saying the baseline should be to keep regulations even if they aren't needed.

No, they already proved their needs. The onus is on the new plantiffs to disprove the needs. No one's done that so far.

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