8 ms·

The Law Can’t Keep Up with Technology, and That's Good

37 points by sjcsjc 11y ago

ilaksh 11y ago
We may want some way to regulate company and individual actions even though we don't want traditional government. Bitcoin-like technologies could be a starting point. We do have unwritten and written social contracts and expectations and having a common framework for encouraging/discouraging certain types of behavior might be important. Another issue is that these companies become so dominant that they are almost the de facto government in certain areas. Technopolies lioe Google and Amazon. Which its nice to decouple modules of (effectively) governance but we probably would be better off with many smaller companies operating on public information technology platforms.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
I'm not seeing anything to convince me that this is a "very good thing." It seems to be a thing that's great if you're a Disruptive Tech Startup(TM) and somewhat mixed if you're an average Joe, but--like many recent tech articles--it's written solely from the perspective of a Disruptive Tech Startup, which is getting tiresome.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  caveat, I didn't read the article because either it is timing out or ublock is blocking it (just see white page) I think it is a good thing that the law can't keep up with technology. Take Uber, people like it and it works well. It is hard for the law to stop this and public opinion is quite loudly for it, so it stands. The internet is changing from centralized to distributed with finance depending on it wholly for infrastructure. Protocols will change at that level and slowly money will become more digitized. Even without bitcoin, it will be possible to quickly transfer funds from organizations at banks. If the public embraces this, the gov't can't do anything. This is like a riot for freedom. When enough people do something the government is outnumbered and it becomes defacto legal. Often, this rare phenomenon is referred as democracy. Drones falling on people will be bad. Some people will be scammers. Medical devices/technoques will be more dangerous (with better upside). People will hide income which is good for the individualshort-term but bad for the governemnt, and possibly everyone long term. Wages are fucked. This will force cooperation between people and ultimately governments because the power distance delta will be lowered significantly from a person to "the government". Technology is killing government just like home taping killed the music industry. Very slowly.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    When was the internet ever centralized?
  - pjc50 11y ago
    it will be possible to quickly transfer funds from organizations at banks This is called "Faster Payments" in Europe, where it's already working quite nicely.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      Indeed. In fact, a great deal of what is wrong with financial infrastructure is precisely because the industry is dominated by a few huge players with a vested interest in not rocking the boat, and because of their scale and often their multinational later they are very hard for governments to regulate effectively. Many problems, from highly visible ones like the crazy level of fraud and financial crime we tolerate or the way some governments have propped up failed financial institutions with public money in recent years, to more hidden problems like the one-sided deals small businesses get with financial services and the amount creamed off almost every electronic financial transaction by those same financial service providers, should have been dealt with long ago.
vinceguidry 11y ago
> It’s whether they’re willing to take action that would destroy the companies’ $2.5 billion combined value owned by important investors (and campaign donors) like KKR, Comcast, NBC, Major League Baseball and several Silicon Valley VCs. On one hand I want to agree, on the other hand I'd like to see some justification for this statement. $2.5 billion doesn't seem like a really big industry, sure, it's a lot for two companies to be dominating in, but nothing compared to even the smallest durable goods market. It seems like a really small fish that the government wants to protect, rather than some giant that can't be touched. What it reminds me of is Hollywood. I read somewhere that the market cap of the entire movie business is handily outstripped by Disney's toy arm, or something like that, and what gives them outsized influence on policy-making is the symbiotic relationship that so much of our capitalism has with our content industries. Football is like that. Yes, there's a lot of money in advertising and ticket sales and the actual business of football. But the rest of the economic effects that football generates is just huge. The govt is loathe to do anything to endanger football's ability to make money because of all that. It's not that they can't, they just don't want to.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  That seems like a compelling argument for restricting corporate political donations. If the politicians want to block something that their voters don't want to see blocked, that's the politicians' problem and they can pay for it at the next election. But if they aren't blocking something they should be because of the business connections involved, that's corruption pure and simple. As for the businesses collectively investing a few billion in a new industry, that's why the value of your investment can do down as well as up and why you're supposed to do your homework before you put your money into a new venture. It doesn't always work out, and if you backed a controversial scheme and that was one of those times, that was the risk you took.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    > But if they aren't blocking something they should be because of the business connections involved, that's corruption pure and simple. Well, first off, corruption involves people and not industries. I highly doubt that the two firms dominating the industry are themselves politically connected. Government officials protecting an industry is categorically not corruption, protecting individual firms and giving them a leg up over other firms in the same industry categorically is. Propping up an industry is called subsidization and it's part and parcel of how modern governments manage the economy. Second, whether they should be blocking it or not is not a settled question. Gambling is weird, it can't really be called good or bad, like any vice, in moderation it's fine for people. And it's arguable whether fantasy football is actually gambling. Also we lost the ability to regulate real gambling when the big online poker companies fled the country and set up shop overseas. Seems like there would be nothing keeping this niche from doing that either.
noonespecial 11y ago
It is good so long as the legal philosophy of the land is "unless something is explicitly forbidden, it is automatically allowed". This is not a good thing when that philosophy is "you're not allowed to just go and do new stuff until we get a chance to consider it and pass regulations". There are plenty of examples around of "unless explicitly permitted, automatically denied" that are stifling innovation in my opinion. Pick a random county in America and try to build a residential dwelling using any sort of alternative materials or architecture for example.
- richmarr 11y ago
  Agree with your point in principle, but I'd nitpick with your example. Building regulations & planning approval are a matter of public safety precisely because human beings have a millenia-long track record of putting together dwellings in weird ways using whatever materials are available/convenient, and often aren't aware of the repurcussions. Should it be okay for someone to build a 3-storey domestic dwelling, in a unique way, out of unregulated materials, 4 feet from another home? Not next to my home it shouldn't. Nor should it be my responsibility to discover & research their building materials and lodge a complaint. If they want to build their house using 3d-printed ceramic blocks using plans they downloaded from douchebrick.io, and raw materials they sourced themselves, then the burden of proof should reasonably be on them that they're not putting neighbours, friends, Airbnb guests, adjacent property, kids fetching their ball from your garden, tenants, future buyers, passers-by, postal workers, and Avon ladies at risk. You could make an argument that these approval processes should move faster, but it doesn't sound like the argument you're making, and it may result in more mistakes (Asbestos anyone?).
- hga 11y ago
  Pick a random county in America and try to build a residential dwelling using any sort of alternative materials or architecture for example. To my knowledge, such restrictions are unusual in unincorporated parts of counties (or at least it was considered unusual in the '70s that the Colorado county including Aspen and Snowmass had a severe zoning regime). Certainly so in mine, Jasper County, Missouri (which includes most of Joplin); right now I'm living in an 3 story Amish barn with a frame that's 100% wood (no nails or other metals holding it together). The county didn't care. And for those areas that do, ignoring the issue of aesthetics, it's my understanding that the usual requirement is to get a certified engineer to sign off on the design. Conventional approaches are essentially pre-certified, and are generally sane.

37 points by sjcsjc 11y ago

We may want some way to regulate company and individual actions even though we don't want traditional government. Bitcoin-like technologies could be a starting point. We do have unwritten and written social contracts and expectations and having a common framework for encouraging/discouraging certain types of behavior might be important. Another issue is that these companies become so dominant that they are almost the de facto government in certain areas. Technopolies lioe Google and Amazon. Which its nice to decouple modules of (effectively) governance but we probably would be better off with many smaller companies operating on public information technology platforms.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

I'm not seeing anything to convince me that this is a "very good thing." It seems to be a thing that's great if you're a Disruptive Tech Startup(TM) and somewhat mixed if you're an average Joe, but--like many recent tech articles--it's written solely from the perspective of a Disruptive Tech Startup, which is getting tiresome.

vonklaus 11y ago
caveat, I didn't read the article because either it is timing out or ublock is blocking it (just see white page) I think it is a good thing that the law can't keep up with technology. Take Uber, people like it and it works well. It is hard for the law to stop this and public opinion is quite loudly for it, so it stands. The internet is changing from centralized to distributed with finance depending on it wholly for infrastructure. Protocols will change at that level and slowly money will become more digitized. Even without bitcoin, it will be possible to quickly transfer funds from organizations at banks. If the public embraces this, the gov't can't do anything. This is like a riot for freedom. When enough people do something the government is outnumbered and it becomes defacto legal. Often, this rare phenomenon is referred as democracy. Drones falling on people will be bad. Some people will be scammers. Medical devices/technoques will be more dangerous (with better upside). People will hide income which is good for the individualshort-term but bad for the governemnt, and possibly everyone long term. Wages are fucked. This will force cooperation between people and ultimately governments because the power distance delta will be lowered significantly from a person to "the government". Technology is killing government just like home taping killed the music industry. Very slowly.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  When was the internet ever centralized?
- pjc50 11y ago
  it will be possible to quickly transfer funds from organizations at banks This is called "Faster Payments" in Europe, where it's already working quite nicely.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    Indeed. In fact, a great deal of what is wrong with financial infrastructure is precisely because the industry is dominated by a few huge players with a vested interest in not rocking the boat, and because of their scale and often their multinational later they are very hard for governments to regulate effectively. Many problems, from highly visible ones like the crazy level of fraud and financial crime we tolerate or the way some governments have propped up failed financial institutions with public money in recent years, to more hidden problems like the one-sided deals small businesses get with financial services and the amount creamed off almost every electronic financial transaction by those same financial service providers, should have been dealt with long ago.

vinceguidry 11y ago

> It’s whether they’re willing to take action that would destroy the companies’ $2.5 billion combined value owned by important investors (and campaign donors) like KKR, Comcast, NBC, Major League Baseball and several Silicon Valley VCs. On one hand I want to agree, on the other hand I'd like to see some justification for this statement. $2.5 billion doesn't seem like a really big industry, sure, it's a lot for two companies to be dominating in, but nothing compared to even the smallest durable goods market. It seems like a really small fish that the government wants to protect, rather than some giant that can't be touched. What it reminds me of is Hollywood. I read somewhere that the market cap of the entire movie business is handily outstripped by Disney's toy arm, or something like that, and what gives them outsized influence on policy-making is the symbiotic relationship that so much of our capitalism has with our content industries. Football is like that. Yes, there's a lot of money in advertising and ticket sales and the actual business of football. But the rest of the economic effects that football generates is just huge. The govt is loathe to do anything to endanger football's ability to make money because of all that. It's not that they can't, they just don't want to.

Silhouette 11y ago
That seems like a compelling argument for restricting corporate political donations. If the politicians want to block something that their voters don't want to see blocked, that's the politicians' problem and they can pay for it at the next election. But if they aren't blocking something they should be because of the business connections involved, that's corruption pure and simple. As for the businesses collectively investing a few billion in a new industry, that's why the value of your investment can do down as well as up and why you're supposed to do your homework before you put your money into a new venture. It doesn't always work out, and if you backed a controversial scheme and that was one of those times, that was the risk you took.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  > But if they aren't blocking something they should be because of the business connections involved, that's corruption pure and simple. Well, first off, corruption involves people and not industries. I highly doubt that the two firms dominating the industry are themselves politically connected. Government officials protecting an industry is categorically not corruption, protecting individual firms and giving them a leg up over other firms in the same industry categorically is. Propping up an industry is called subsidization and it's part and parcel of how modern governments manage the economy. Second, whether they should be blocking it or not is not a settled question. Gambling is weird, it can't really be called good or bad, like any vice, in moderation it's fine for people. And it's arguable whether fantasy football is actually gambling. Also we lost the ability to regulate real gambling when the big online poker companies fled the country and set up shop overseas. Seems like there would be nothing keeping this niche from doing that either.

noonespecial 11y ago

It is good so long as the legal philosophy of the land is "unless something is explicitly forbidden, it is automatically allowed". This is not a good thing when that philosophy is "you're not allowed to just go and do new stuff until we get a chance to consider it and pass regulations". There are plenty of examples around of "unless explicitly permitted, automatically denied" that are stifling innovation in my opinion. Pick a random county in America and try to build a residential dwelling using any sort of alternative materials or architecture for example.

richmarr 11y ago
Agree with your point in principle, but I'd nitpick with your example. Building regulations & planning approval are a matter of public safety precisely because human beings have a millenia-long track record of putting together dwellings in weird ways using whatever materials are available/convenient, and often aren't aware of the repurcussions. Should it be okay for someone to build a 3-storey domestic dwelling, in a unique way, out of unregulated materials, 4 feet from another home? Not next to my home it shouldn't. Nor should it be my responsibility to discover & research their building materials and lodge a complaint. If they want to build their house using 3d-printed ceramic blocks using plans they downloaded from douchebrick.io, and raw materials they sourced themselves, then the burden of proof should reasonably be on them that they're not putting neighbours, friends, Airbnb guests, adjacent property, kids fetching their ball from your garden, tenants, future buyers, passers-by, postal workers, and Avon ladies at risk. You could make an argument that these approval processes should move faster, but it doesn't sound like the argument you're making, and it may result in more mistakes (Asbestos anyone?).
hga 11y ago
Pick a random county in America and try to build a residential dwelling using any sort of alternative materials or architecture for example. To my knowledge, such restrictions are unusual in unincorporated parts of counties (or at least it was considered unusual in the '70s that the Colorado county including Aspen and Snowmass had a severe zoning regime). Certainly so in mine, Jasper County, Missouri (which includes most of Joplin); right now I'm living in an 3 story Amish barn with a frame that's 100% wood (no nails or other metals holding it together). The county didn't care. And for those areas that do, ignoring the issue of aesthetics, it's my understanding that the usual requirement is to get a certified engineer to sign off on the design. Conventional approaches are essentially pre-certified, and are generally sane.