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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

This notion that each industry knows best how to regulate itself keeps ending us up in one disaster after another.

The most regulated industries in America are banking, medicine, and education. It seems to be doing a good job.

Meanwhile internet technology is among the least regulated. Someone needs to do something to ensure a vibrant competitive landscape.

> banking, medicine

So either this is extreme sarcasm or extremely hilarious in a laugh-gets-stuck-in-your-throat kind of way.

Yes, your comment is witty, but I think it's critically flawed. Firstly, medicine and education should be public services, in the sense that their management should have the imperative of increasing living conditions for the populace rather than generating capital. It can also be added that arguably, the purpose of banking is to increase living standards, instead of being a business for those that control it.

Secondly, you're implying that the correlation between regulation and 'success' in those sectors implies causation between the two. Do you really think that the problem with health care in the US is that it's not regulated ENOUGH? Similarly, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you implying that education should be privatised? And lastly, do you think that the success of internet technology is a result of the fact that it has been less regulated than other industries (I'm not saying that it SHOULD be regulated, I'm just questioning whether or not that is a crucial factor)?

If that was intended only as a joke I understand, however I think it's important to think seriously about these things if we are to every try to fix them.

EDIT: typo

Using your logic, shouldn't access to knowledge and information (the internet) be a public service too? Shouldn't management have the imperative of increasing living conditions for the populace rather than generating capital apply to internet as well?

The logic behind the reasoning for healthcare, education, banking, telcom being heavily regulated is extremely flawed. The real reason those sectors are heavily regulated is so they can lock in profits with little effort.

"The real reason those sectors are heavily regulated is so they can lock in profits with little effort."

Exactly, how do so many people miss this?

The internet is more than access to knowledge and information, and I agree that the sectors responsible for knowledge and information should have the imperative of increasing living conditions, and not generating capital. This is why Wikipedia should not be a business; this is why universities should not be businesses and this why they should receive tax dollars. Note however, that whether or not they should be regulated is a totally different matter. I was questioning the notion that the problem with banking, medicine, and education in the US is excessive regulation.

On the other hand, companies like Amazon and Facebook have little to do with broadening access to knowledge and information (barring the latter in a trivial sense of the word), and are oriented towards generating capital, so I don't think the rhetorical questions that you open with are applicable here.

I'd like to hear you elaborate on why the reasoning for regulation is flawed in the cases of healthcare, education, banking, telecom.

>"in the sense that their management should have the imperative of increasing living conditions for the populace rather than generating capital"

Couldn't this be said of the food industry, the clothing industry, etc.? How are you not arguing for communism?

if the banks and wallstreet had it their way, there would not be many regulations

demonstrably false. The major wall street banks have lobbied for arcane regulation for decades. See of all the inclusions at their request into the Dowd-Frank bill, or SarbOx, etc. The federal reserve act of 1913 was the a major step up in regulation of the banking sector, and was primarily pushed by the largest banks at the time. Former lobbyists have stated that their stated strategy is to create barriers to entry in legal compliance costs so smaller competitors can't effectively compete.

America has the world's preeminent financial sector and medical sector, and when you adjust for demographics its K12 education sector is in line with that of western European countries, while its university system is again preeminent in the world.

The situation in the US is not quality, but access. But the same phenomenon exists for internet technology (e.g. The digital divide).

This notion that industry needs regulating keeps ending us up in one disaster after another.

Who was it who said "when buying and selling are legislated, the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators?"

How would the free market prevent the Fertilizer plant from exploding and killing all those people?

Fertilizer plants are expensive? As are wrongful death lawsuits?

Not saying this is enough but no one is exploding these things for profit.

Tort reform in Texas HIGHLY limits the payout on a wrongful death lawsuit. It'd barely be a dent in a days business for the plant.

Theoretically civil lawsuits, or the threat of such.

Explosions are very bad for business not only is your valuable plant destroyed but you can't make fertilizer until you build a new one. Existing and potential employees would demand higher wages and/or increased safety measures after an accident. Neither the free free nor a regulatory body can reliably prevent all accidents. Probably has more to do with how the interested parties value life and property.

That's a great theory, but real life has shown time and time again that businesses don't always act in their own long-term interests and individuals aren't rational actors. And people aren't satisfied when the "cost of business" to reach the end-goal of having poor businesses weeded out is people's lives.

Except they work on the idea "oh that will never happen", ala BP oil rig explosions.

They refused to build a blast wall and congress defunded inspections so the last one was in the 90s so there was never any enforcement.

The industry under discussion (communications) generally does not risk lives, i.e., no catastrophe when you screw up.

Some types of industry do risk lives. Don't confuse safety regulations with other business regulations. They serve completely different purposes.

We should regulate the hell out of fertilizer depots, power generators, medical software, flight. For good reason.

Communications can, in fact, kill people. High-intensity electromagnetic emissions. Those cell towers in the middle of the city have to be very thougthfully planned and installed.

If "high-intensity electromagnetic emissions" from cell towers kill people, I doubt making them safe is just a matter of placement.

If you want to place some in the middle of a city, they will be close to a lot of people, and if their emissions kill people, it's probably not a good idea to place them near lots of people. But they have been placed pretty much everywhere. It appears that either you're overstating the dangers, or we're both about to die any second now.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedian_protester.png

How did the regulated market prevent it from blowing up?

How did a law against murder prevent murders from happening?

If you've been paying any attention at all to the West, TX, story, you'd be aware that the regulators were largely defundend and eviscerated by anti-regulation interests.

Gov. Perry got a little steamed when his "Business is Booming" campaign was highlighted:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/perry-disgusted-by-ca...

Edit: better story link to cartoon.

P.J. O'Rourke said it. Nothing else explains regulatory capture so succinctly.

That would be an interesting experiment - fully unregulated airwaves. Imagine AT&T jamming Verizon's 3G signal, private transmitter hijacking terminals, etc.

Well, in the jamming case, Verizon would probably jam AT&T back. So neither is getting any revenue, and they are left to work out a truce or face bankruptcy.

There exists swathes of practically unlicensed spectrum, such as ham radio and 2.4GHz. While regulation exists, large scale enforcement is pretty much unheard of, yet it works pretty well.

The big cellular telecom standards (GSM and CDMA) assume a very orderly environment (contrasting the 801.11x standards that are more adaptive), so they would probably look different in a world with unregulated airwaves.

EDITED to add: For the purpose of such a thought experiment, It's not practical to imagine what would happen if the current GSM 2G and 3G spectrum just became unlicensed overnight. There is a huge infrastructure investment, both on the carrier and consumer ends that would become worthless, and this is clearly undesirable. Rather, imagine a block of airwaves (say, ex-military or analogue broadcast TV) being released with zero or minimal regulation (no exclusivity, basically).

2.4 GHZ are regulated in the only dimension that matters for spectrum: power output. And unlicensed devices are all inspected and approved by the FCC.

The ISM bands are vastly less regulated. It's some of the most useful spectrum because of that.

I get the point of view. I disagree with it, but even more, I find it jarring to apply a faith-based approach to thinking about these things in lieu of a critical assessment one. As if it were sufficient to cut through all the tangle and uncertainty with, like, "Daniel 11:3 'And a great king shall stand up ...'" and think that was case and point.

What's more, it's hardly clear that you've got this proverb the right way around: It seems as likely that corrupt legislators create regulation to enrich them and their kind, as opposed to well-intentioned regulation leading to the corruption of legislators. I've cut out the middle - corrupt legislators creating corrupt legislation - which is what we actually have and also the sort of murk that doesn't lend itself to witticism.

Corruption USA style.

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