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Comment by ecocentrik | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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