5 ms·

> We have to decide, as a society, if we want to allow businesses to operate in residential areas. We can't simply encourage people to break the law because it

by arkades 11y ago

> We have to decide, as a society, if we want to allow businesses to operate in residential areas. We can't simply encourage people to break the law because it makes some guy with an app money... I really thought where you were going here was not about zoning, but was going to be "We have to decide, as a society, if we want to undo a couple centuries' worth of public health regulations because it makes some guy with an app money... "

tamana 11y ago
Six of one. Chesterton's fence. The law exists for a reason, and the law should be enforced or changed, not selectively ignored.
- coldtea 11y ago
  If Chesterton had seen modern laws (and he was already quite vocal for the proliferation of BS laws back in his day) he would never have brought forward his "fence" argument. Really, a huge numbers of modern laws and restrictions are as far removed from utility as possible. And unlike in "Chesterton's fence" case, it's not like they are old and we don't know why they come up with them back in the day. Quite the opposite. We DO know why the come with them, and for a lot of them, we witnessed lobby groups and special interests, concerned citizens "think of the children", etc press for them -- and it has been mostly BS.
  - arkades 11y ago
    You are speaking in broad generalities about a specific and narrow topic. Could you please clarify what public health / food sanitation laws you feel are the one-sided product of lobbyists and special interests and have no "Chesterton's Fence"-type value to speak of?
    - coldtea 11y ago
      Was mostly referring to the zoning restrictions the grant-parent mentioned, here are some examples: https://mises.org/library/zoning-laws-destroy-communities https://mises.org/library/zoning-laws-destroy-communities http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/zoning-laws-and-the-rise-of-economic-inequality/417360/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/zoning-l... http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/12/17/best-of-blog-the-crazy-face-of-zoning.html http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/12/17/best-of-blog-t... Though the situation and intent of lots of these is much worse, "City of Quartz" (book on LA's development) is quite illuminating for example. But lots of bad food laws too, e.g: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/apr/15/illegal-food-cheese-us-mimolette http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/apr... We have a share of BS laws in Europe too, that killed small producers with "safety regulations" and requirements designed so that only big buck corps can afford them -- despite having no issues whatsoever with said producers' products for centuries up until the 1990s or so when the laws got drafted...
      - arkades 11y ago
        I can't speak to the zoning restrictions meaningfully as it's outside my area of expertise. But as to the food law example: Well, that's not an example of a lobbyist-sponsored food law. The FDA has old regs on the books about the maximum number of mites/cheese sample, apparently written for "cheeses at large," to limit the dissemination of contaminated food, rather than one specific type of intentionally mite-ridden cheese. A single instance of a border check resulted in an imported shipment was recorded. In that article, the border control "wouldn't specify what the safe level was." It took 30 seconds to find that the regulatory level is 6 mites / cc, and that the samples they examined exceeded that, some by up to ~660x. This was not part of a broader law or effort on the behalf of the FDA, and future shipments of the cheese got through import checks just fine. Literally, the media and the media alone made up a storm in a teacup over an "attack" on small oversea dairies. Do you have any other bad food laws in mind?
- Alex3917 11y ago
  > The law exists for a reason, and the law should be enforced or changed, not selectively ignored. Except for that in practice the only way you can get the law changed is if you can get enough people to break it.
  - username223 11y ago
    The obvious corollary to your statement is "in practice the only way you can affirm the law is to throw enough people in jail for breaking it." So do we throw more people who break food safety laws in jail, or pat them on the back?
    - Alex3917 11y ago
      Not really. How many Uber customers went to jail? There are tens of thousands of laws, but almost everyone in prison is there for breaking the same 20 or so.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
rgbrgb 11y ago
That's a stawman, nobody's using these apps to make some guy with an app money. Users are on them because it's convenient and fun to have your neighbor cook an extra few portions of what they're having without necessarily doing the dinner party thing or owing them a meal back. Also, like we're seeing with airbnb, the sharing economy doesn't undo regulations, they just demand new types of regulation. I totally agree that there's a food safety concern with these services, I just don't think we should dismiss them entirely because they don't fit well with our current style of regulating restaurants. For example, a single unsterile kitchen in the food-sharing economy presents an order of magnitude less risk than a high throughput restaurant because they serve an order of magnitude less food. It's a slightly different potato, but if we can manage to peel it there are enormous gains to be had in terms of health and community -- just imagine if a healthy home-cooked dinner was as cheap and convenient as picking up a family meal from KFC or take-out chinese food.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  At the same time we have to remember these apps exist for a reason.. to make a small group of people money. In the quest to accomplish this goal marketing, combined with PR, government relations, and legal, attempt to manipulate society in such a way that society will conform to the goals of the business. If we forget this, either intentionally or due to ignorance, we become much more susceptible to manipulation which may or may not be detrimental to us.
  - rgbrgb 11y ago
    I disagree with the premise that these apps exist to make a small group of people money... 1) Nobody's working on this kind of stuff just for the money, and if they are then they've lied to a lot of people and are fucking up. If you're a strong engineer with good quantitative skills, the expected value of working on wall street, working at googazonsoft, or even becoming a realtor in the bay (if you have the soft skills) is much higher than striking out on your own to create something new. A technical founder I met from one of these companies could have easily done one of these other things but felt really passionate about improving our relationship to food. I really doubt there's a money grubbing evil genius working on food sharing apps in order to amass great wealth and power. 2) You can't really manipulate society with $50M of facebook ads and no product (and I think that's more than any of these companies have raised). If you're making a consumer app and it's not something people want, there's no "marketing, combined with PR, government relations, and legal" that's going to get them to use it and "conform to the goals of the business". IDK, maybe I'm just a dumb optimist but I'm excited about what the future holds for this stuff.
braythwayt 11y ago
Some zoning laws also have safety implications. If dine-sharing apps take off, I expect the trajectory to quickly go from “sharing a meal with a neighbour” to “running a full-time restaurant out of your house.” Both Uber and AirBnB have followed this arc. Uber even gives preference to drivers who work full-time. Zoning is related to building codes. All the rules around waste disposal, fire codes, and so forth are dramatically different between a restaurant and a private home. And the financial incentives with a “dine-sharing” business will be to ignore safety until forced to comply, as they have been historically with almost all businesses. Who is going to check that there are even working smoke detectors and a fire extinguisher? For that matter, who will even check that there is a cooker hood removing grease? We don’t enforce these things for private homes because when you cook for yourself, your family, and people you know, there are social incentives in place to control safety. There’s no such incentive in place when you’re cooking for strangers. And of course, this is a dramatically different story when you compare to ride-sharing. Private cars have the same safety features as the taxis already on the road, and drive on the same roads. Private kitchens do not have the same safety features as restaurant kitchens, and are not housed in the same buildings. Private cars operate in public, with some expectation that the police will intervene if the car appears to be driven improperly, like speeding. Not perfectly, but there is enough oversight to provide incentives to drive safely. There is no such oversight for private kitchens. Ride-sharing apps have a high degree of tracking: They monitor the car’s location and speed continuously. Location is shared with the passenger’s app. Will dining apps monitor the food being cooked? Do they know if the eggs are past their best-before date? Dine-sharing is unlike ride-sharing or home-sharing in a number of substantial ways that are at relevant to zoning and the concept of what is and isn’t a fit establishment for cooking for strangers.

by arkades 11y ago

tamana 11y ago

Six of one. Chesterton's fence. The law exists for a reason, and the law should be enforced or changed, not selectively ignored.

coldtea 11y ago
If Chesterton had seen modern laws (and he was already quite vocal for the proliferation of BS laws back in his day) he would never have brought forward his "fence" argument. Really, a huge numbers of modern laws and restrictions are as far removed from utility as possible. And unlike in "Chesterton's fence" case, it's not like they are old and we don't know why they come up with them back in the day. Quite the opposite. We DO know why the come with them, and for a lot of them, we witnessed lobby groups and special interests, concerned citizens "think of the children", etc press for them -- and it has been mostly BS.
- arkades 11y ago
  You are speaking in broad generalities about a specific and narrow topic. Could you please clarify what public health / food sanitation laws you feel are the one-sided product of lobbyists and special interests and have no "Chesterton's Fence"-type value to speak of?
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Was mostly referring to the zoning restrictions the grant-parent mentioned, here are some examples: https://mises.org/library/zoning-laws-destroy-communities https://mises.org/library/zoning-laws-destroy-communities http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/zoning-laws-and-the-rise-of-economic-inequality/417360/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/zoning-l... http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/12/17/best-of-blog-the-crazy-face-of-zoning.html http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/12/17/best-of-blog-t... Though the situation and intent of lots of these is much worse, "City of Quartz" (book on LA's development) is quite illuminating for example. But lots of bad food laws too, e.g: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/apr/15/illegal-food-cheese-us-mimolette http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/apr... We have a share of BS laws in Europe too, that killed small producers with "safety regulations" and requirements designed so that only big buck corps can afford them -- despite having no issues whatsoever with said producers' products for centuries up until the 1990s or so when the laws got drafted...
    - arkades 11y ago
      I can't speak to the zoning restrictions meaningfully as it's outside my area of expertise. But as to the food law example: Well, that's not an example of a lobbyist-sponsored food law. The FDA has old regs on the books about the maximum number of mites/cheese sample, apparently written for "cheeses at large," to limit the dissemination of contaminated food, rather than one specific type of intentionally mite-ridden cheese. A single instance of a border check resulted in an imported shipment was recorded. In that article, the border control "wouldn't specify what the safe level was." It took 30 seconds to find that the regulatory level is 6 mites / cc, and that the samples they examined exceeded that, some by up to ~660x. This was not part of a broader law or effort on the behalf of the FDA, and future shipments of the cheese got through import checks just fine. Literally, the media and the media alone made up a storm in a teacup over an "attack" on small oversea dairies. Do you have any other bad food laws in mind?
Alex3917 11y ago
> The law exists for a reason, and the law should be enforced or changed, not selectively ignored. Except for that in practice the only way you can get the law changed is if you can get enough people to break it.
- username223 11y ago
  The obvious corollary to your statement is "in practice the only way you can affirm the law is to throw enough people in jail for breaking it." So do we throw more people who break food safety laws in jail, or pat them on the back?
  - Alex3917 11y ago
    Not really. How many Uber customers went to jail? There are tens of thousands of laws, but almost everyone in prison is there for breaking the same 20 or so.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

rgbrgb 11y ago

That's a stawman, nobody's using these apps to make some guy with an app money. Users are on them because it's convenient and fun to have your neighbor cook an extra few portions of what they're having without necessarily doing the dinner party thing or owing them a meal back. Also, like we're seeing with airbnb, the sharing economy doesn't undo regulations, they just demand new types of regulation. I totally agree that there's a food safety concern with these services, I just don't think we should dismiss them entirely because they don't fit well with our current style of regulating restaurants. For example, a single unsterile kitchen in the food-sharing economy presents an order of magnitude less risk than a high throughput restaurant because they serve an order of magnitude less food. It's a slightly different potato, but if we can manage to peel it there are enormous gains to be had in terms of health and community -- just imagine if a healthy home-cooked dinner was as cheap and convenient as picking up a family meal from KFC or take-out chinese food.

jonesb6 11y ago
At the same time we have to remember these apps exist for a reason.. to make a small group of people money. In the quest to accomplish this goal marketing, combined with PR, government relations, and legal, attempt to manipulate society in such a way that society will conform to the goals of the business. If we forget this, either intentionally or due to ignorance, we become much more susceptible to manipulation which may or may not be detrimental to us.
- rgbrgb 11y ago
  I disagree with the premise that these apps exist to make a small group of people money... 1) Nobody's working on this kind of stuff just for the money, and if they are then they've lied to a lot of people and are fucking up. If you're a strong engineer with good quantitative skills, the expected value of working on wall street, working at googazonsoft, or even becoming a realtor in the bay (if you have the soft skills) is much higher than striking out on your own to create something new. A technical founder I met from one of these companies could have easily done one of these other things but felt really passionate about improving our relationship to food. I really doubt there's a money grubbing evil genius working on food sharing apps in order to amass great wealth and power. 2) You can't really manipulate society with $50M of facebook ads and no product (and I think that's more than any of these companies have raised). If you're making a consumer app and it's not something people want, there's no "marketing, combined with PR, government relations, and legal" that's going to get them to use it and "conform to the goals of the business". IDK, maybe I'm just a dumb optimist but I'm excited about what the future holds for this stuff.

braythwayt 11y ago

Some zoning laws also have safety implications. If dine-sharing apps take off, I expect the trajectory to quickly go from “sharing a meal with a neighbour” to “running a full-time restaurant out of your house.” Both Uber and AirBnB have followed this arc. Uber even gives preference to drivers who work full-time. Zoning is related to building codes. All the rules around waste disposal, fire codes, and so forth are dramatically different between a restaurant and a private home. And the financial incentives with a “dine-sharing” business will be to ignore safety until forced to comply, as they have been historically with almost all businesses. Who is going to check that there are even working smoke detectors and a fire extinguisher? For that matter, who will even check that there is a cooker hood removing grease? We don’t enforce these things for private homes because when you cook for yourself, your family, and people you know, there are social incentives in place to control safety. There’s no such incentive in place when you’re cooking for strangers. And of course, this is a dramatically different story when you compare to ride-sharing. Private cars have the same safety features as the taxis already on the road, and drive on the same roads. Private kitchens do not have the same safety features as restaurant kitchens, and are not housed in the same buildings. Private cars operate in public, with some expectation that the police will intervene if the car appears to be driven improperly, like speeding. Not perfectly, but there is enough oversight to provide incentives to drive safely. There is no such oversight for private kitchens. Ride-sharing apps have a high degree of tracking: They monitor the car’s location and speed continuously. Location is shared with the passenger’s app. Will dining apps monitor the food being cooked? Do they know if the eggs are past their best-before date? Dine-sharing is unlike ride-sharing or home-sharing in a number of substantial ways that are at relevant to zoning and the concept of what is and isn’t a fit establishment for cooking for strangers.