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For every entrepreneur that struggles through a hurdle like this, how many personal injuries and environmental harms are avoided? You make it sound like regula

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.
anigbrowl 10y ago
I would agree with you if we were talking about a defective product. But neodymium spheres are not defective, they're just dangerous. I have been interested i this for several years as I own a whole lot of Buckyballs, a previously popular brand of strong magnet sold to the public, which were taken off sale after repeated CPSC objections. Yes, they're dangerous is you don't follow safety precautions and I would never allow children to play with them. When children visit we make sure the magnets are not accessible - it's our responsibility to think about others' safety. But it's not the responsibility of the magnet manufacturers, as long as they make it clear that their product can be dangerous (and the vendors I've bought from certainly do). The mere fact that something is dangerous is not grounds for taking it off sale, otherwise we should shut down every gas station and hardware store right now.
- goflyapig 10y ago
  >I would agree with you if we were talking about a defective product. But neodymium spheres are not defective, they're just dangerous. Why make a distinction between things that are dangerous on accident (defective) vs things that are dangerous by design? >otherwise we should shut down every gas station and hardware store right now. Every law or regulation needs to balance the risk to society against the benefit to society. This is a toy.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    > This is a toy This comment is one example of how hard the labelling failed. Buckyballs came with a big label saying "BUCKYBALLS ARE NOT TOYS".
    - geon 10y ago
      You play with them, and they have no other purpose than entertainmenr. Of course they are toys. Just not suitable for children.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    So are dildos, but that doesn't mean they need to be made safe for children. These toys were clearly advertised as being for adults only.
jessriedel 10y ago
> You make it sound like regulation exists for no reason or has no upside What exactly did I say that made it sound like that?

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.

anigbrowl 10y ago

I would agree with you if we were talking about a defective product. But neodymium spheres are not defective, they're just dangerous. I have been interested i this for several years as I own a whole lot of Buckyballs, a previously popular brand of strong magnet sold to the public, which were taken off sale after repeated CPSC objections. Yes, they're dangerous is you don't follow safety precautions and I would never allow children to play with them. When children visit we make sure the magnets are not accessible - it's our responsibility to think about others' safety. But it's not the responsibility of the magnet manufacturers, as long as they make it clear that their product can be dangerous (and the vendors I've bought from certainly do). The mere fact that something is dangerous is not grounds for taking it off sale, otherwise we should shut down every gas station and hardware store right now.

goflyapig 10y ago
>I would agree with you if we were talking about a defective product. But neodymium spheres are not defective, they're just dangerous. Why make a distinction between things that are dangerous on accident (defective) vs things that are dangerous by design? >otherwise we should shut down every gas station and hardware store right now. Every law or regulation needs to balance the risk to society against the benefit to society. This is a toy.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > This is a toy This comment is one example of how hard the labelling failed. Buckyballs came with a big label saying "BUCKYBALLS ARE NOT TOYS".
  - geon 10y ago
    You play with them, and they have no other purpose than entertainmenr. Of course they are toys. Just not suitable for children.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  So are dildos, but that doesn't mean they need to be made safe for children. These toys were clearly advertised as being for adults only.

jessriedel 10y ago

> You make it sound like regulation exists for no reason or has no upside What exactly did I say that made it sound like that?