Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

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> These technologies didn't fix the problems. There is too much regulation, you can't do anything without a license. The only solutions are political, not technological.

> Everything feels like a scam within a scam. I feel dizzy just thinking about it. I'm completely demoralised. Everything related to career feels pointless, sisyphean because of the bureaucracy. Any work that pays well is useless at best, harmful at worst. It's either illegal or impossible to do anything which might provide value to people. Even if all the hurdles could be removed, I'm not even sure I want to contribute... For whose benefit?

None of this is because of regulation. It's all because of greed and unchecked grift and profit capture. Technology is making the world worse because of greed and capturing profit, not because of regulations. The work most of us are doing is harmful because of greed and capturing profit, not because of regulations. Everyone is living a lie because of greed and capturing profit, not because of regulations. These uncountable scams are all because of unregulated greed and profit. People on HN are mad, but they're acting out against an imagined "regulation boogieman," not what's actually causing all of the shit.

> None of this is because of regulation.

Disagree. Zoning law and regulation-driven credentialism are the closest thing to a root cause you can find for most of the problems with modern society; sure you can say "greed" but that's a permanent part of human nature, and most societies find a way to live with it. Today's world where for a family to succeed both parents have to be putting 40+ hours into bullshit fake work in a circular economy of bullshit fake solutions to bullshit fake problems so that they can afford to get their kids the right bullshit fake qualifications is a distinctly regulation-based phenomenon.

> These uncountable scams are all because of unregulated greed and profit.

Sure. But are they actually any worse than the regulated scams? Often the licensed and regulated stuff hurts the end victim more than the direct scams.

Sure, I agree that greed is the root of all problems. Regulations are a symptom of greed; people want to protect their interests and are willing to incrementally corrupt the system to achieve it; that's what a lot of regulations are.

But it's hard to fix greed. The solution to fix greed is way more radical, it's violent. The greedy will defend their interests with violence when confronted. The only non-violent solution I can think of is to let the system collapse, under their own direction. That's the only way the greedy would relinquish enough control to allow people the freedom to get things going again. There was a bit of this after COVID but it wasn't enough.

I just hope people can maintain their sanity through this. I hope it's not going to be an endless cycle of society repeatedly rebounding off from rock bottom... Never actually lifting itself out of the muck but basically always scraping rock bottom with only short temporary breaks.

As a developer, the system and code complexity we have to work with is increasing to the level that it should be considered mental assault. You need to develop a kind of apathy to get through life.

Not all regulation is a symptom of greed. Regulation can be written and passed with the intention of protecting the public good, promoting public health, preserving fair competition... That it sometimes works counter to those goals is a function of greed, a lack of accountability and and a lack of transparency. We write these laws with consistent check on accountability and transparency, but we keep electing sociopaths that want to game the system and sometimes go as far as screaming "deep-state" or "fraud, waste and abuse"... when they want to completely remove those checks and people keep falling for that bullshit.

True as well but personally I prefer people to regulate themselves though for that to happen, there needs to be very strong punishment for violations. Harm mitigation should be at the forefront of everyone's minds. Not quite compatible with the 'limited liability' legal construct. People won't regulate themselves unless they are afraid of consequences.

The regulation + limited liability combo takes away fear. The big companies doing harm love regulations, they breathe a sigh of relief when regulations are introduced. 'Regulatory clarity' they call it. They barely even know what harms the regulation is trying to prevent. They are disconnected from that.

I have personal experience with companies that consistently violate environmental regulations with very little understanding of the regulations they are violating beyond their effect on profit margins. They pay the fines or pay environmental engineers to help them pass an inspection that could potentially disrupt operations and are violating the same statutes 6 months later. The only regulatory clarity they care about is knowing which regulations can impact production and which can be gamed or paid off.

> That it sometimes works counter to those goals is a function of greed, a lack of accountability and and a lack of transparency.

The whole purpose of regulations is to reduce accountability (because instead of taking responsibility for their actions, entities instead just follow the regulations). It's not an accidental bug, it's a fundamental design flaw in the system.

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