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How else do you propose new technology become legal if not by meeting with government regulators to promote change? You can't just sell self driving cars becau

• jMyles 11y ago
  I propose that "legal" is the default state for new inventions. The time and manner of invention and evolution do not yield to government nor even recognize its purview. I think it's becoming clear to all of us that the internet will not abide government and I really don't want it to have to come to a head in the form of violence. Think about it this way: Seven generations hence, do you really think that internet will be a triviality to be 'regulated' by cronies?
  • chaz72 11y ago
    Legal is the default state for devices that don't use public roads, public airwaves, etc.
    • jMyles 11y ago
      This is a no true Scotsman fallacy. There's no reason that roads and airwaves need to be managed by violence.
      • gress 11y ago
        How do you suggest dealing with drunk drivers or getaway cars?
      • gnaritas 11y ago
        Law doesn't require reason, it's a popularity contest, not a theorem.
        • jMyles 11y ago
          Surely you realize that this position is not universally held? For a primer on an alternative view, start with The Law: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44800/44800-h/44800-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44800/44800-h/44800-h.htm
          • gnaritas 11y ago
            Universally held or not, it's a fact, not a matter of belief; laws are passed by popular consent, not by adherence to reason.
            • jMyles 11y ago
              Most people don't regard "the law" to be merely the collection of statues passed by whatever government claims power at a given moment. "The law" is subject to incredible debate and scrutiny - this is the reason, for example, for constitutional courts. It is also the basis for revolution. What if more than one entity claims to be the legitimate government? Then what is 'the law'? Merely reading the federal register is not sufficient to inform someone about the particulars of the law. Please - read the essay and see if you are find "the law" to be a matter of fact.
              • gnaritas 11y ago
                > "The law" is subject to incredible debate and scrutiny Not debated, but only after the fact when challenged. Laws are passed by popular consent, even when they contradict previous laws and they tend to stand for far longer than they should because taking down bad law takes years. You're discussing an ideal "law", I'm discussing actual law. Take gay marriage, illegal for how long... despite always violating the constitution; it just took that long for the courts to acknowledge the discrimination that was going on. And no, I'm not going to read a few thousands words because you're unable to make your point yourself. My point is fact, and stands: law doesn't require reason to exist. Yes, eventually, after many decades, reason may find its way into the law, but that doesn't dispute my claim.
      • azernik 11y ago
        Of course there is. They are common goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_good_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_good_(economics)
  • obrero 11y ago
    > The time and manner of invention and evolution do not yield to government nor even recognize its purview. I think it's becoming clear to all of us that the internet will not abide government Well you must be rather young and have no idea of the history of the Internet that some of us here have lived through (or you're old and are just oblivious). All changes to the Internet's root zone need approval by the US Department of Commerce. That's because the Internet is an invention of the US government. It is government's purview since it's government's creation. You can go out to an audience of laymen and probably fool them, but I remember when there were hosts still manually mapping name to IP in /etc/hosts, before switching over to pointing to sri-nic.arpa. As do others here. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just ignorant of what you're talking about, as opposed to being deceptive. Either way, this is the wrong crowd to try to fool with this - many of us were there when it happened.
    • jMyles 11y ago
      I might be neither misinformed nor disingenuous. Perhaps instead I have a different assessment than you. I find your position to be equivalent to saying that, because the government dropped an atomic bomb on people, it invented periodicity and the nuclear forces and retains perpetual say-so over their function and mechanics.
  • gnaritas 11y ago
    > I propose that "legal" is the default state for new inventions. But it isn't, so that proposal doesn't mean anything; if you want self driving cars, you must convince government to allow it. Vehicles require state approval, you can't drive an unlicensed vehicle and the state won't license vehicles they don't know are safe and haven't been approved yet. > I think it's becoming clear to all of us that the internet will not abide government and I really don't want it to have to come to a head in the form of violence. It's abiding by government just fine.
    • mch82 11y ago
      Actually, the constitution is written so that things are legal by default. All rights not explicitly granted to the national government go to the states or to the people. Edit: in the United States.
      • gnaritas 11y ago
        To the states or to the people, and the states have chosen to not make those things legal by default.
    • jMyles 11y ago
      > It's abiding by government just fine. Is it?! It seems to be increasingly in a state of tension as governments flailingly attempt to censor and surveil. Content whose distribution is prohibited on "copyright" grounds is very widely available. My understanding is that drugs and illicit pornography are available on ongoing dark net markets, which are now stronger and more numerous than in the silk road days. Jobs are routinely outsourced as remote work to the other side of the world, in violation of the spirit of labor laws. The EFF and other organizations are in a constant cycle of litigation to ward off more impotent laws that threaten to criminalize or civilly sanction already widespread behavior on the internet. In what ways is the internet abiding the government?
      • gnaritas 11y ago
        Those things are all still quite barely used by the masses, government control is still firmly in place of the majority of people who abide by the law. Pointing out exceptions to the rule doesn't invalidate the rule.
  • rayiner 11y ago
    It's pretty ironic to direct an anarchist screed at something (roads and cars) that wouldn't exist without the threat of government violence (either government road construction or exercise of eminent domain in favor of private road builders). Also, cars are the archetypal example of externalized violence that must be countered with government violence. They impose violence on the public and the environment by spewing pollution into the air, and create externalized risk for everyone in their vicinity.
    • jMyles 11y ago
      > that wouldn't exist without the threat of government violence As I'm sure you already suppose, an anarchistic assessment of this results in a different conclusion.
      • rayiner 11y ago
        Name one anarchist civilization that has created sophisticated road networks, even in antiquity? Road construction is the archetypal government activity. You go back to 3000 BC and look at ancient Egypt's sophisticated infrastructure. How did they do it? Government. And compare that to what contemporary societies without government have left us. Pottery fragments.
        • jMyles 11y ago
          I acknowledge that absence of government hasn't worked well during history. However, what I'm saying (perhaps in fact the whole point) is that we are leaving the period called history and entering a very different space, as evidenced by the rapidity of the internet. In other words, I assert that the time for peace without government is ahead, not behind.
        • wooster 11y ago
          The stagecoach roads of the American West? (Often un-deeded right-of-ways through private lands, many now home to paved roads.)
        • refurb 11y ago
  • threeseed 11y ago
    > I propose that "legal" is the default state for new inventions. This is a pretty ridiculous concept. It would just encourage dodgy entrepeneuers to rapidly produce disruptive products without any care for safety or public benefit. Some things need to be thoroughly tested before releasing them into the public e.g. milk formulas, vaccines, cars otherwise they could kill masses of people before anyone has a chance to stop it. And in fact a place already exists with lax regulations: China. And look what's happened there over the last few decades. So bad in fact that the public desperately looks to Western countries for food and health products.
    • jMyles 11y ago
      Just so I understand: You are holding up China as a refuge from totalitarian tendencies?
      • azernik 11y ago
        When it comes to economic rules, China went from a centrally-controlled economy to a shockingly unregulated (by Western standards) market economy. If you want to speak up against the government you're out of luck, but if you want to sell baby formula without inspections it's much easier than in the States.
        • jMyles 11y ago
          I'm saying: obviously China, which is an environment of dreadful rights of expression of all sorts, is not a good example of the potential of innovation sans government.
      • nickv 11y ago
        Yes... China is about as unregulated w.r.t. to industry as you can get. Have you ever seen the air quality in Beijing? Do you remember the air quality in LA in the 80s before stricter CARB standards? (Or are you too young to?)
        • jMyles 11y ago
  • brc 11y ago
    I have sympathy for your views - those states which by default declare anything illegal until regulated are slow to innovate. However, roads and traffic is one area where even the most limited government fan will typically agree that regulation provides benefits well outside the cost. Well regulated road networks provide large economic benefits even to people who don't directly use them.
    • jMyles 11y ago
      Eh, I think it will be done better once the government is gone. I see bungling, overpriced and late construction projects. I see utter callousness toward the environment. I see a relentless yielding to more and more and more cars along with cordoning off of pedestrians. I see languishing rails, with road-based competition receiving an effective subsidy (and also no competition at all on the rails, with amtrak, also government-subsidized, having an effective monopoly for passenger traffic). There is no doubt in my mind that the internet will do roads better than government.
  • serge2k 11y ago
    Some things can't work like that, for good reasons. In the case of cars or drones the main reason would be safety. In the case of a lot of IoT things the issue is going to be spectrum.
  • bertil 11y ago
    “My vehicle can drive itself” was the default state until Ford, Panhard, Bugatti and Rolls-Royce came with horse-less carriages. It wasn’t ideal: horse, oxen and asses got mad and rumbled into crowd regularly so it was far from ideal, but dandies needn’t no permission to get drawn by a new animal, be it a camel, and ostrich or tortoise. Then, with mechanisation drive-through lattes and texting, a little too many kids were crushed to death, with their severed limbs thrown in the air into their parents’ faces — so we had to change that state of affairs. We ask people to prove they realised they were sitting in armoured tanks, and make sure those tanks acted like expected. When the expectation is “you can go back to texting and sipping your latte, your tank will swerve when needed” that bar is, expectedly, incredibly high. You are more welcome to introduce any self-driving vehicle that is not independently powered with so much energy that it can kill on impact: clubs who make recumbent bikes are a good example of where to look for hackers in that area.