3 ms·
Laws against theft, contract enforcement, etc. are general laws for the benefit of everyone. (They also derive from common law, which dates back over a thousand
by _jal 9y ago
Laws against theft, contract enforcement, etc. are general laws for the benefit of everyone. (They also derive from common law, which dates back over a thousand years, as opposed to statutory laws that are routinely bought by lobbying, but let's put that aside.) They are a sort of 'legal primitive' - don't cheat, don't steal - that attempt to provide a baseline of trust in society.
Mandates that computers must respect special rules based on legal definitions are laws that tell me how my machines must operate and how you must build machines. They are arbitrary restrictions the degrade capabilities (make the machines less valuable) solely for the purpose of enabling a few industries to be lazy and not figure out how to be relevant in a changing world.
If you want to go down that path, you're going to be "picking winners and losers" - something I hear we are supposed to dislike. Which business models "deserve" protections?
- Do long-haul truckers "deserve" to keep working in the face of self-driving trucks?
- Do corner groceries "deserve" protection from Whole Foods/Amazon or Walmart's logistics innovations?
> So what makes some business models [...] more protectable?
As a descriptive matter, it appears that that's closely related to one's investment in lobbying.
- coldtea 9y ago>If you want to go down that path, you're going to be "picking winners and losers" - something I hear we are supposed to dislike. Which business models "deserve" protections? I'd say that should not be up to the availability of the relevant technology to decide, but up to society. Just because we can obliterate or replace something doesn't automatically mean we should, or that it would be better for us if we did. So I'm perfectly OK with society picking winners and losers, and not OK with a jungle race where "invisible hands" and market forces (including the one's people forget, like lobbies, monopolies and under the table deals) decide.
- _jal 9y ago> So I'm perfectly OK with society picking winners and losers, and not OK with a jungle race where "invisible hands" and market forces (including the one's people forget, like lobbies, monopolies and under the table deals) decide. Uh, I specifically called out lobbies and monopolies. And in theory I agree with you. In practice, "society" doesn't serve that role. The "invisible hands" are exactly the actors doing the picking. Don't get me wrong - I love me some theory, it is so much cleaner than the real world. But we don't get to live there.
- coldtea 9y ago>Don't get me wrong - I love me some theory, it is so much cleaner than the real world. But we don't get to live there. Is that because it's impossible and unpractical, or because we are conditioned for the current situation?