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What are the odds that this regulation effort gets compromised into something that is spun by politicians as a pro-consumer/citizen victory while also digging F

What are the odds that this regulation effort gets compromised into something that is spun by politicians as a pro-consumer/citizen victory while also digging Facebook's and Google's moats a bit deeper? Basically, something where compliance is a small cost center for them, but a big hurdle for any would-be competitor trying to scale up. This is a pattern I've definitely heard discussed in the past, though I'm failing to come up with any concrete examples.

mdpopescu 9y ago
You can find some examples at [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Have their been any attempts to outlaw regulatory capture? Rant: I can think of many more examples that are not on that list, and it seems like a comprehensive list would be extremely exhausting. For example, in Seattle I once needed access to a court hearing record, which Seattle law requires the public have "reasonable" accesse to. Instead of providing the records in a reasonable format, the audio was recorded in a proprietary, non-open source format called "On the Record." Getting and paying for not just the CD in person, but the player to work required me to boot into Windows, and even then I still encountered bugs that made life unreasonably difficult. A child could easily record hearings with free software in mp3 format, host them securely on the web, creating a lot of benefit and efficiency to society. And that is all a good example to bring attention to a second point: when people talk about ideas like income redistribution, jobs, and basic income, they worry about "where will the wealth come from, and who will produce useful value?" But come on, if we comb through the economy like a small business owner would through his company, we'd find already an enormous amount of people who aren't involved in producing anythint useful. Or in this case, something useful, but ridiculously inefficient; and in other cases, things which are detrimental to society. It's not uncommon to see on HN stories of corruption, or even science which missrepresents truth.
cidibe 9y ago
Very likely. This is why Epic dominates EHRs despite users universally hating the software. The funny thing is Google and Facebook don't even want it, but with all this sudden vigilance against them from both ends of the political spectrum, their potential competitors will need massive legal departments they can't afford before getting market share. Maybe it'll be a one two punch, regulate tightly then they will be real unarguable monopolies you can bust up.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
IBM 9y ago
Governments have the tools to deal with that as well: antitrust.
alexasmyths 9y ago
That's a really great point and I suggest you may be correct.

mdpopescu 9y ago

You can find some examples at [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

wallace_f 9y ago
Have their been any attempts to outlaw regulatory capture? Rant: I can think of many more examples that are not on that list, and it seems like a comprehensive list would be extremely exhausting. For example, in Seattle I once needed access to a court hearing record, which Seattle law requires the public have "reasonable" accesse to. Instead of providing the records in a reasonable format, the audio was recorded in a proprietary, non-open source format called "On the Record." Getting and paying for not just the CD in person, but the player to work required me to boot into Windows, and even then I still encountered bugs that made life unreasonably difficult. A child could easily record hearings with free software in mp3 format, host them securely on the web, creating a lot of benefit and efficiency to society. And that is all a good example to bring attention to a second point: when people talk about ideas like income redistribution, jobs, and basic income, they worry about "where will the wealth come from, and who will produce useful value?" But come on, if we comb through the economy like a small business owner would through his company, we'd find already an enormous amount of people who aren't involved in producing anythint useful. Or in this case, something useful, but ridiculously inefficient; and in other cases, things which are detrimental to society. It's not uncommon to see on HN stories of corruption, or even science which missrepresents truth.

cidibe 9y ago

Very likely. This is why Epic dominates EHRs despite users universally hating the software. The funny thing is Google and Facebook don't even want it, but with all this sudden vigilance against them from both ends of the political spectrum, their potential competitors will need massive legal departments they can't afford before getting market share. Maybe it'll be a one two punch, regulate tightly then they will be real unarguable monopolies you can bust up.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

IBM 9y ago

Governments have the tools to deal with that as well: antitrust.

alexasmyths 9y ago

That's a really great point and I suggest you may be correct.