5 ms·

If technologies were as free as software without regulation, cars would not have crumple zones, seat belts, airbags, anti lock brakes, or any other safety techn

by yladiz 10y ago

If technologies were as free as software without regulation, cars would not have crumple zones, seat belts, airbags, anti lock brakes, or any other safety technology mandatory. Companies would use the cheapest pesticide even if it causes horrible birth defects and medical issues to grow our food. Medical and pharma companies would price their services and drugs however they want because they can and people have to buy it (which is what's happening already, and 17.1% of the US GDP is spent on medicine as of 2014[1], higher than any other country in the world). In every example, companies wouldn't do the right thing because it would cut into their profits, which is what capitalism boils down to. Not every regulation is good -- look at SF's housing and how you can have multiple overlapping regulations that mean that building a building is impossible in some situations -- but in many ways they're better than "free as software" technology. Edit: Yes, safety features like seat belts were available before they were mandatory, but not everyone would buy them. I would be surprised if car manufacturers marketed the seat belt much even if they offered it. 1: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_high_desc=true http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_high...

TaylorAlexander 10y ago
[Citation Needed]
- yladiz 10y ago
  http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_high_desc=true http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_high... Sorry, I was a little off. It's 17.1%, not 17%. And I also said it's higher than any developed country when it's actually every country in The World Bank's data.
- foldr 10y ago
  This is what actually happened before the relevant regulations were put in place.
jerf 10y ago
Seat belts were offered in cars prior to regulation [1]: "American car manufacturers Nash (in 1949) and Ford (in 1955) offered seat belts as options, while Swedish Saab first introduced seat belts as standard in 1958.[7] After the Saab GT 750 was introduced at the New York Motor Show in 1958 with safety belts fitted as standard, the practice became commonplace.[8]" "... The world's first seat belt law was put in place in 1970, in the state of Victoria, Australia, making the wearing of a seat belt compulsory for drivers and front-seat passengers. This legislation was enacted after trialing Hemco seatbelts, designed by Desmond Hemphill (1926–2001), in the front seats of police vehicles, lowering the incidence of officer injury and death." Wikipedia mentions "in 1959, Congress passed legislation requiring all automobiles to comply with certain safety standards." but the writing leaves it unclear to me whether that included mandating seat belts. The theory that government regulation is mandatory or companies will never do anything healthy requires a consumer base who assigns no regard to their health and safety, which is obviously false. I'm not say it's all market, either; I think a government that watches a free market but does not participate is generally the ideal. But the idea that we wouldn't have standard seat belts if it weren't for government is silly. In the general case, the government can't mandate things that don't exist yet. They can at least prod things in certain directions with things like CAFE standards, but that's all. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > The theory that government regulation is mandatory or companies will never do anything healthy requires a consumer base who assigns no regard to their health and safety, which is obviously false. Either that or companies price health-and-safety options out of the price range of some consumers, resulting in a society where we think it's right that anyone under a certain level of income doesn't deserve to be as safe as we are. At least in the current system, you can't buy things without much the same level of safety as we have - meaning that you can't realistically push their income+benefits any lower without lots of pushback. If we thought that health and safety features were optional... that'd be a lot different.
  - witty_username 10y ago
hueving 10y ago
Your post is all over the place with made up anecdotes. For your car example, it assumes nobody would ever buy cars for safety features. For the medical example, the entire reason pharma can charge that is because of government grants monopolies. For the pesticide example, capitalism != no laws on poisoning people.
- croon 10y ago
  > For your car example, it assumes nobody would ever buy cars for safety features. You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper seatbelts in car A is any different from vinyl seatbelts in car B without any governed inspecting organ. > or the medical example, the entire reason pharma can charge that is because of government grants monopolies. No, the FDA approves things (for good: people don't die from rushed medicine with unseen side effects, and bad: it takes a lot of time and money to market, when people want new treatment now) for a reason. Why the current example has a monopoly is because of corrupt/lobbied regulation, not because the concept of regulation is bad. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water.
  - beambot 10y ago
    > You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper seatbelts in car A is any different from vinyl seatbelts in car B without any governed inspecting organ. Consumer reports?
    - croon 10y ago
      Sure, I definitely would, and probably give a quick glance over who performed it. Those are however not available in all fields or products. I'm also not considering myself better than anyone else, but am still very sure that a lot if not most people don't always check that. They however still deserve at least some form of baseline safety (not get sick, not get into product-fault accident) even without that. I save you by knowing how my field works and alerting you/stopping bad practices, and you save me by knowing your field. Then we institutionalize and compartmentalize that to ensure that unlike consumer reports, it's not influenced by market interests (which the US is still brilliant at ruining with lobbying). That is how a community works. Of course, you can instead pay someone explicitly to look after your interests/safety, to make sure they're not paid by other interests, ie companies wanting to pay as little as possible to sell you as much as possible. The thing is you've now just created a government. If it's not working it's not because of its concept.
witty_username 10y ago
Doesn't software also have some regulations depending on usage? Also, you can't say DDos a website or infringe copyright of code, there are still laws and regulation. Of course, relative to other industries it's much less.

by yladiz 10y ago

TaylorAlexander 10y ago

[Citation Needed]

yladiz 10y ago
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_high_desc=true http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_high... Sorry, I was a little off. It's 17.1%, not 17%. And I also said it's higher than any developed country when it's actually every country in The World Bank's data.
foldr 10y ago
This is what actually happened before the relevant regulations were put in place.

jerf 10y ago

Seat belts were offered in cars prior to regulation [1]: "American car manufacturers Nash (in 1949) and Ford (in 1955) offered seat belts as options, while Swedish Saab first introduced seat belts as standard in 1958.[7] After the Saab GT 750 was introduced at the New York Motor Show in 1958 with safety belts fitted as standard, the practice became commonplace.[8]" "... The world's first seat belt law was put in place in 1970, in the state of Victoria, Australia, making the wearing of a seat belt compulsory for drivers and front-seat passengers. This legislation was enacted after trialing Hemco seatbelts, designed by Desmond Hemphill (1926–2001), in the front seats of police vehicles, lowering the incidence of officer injury and death." Wikipedia mentions "in 1959, Congress passed legislation requiring all automobiles to comply with certain safety standards." but the writing leaves it unclear to me whether that included mandating seat belts. The theory that government regulation is mandatory or companies will never do anything healthy requires a consumer base who assigns no regard to their health and safety, which is obviously false. I'm not say it's all market, either; I think a government that watches a free market but does not participate is generally the ideal. But the idea that we wouldn't have standard seat belts if it weren't for government is silly. In the general case, the government can't mandate things that don't exist yet. They can at least prod things in certain directions with things like CAFE standards, but that's all. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History

vertex-four 10y ago
> The theory that government regulation is mandatory or companies will never do anything healthy requires a consumer base who assigns no regard to their health and safety, which is obviously false. Either that or companies price health-and-safety options out of the price range of some consumers, resulting in a society where we think it's right that anyone under a certain level of income doesn't deserve to be as safe as we are. At least in the current system, you can't buy things without much the same level of safety as we have - meaning that you can't realistically push their income+benefits any lower without lots of pushback. If we thought that health and safety features were optional... that'd be a lot different.
- witty_username 10y ago

hueving 10y ago

Your post is all over the place with made up anecdotes. For your car example, it assumes nobody would ever buy cars for safety features. For the medical example, the entire reason pharma can charge that is because of government grants monopolies. For the pesticide example, capitalism != no laws on poisoning people.

croon 10y ago
> For your car example, it assumes nobody would ever buy cars for safety features. You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper seatbelts in car A is any different from vinyl seatbelts in car B without any governed inspecting organ. > or the medical example, the entire reason pharma can charge that is because of government grants monopolies. No, the FDA approves things (for good: people don't die from rushed medicine with unseen side effects, and bad: it takes a lot of time and money to market, when people want new treatment now) for a reason. Why the current example has a monopoly is because of corrupt/lobbied regulation, not because the concept of regulation is bad. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water.
- beambot 10y ago
  > You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper seatbelts in car A is any different from vinyl seatbelts in car B without any governed inspecting organ. Consumer reports?
  - croon 10y ago
    Sure, I definitely would, and probably give a quick glance over who performed it. Those are however not available in all fields or products. I'm also not considering myself better than anyone else, but am still very sure that a lot if not most people don't always check that. They however still deserve at least some form of baseline safety (not get sick, not get into product-fault accident) even without that. I save you by knowing how my field works and alerting you/stopping bad practices, and you save me by knowing your field. Then we institutionalize and compartmentalize that to ensure that unlike consumer reports, it's not influenced by market interests (which the US is still brilliant at ruining with lobbying). That is how a community works. Of course, you can instead pay someone explicitly to look after your interests/safety, to make sure they're not paid by other interests, ie companies wanting to pay as little as possible to sell you as much as possible. The thing is you've now just created a government. If it's not working it's not because of its concept.

witty_username 10y ago

Doesn't software also have some regulations depending on usage? Also, you can't say DDos a website or infringe copyright of code, there are still laws and regulation. Of course, relative to other industries it's much less.