Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

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!00% agree. 'we need less regulation' is never the right answer, 'we need the right regulations' is. The article points out areas that improvements to regulation, and process, would help and that second part 'and process' is often overlooked. A complex regulatory structure may be needed but that doesn't mean it has to be as hard as it is. Is it really the problem that the regulations were complex or was it a problem that navigating them was a challenge? I've had this discussion with local permitting where I live. Permits are needed, but that doesn't mean they should be hard or that the job of the city is to just tell you no. There is a world where the city is a partner trying to help you achieve something so when permitting comes up, and you pay your fees, the answer they give isn't just 'yes/no' but 'you may want to consider' and 'let's work together on a plan that...'. There isn't a regulation here, just a process improvement and the difference can be massive. A similar view of how to improve federal regulations, through simple process improvement and not just regulatory change, could really make a difference.

Sure, but sometimes a repealing a bad piece of regulation doesn’t necessitate a replacement.

Policy reform decisions need to be evidence based and sometimes evidence suggests ditching the law over updating. And sometimes it’ll say update it.

What makes Good regulation is path dependent (in respect to existing institutions) and context sensitive, it’s important to analysis the costs of enforcement, not just the administrative side but in terms of lost opportunities. Do they make a suite of desirable economic activity infeasible or unjustifiable more expensive (relative to the goal of the policy)

> There isn't a regulation here, just a process improvement and the difference can be massive

Are those binding constraints? If so it’s effectively regulation or part of the regulatory regime even if they aren’t the rules themselves

I was typing that in the shower, but a more complete version of "Do they make a suite of desirable economic activity infeasible or unjustifiable more expensive (relative to the goal of the policy)" is

Does the added benefit or reduced cost of the law outsize any cost or lost benefit from the introduction of the law? This question isn't always asked and in many cases it's only asked after someone picks up on a problem well after the fact.

Understandably you can't always wait for measurements to come in to evaluate a policy, it's also a political environment in which these decisions are made. That fact also leads to reactionary regulation as its the easiest way for leaders to show they're responding to a problem.

Having the ability to gather evidence to assess policy in a timely manner is actually pretty hard without some kind of history of research in the space, and you need to develop institutions that help answer these questions faster and with some level of independence from the government to demonstrate a level of legitimacy. Even in a scenario where evidence continues to come in, saying "the existing legislation is unideal", you'll have people with who have made a living out of the existing regime defend that status quo. And the longer that legislation is in place the harder it will be to challenge those people as they will only become more organised as time goes on, but in a democracy all you need is the people by and large on your side, but an organised beneficiary of the status quo will definitely not go down without a fight.

It's very difficult to generalise stuff like this.

Ok, I'll bite... how do you type in the shower?

Aren't most phones these days fairly waterproof?

Yes, but they're a PITA to use when wet because the touch screen doesn't work.

I guess I don’t stand directly underneath while typing, occasionally wipe water droplets off the screen, and ask myself if I should wrap up my shower first

> 'we need less regulation' is never the right answer

Sometimes it is. For example some countries had or have regulation that only nobles can work in specific professions or wear specific clothes or live in specific places. Some had the same but race-based.

This entire class of regulation deserved to be thrown out. And yes, at least partially there are claims how it was necessary for safety or whatever else.

There are are also some dumb taxes with bad side effects like tax on windows.

Some regulation is terrible and deserves to be removed rather than replaced or improved.

I think you may be misinterpreting the point. It's not that we never need less regulation, this may be the case. We should never make 'less regulation' the target. The right regulation may be less in some cases.

Less regulation is a good target.

Just not sole one.

Harm reduction (a good reason for regulation) also needs to be balanced with it.

But piles of regulation have costs - both in reduction of competitiveness, increasing expenses, reducing willingness of people to follow and support it and so on.

Regulation is bad, just it is often less bad than alternatives.

But reducing amount of regulation is a good goal.

Otherwise you end in situation where you need lawyer to understand anything, you are not allowed to throw torn socks into garbage and general population applauds people breaking law and happily support it.

"Less regulation is a good target" is only true under regimes where good faith outcomes can be expected without regulation. Given the frequency with which financial incentives align with undesirable outcomes there's no evidence to support this idea.

Regulations aren't free.

Say someone silly makes a rule that your need X hours of training annually to be an interior decorator. Now besides the training, you also have to know that that's required, you have to maintain records to prove you've had the training, the government needs a process for verifying that you've had the training, ...

That's the point of regulations.

If correct/moral/societally beneficial behavior was the most profitable then no regulation would be needed.

Lacking regulation also has a cost, it's just not to the unregulated. Dumping waste into a river is cheap for the business doing the dumping, but has environmental impacts on everyone downstream. It's more expensive to properly dispose of or recycle waste material, that's why a regulation that you must do that is needed.

The market simply does not hold bad actors accountable in any meaningful way. As a result, it pays to be a bad actor.

It's simply not a black and white issue. There are bad regulations to be sure. But it's not nearly as simple as saying that less regulation is better or that more regulation is better. The right amount is good and the wrong amount is bad. What that amount is is up for debate.

Sadly, sometimes people are wrong.

This applies also to enacting monstrously stupid regulations. Or even ones that were introduced entirely as revenge or to create opportunity for corruption.

So you identify that tools can be used wrong, but still choose to blame the tool instead of the user abusing it?

That all sounds good, we just need to make sure "X" is reasonable. Having reassurance that any licensed decorator had an amount of training/testing is good for the customer.

Unfortunately your silly rule is something that exists (not for interior decorators of course) but for countless other trade jobs (barber, plumber, etc). Whether that's good or bad I can't say

It does exist! https://occupationallicensing.com/occupation/interior-design...

Yes, it has gotten that bad.

>Whether that's good or bad I can't say

I personally see it as good. Why wouldn't I want someone I trust with my hair or pipes to not have something to vouch for them?

It's only a downside if you see cost as the most important thing about all else. The clear consequence is that a trained barber/plumber will require higher compensation to make up for the training, and due to less supply since not everyone will be able to get a license.

It's unambiguously good, and that's coming from the perspective of someone who is routinely frustrated by regulations around residential plumbing and electrical work. It would be utterly insane to remove minimum credential and testing requirements from trades where fucking up results in catastrophic damage to a structure, fires, etc.

Note that I am not saying that "throw away regulation, always less regulation is better".

That would be asking to drop all regulations.

I am saying that regulations have cost so you should have as little as regulation as possible to achieve wanted effect.

And wanted effect often should not be literally zero of accidents or bribery or corruption. As it may be either impossible to achieve or extra side effects not worth it past certain point.

In other words minimisation of how much regulations you have should be one of targets.

What we "we need" is less corruption, this means better educations, educations that actually teach the secondary considerations of why these regulations exist, and how many corruptions they prevent. Then that education should continue with how our over regulated situation is caused by not teaching critical analysis such that these corruptions look like a good idea at all, they become exploited, and the end result is over regulation.

Or will education make things worse by teaching groups how to use corruption to create even more regulations that benefits them against everything else.

>by teaching groups how to use corruption to create even more regulations

more people who learn corruption is massively outbalanced by more people who will be civilly active and realize "this is bad for us, let's vote him out". As it is now, they simply trick the non-active people into thinking their corruption is good. See: 2024 national US elections.

I tend to be in the camp that educating people in general is better than not; we've been trying the "educate people in narrow silos" approach, but that creates a really gullible population. Which is kind of why things are in such a mess.

I feel this is exactly the same as efficiency. It isn't that we want inefficient solutions. But aiming for efficiency as a target often produces perverse incentives.

https://grugbrain.dev/#grug-on-complexity I think this section on complexity sums it up really well whether you’re talking about code or laws

> It's not that we never need less regulation

this would be going against

> 'we need less regulation' is never the right answer

Based on your opinion of local permitting I have a strong suspicion you've never applied for any sort of local permit for something where issuance of the permit requires any real consideration.

Petty homeowner renovation stuff is basically a weird tax in disguise. They don't care, they were never gonna tell you no. They just want your money and want you to make work for whatever trade is being made work for in the process.

Go for a variance and then see how you feel about it. Better yet, go try and create any sort of occupied structure or commercial use where one doesn't already exist.

Local permitting is riddled with bike shedding, people trying to avoid responsibility, people trying to advance their pet interests at other people's cost and probably more stuff I'm forgetting. At least with state level stuff you can be all "I've paid my engineer big bucks, here's there work output, here's why it's GTG, and if it is in fact GTG they typically rubber stamp it. But little guys can't afford to play in that arena unfortunately.

>Petty homeowner renovation stuff is basically a weird tax in disguise.

Where I live, in California, that's a direct response to a state constitutional amendment that strangled property taxes (and pretty much any other taxes). Because permits are fee-for-service, they're not considered a tax in the same way, and can be increased freely. Permitting costs ballooned predictably.

So, yes, it's literally a tax in disguise, because, ironically, we've over regulated municipalities abilities to raise tax revenue in the most straightforward, fair, intuitive way possible, so every service has to pay for itself or find a weird oblique source of revenue, and services pursued by people with money (such as modifying a property you owned) get to pay for other things too.

I am actively trying to work on non-legislated ways of improving the permitting process for my local city. I have met with builders and city officials and I have done a review of programs in other cities (comparable and larger) to find programs that help get to yes and how the city can support them. Key are things like pre-approved plans and builder workshops. What I have found so far is this is 99% communication, or lack there of, and almost no actual bad actors actively trying to create harm. I think approaches like this can go a long way to helping. Basically, if we keep the conversation only at 'regulations need to be changed' then we are missing a huge opportunity to actually address the problems people are really having.

This literally doesn't disagree with its parent comment at all from my point of view. You're describing badly implemented or corruptly designed regulations which cause inficiencies. I think everyone here is agreeing those are a problem.

> !00% agree. 'we need less regulation' is never the right answer, 'we need the right regulations' is.

Well, much of the time the right regulation is 'let existing general laws (eg around safety and fraud) and contract law and private agreements handle it'.

But it's pretty fair to sum that Right Regulation up as 'less regulation'.

To give a crazy example: the Right Regulation about the colour of your underwear is to just let you decide what you want to wear, also known as no regulation of the colour of your underwear.

See https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation.html for less silly example of airline regulation.

>and private agreements handle it

We've had an example all year of why that's a pretty horrible idea. At least, why it's bad for the general public to let private aggreements run rampant.

Sorry, what are you talking about?

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