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Note: you're making a mistake if you read this story and think "well, at least the system basically works, and the right decision was finally made". The maker

Note: you're making a mistake if you read this story and think "well, at least the system basically works, and the right decision was finally made". The maker of ZenMagnets was tirelessly and bizarrely passionate about overturning this ruling. For every entrepreneur that struggles through a hurdle like this, a dozen more wisely choose to silently forgo developing a similar a product.

openclosed 10y ago
What makes you say bizarrely? It seems normal to pursue something that could result in economic benefit, if you have the means to do so. And if there's a larger principle at stake, all the more reason.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  The CPSC successfully drove every other company in this product category out of business. For any CEO in this position, it honestly bears question whether fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle (they claim they're the first to win such a battle in over 20 years) is going to end up eventually allowing you to turn a profit, or if your best bet is to close up shop and enter a different business entirely.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- jessriedel 10y ago
  I used "bizarre" based on the tone of the guys writing. Read some of the older stuff he's written about it; it's been going on for years. He cares about this a lot more than most people who suffer from these sorts of regulation. It's not clear to me that he actually ended up with an economic benefit to justify the time he spent on it.
  - Tempest1981 10y ago
    So "surprisingly passionate"?
- michaelt 10y ago
  A frequent narrative I hear on HN is that going to court is ruinously expensive, emotionally taxing, wildly uncertain even if you're completely in the right, and so slow any victory is almost certain to be Pyrrhic. Someone who believes that narrative would have expected this guy to lose, pay six figures in legal fees, have a mental breakdown, and the judgement to only come in five years after his magnet company closed down because they couldn't sell their only product. Personally I don't have enough experience to know whether the US legal system really works that way.
  - bitJericho 10y ago
    My first hand experience is it works exactly that way.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    I think that's actually an accurate characterization of the legal system. I highly recommend this book if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Adversarial-Legalism-American-Way-Law/dp/0674012410 https://www.amazon.com/Adversarial-Legalism-American-Way-Law...
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  It's bizarre in that he went to great lengths to prove a point when there were much easier ways to make more money in the same period. Most people would not be willing to spend as much money on proving the point but would rather use it to produce something less controversial.
matt4077 10y ago
If, however, you think "too bad there are dozens of entrepreneurs that fail at hurdles like these", make sure to remember: for every entrepreneur that encounters such Kafkaesque situations, there are thousands that never run into any problems with bureaucracy that can't be solved with a phone call or a two-page form.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  The large, economy-wide negative impact of regulation are well established by academics. You can think the benefits are worth the cost, but you can't think the costs are small.
  - mejari 10y ago
    >The large, economy-wide negative impact of regulation are well established by academics. That sounds like an easily made, hard to back up claim.
    - mamurphy 10y ago
      "Regulations are very costly (in a large, economy-wide way)," to me, sounded like an almost-self-evident, incredibly easy to back up claim. 15 seconds with Google confirmed that initial assessment. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1177&context=yjreg http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic... "The Costs and Benefits of Regulation: Review and Synthesis" RW Hahn, Yale Journal of Regulation, Volume 8, Issue 1, Article 9, 1991 The above link was the first Google result for (economy-wide costs of regulations journal) for me, and Google notes that it is cited by hundreds of other articles. The first 10 results all seemed to similarly explain that regulations are costly.
      - mejari 10y ago
        Having a cost and having a "large, economy-wide negative impact" are very different things.
notacoward 10y ago
For every entrepreneur that struggles through a hurdle like this, how many personal injuries and environmental harms are avoided? You make it sound like regulation exists for no reason or has no upside, but that's a very money-centric POV. From a human POV it's often just as well that some of those startups didn't get off the ground. How many cases of food poisoning or malnutrition were avoided because a dozen Soylent-alikes were - rightly! - told their products were unfit for human consumption?
- Fordrus 10y ago
  You're committing a critical fallacy here, you're making it sound like this has to be a "virtually non-existent regulation" situation or a circumstance like Zen Magnets went through. The CPSC and related regulators CAN regulate dangerous stuff without making idiotic wars on toy magnets that undermine their entire existence. Seriously. They can fulfill their entire function, standards of error for mistakes included, without EVER committing such heinously overregulatory acts as this - in fact, it's important to their continued existence that they DO NOT overregulate this badly (because when they do, their opponents gain substantial ammunition to eventually disband/defang them).
  - 762236 10y ago
    They aren't toy magnets, which is part of the problem: people have internalized that these are toys, which leads to hazardous situations. An educational campaign is surely something that needs to happen.
- toss1 10y ago
  Yes, many regulations exist for good reason and have significant upsides. However, it's false to say that EVERY individual regulation meets these criteria. As TFA pointed out, these objects are far less hazardous than firearms, fireworks, automobiles, and even balloons (the leading cause of child suffocation, and for whic labeling is required), but because they are novel the CPSC decided to slap them with an absolute ban, which is stronger regulation than any of the other products listed above and thousands of others. This was a very badly considered and executed regulation, and the judge acted rightly. FWIW, I don't think anyone is saying what you imply, that all regulations are baseless and bad.

openclosed 10y ago

What makes you say bizarrely? It seems normal to pursue something that could result in economic benefit, if you have the means to do so. And if there's a larger principle at stake, all the more reason.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
The CPSC successfully drove every other company in this product category out of business. For any CEO in this position, it honestly bears question whether fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle (they claim they're the first to win such a battle in over 20 years) is going to end up eventually allowing you to turn a profit, or if your best bet is to close up shop and enter a different business entirely.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
jessriedel 10y ago
I used "bizarre" based on the tone of the guys writing. Read some of the older stuff he's written about it; it's been going on for years. He cares about this a lot more than most people who suffer from these sorts of regulation. It's not clear to me that he actually ended up with an economic benefit to justify the time he spent on it.
- Tempest1981 10y ago
  So "surprisingly passionate"?
michaelt 10y ago
A frequent narrative I hear on HN is that going to court is ruinously expensive, emotionally taxing, wildly uncertain even if you're completely in the right, and so slow any victory is almost certain to be Pyrrhic. Someone who believes that narrative would have expected this guy to lose, pay six figures in legal fees, have a mental breakdown, and the judgement to only come in five years after his magnet company closed down because they couldn't sell their only product. Personally I don't have enough experience to know whether the US legal system really works that way.
- bitJericho 10y ago
  My first hand experience is it works exactly that way.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  I think that's actually an accurate characterization of the legal system. I highly recommend this book if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Adversarial-Legalism-American-Way-Law/dp/0674012410 https://www.amazon.com/Adversarial-Legalism-American-Way-Law...
anigbrowl 10y ago
It's bizarre in that he went to great lengths to prove a point when there were much easier ways to make more money in the same period. Most people would not be willing to spend as much money on proving the point but would rather use it to produce something less controversial.

matt4077 10y ago

If, however, you think "too bad there are dozens of entrepreneurs that fail at hurdles like these", make sure to remember: for every entrepreneur that encounters such Kafkaesque situations, there are thousands that never run into any problems with bureaucracy that can't be solved with a phone call or a two-page form.

jessriedel 10y ago
The large, economy-wide negative impact of regulation are well established by academics. You can think the benefits are worth the cost, but you can't think the costs are small.
- mejari 10y ago
  >The large, economy-wide negative impact of regulation are well established by academics. That sounds like an easily made, hard to back up claim.
  - mamurphy 10y ago
    "Regulations are very costly (in a large, economy-wide way)," to me, sounded like an almost-self-evident, incredibly easy to back up claim. 15 seconds with Google confirmed that initial assessment. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1177&context=yjreg http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic... "The Costs and Benefits of Regulation: Review and Synthesis" RW Hahn, Yale Journal of Regulation, Volume 8, Issue 1, Article 9, 1991 The above link was the first Google result for (economy-wide costs of regulations journal) for me, and Google notes that it is cited by hundreds of other articles. The first 10 results all seemed to similarly explain that regulations are costly.
    - mejari 10y ago
      Having a cost and having a "large, economy-wide negative impact" are very different things.

notacoward 10y ago

For every entrepreneur that struggles through a hurdle like this, how many personal injuries and environmental harms are avoided? You make it sound like regulation exists for no reason or has no upside, but that's a very money-centric POV. From a human POV it's often just as well that some of those startups didn't get off the ground. How many cases of food poisoning or malnutrition were avoided because a dozen Soylent-alikes were - rightly! - told their products were unfit for human consumption?

Fordrus 10y ago
You're committing a critical fallacy here, you're making it sound like this has to be a "virtually non-existent regulation" situation or a circumstance like Zen Magnets went through. The CPSC and related regulators CAN regulate dangerous stuff without making idiotic wars on toy magnets that undermine their entire existence. Seriously. They can fulfill their entire function, standards of error for mistakes included, without EVER committing such heinously overregulatory acts as this - in fact, it's important to their continued existence that they DO NOT overregulate this badly (because when they do, their opponents gain substantial ammunition to eventually disband/defang them).
- 762236 10y ago
  They aren't toy magnets, which is part of the problem: people have internalized that these are toys, which leads to hazardous situations. An educational campaign is surely something that needs to happen.
toss1 10y ago
Yes, many regulations exist for good reason and have significant upsides. However, it's false to say that EVERY individual regulation meets these criteria. As TFA pointed out, these objects are far less hazardous than firearms, fireworks, automobiles, and even balloons (the leading cause of child suffocation, and for whic labeling is required), but because they are novel the CPSC decided to slap them with an absolute ban, which is stronger regulation than any of the other products listed above and thousands of others. This was a very badly considered and executed regulation, and the judge acted rightly. FWIW, I don't think anyone is saying what you imply, that all regulations are baseless and bad.