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Comment by yarekt | Hacker News Reader

Regulation is violence? sorry for putting my socialist hat on, but free market is efficient, so efficient that without regulation it’ll optimise away human happiness and find a way to turn tears into profits. Regulation is basically saying that you can make money in ways that benefits the humanity also, at least in theory. Lobbying and corrupt regulators muddy the waters

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Of course, laws/regulations are enforced by the party in a country that has a monopoly on violence, and use the threat of violence to enforce (either imprisonment or a monetary fine, monetary fines are a derivative of kidnapping as money takes time to accumulate). Of course I'm not arguing against these functions in general, they should be used in ways that prevent an even worse act of violence (ex. a corporation wasting the time and money of millions of people by selling them a dangerous product). The application layer is where I believe laws and regulations are appropriate though, not preventing the development of the technology (ex. trying to limit who, how, and when someone/some company can do a large training run for an AI video model, because AI video models will be leveraged by scammers down the line).

Threat of violence is not violence.

A policeman standing on a public square threatening to incarcerate anybody who is violent results in no violence actually happening at that square. Take away that regulation (in form of the policeman) and watch the actual violence start.

That’s a very narrow view of humanity and morality. Only psychopaths (in a clinical sense, not derogatory) model their actions strictly by what’s legal.

Many things are moral, but have no legal coverage, some things are moral but illegal, and some immoral but legal.

Hmm, I see where you’re coming from. Monetary fines impact corporations “where it hurts”, i.e. the bottom line.

But yea, that’s the only language that a corporate entity understands, unfortunately.

Another way to view it is that valid regulations (which in this context includes statute) are about handling externalities, structuring things so that the market must react to them.

One of the most fundamental limits on the market is the criminalization of killing other people, giving it a prohibitive extra "cost". This kind of restriction on the choices of participants is so incredibly well-accepted that we simply take it for granted, and seldom think about it as a "regulation" even though it is.

That regulation prevents CEOs from "rationally" deciding it costs less to assassinate rivals' employees than it costs to improve their product.

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