8 ms·

About 50% of small business survive their 5th year and roughly 30% survive to their 10th year. The concern is the drip/drip effect of more and more regulation m

About 50% of small business survive their 5th year and roughly 30% survive to their 10th year. The concern is the drip/drip effect of more and more regulation making those numbers even worse. In addition you may be saying to a poor or middle class person that the money costs of starting certain types business are not longer in reach due to much higher costs. A large well established business is in a much better position to weather these costs so the wealthy get wealthier. What are the costs compared to the benefits?

EnFinlay 9y ago
Everything there might be true. Everything might also be false. It might be cheaper to start a business because PPI information will be handled properly from the start and not be a cost centre. This might increase new business viability. Maybe there are no "costs". Just benefits and benefits?
dsjoerg 9y ago
In general I strongly agree that regulations can be one of the slow drip/drips that crush a society over time. However there are two forms of complexity at war here; complexity for business (regulation) and complexity for ordinary people (having data about you everywhere, about everything, forever). So we have to decide which kind of complexity is worse, or how to strike the right balance.
DenisM 9y ago
Your logic applies to fire codes and food sanitary rules just as well. Doing the right thing is a burden, that’s why it’s called the right thing and not the convenient thing.
- jcriddle4 9y ago
  Yes you are correct. What are the costs compared to the benefits? Is the additional privacy going to be worth it? If we discover a few years from now that European companies are sharing roughly the same amount of data with other companies as their American counterparts, just documenting it better, have you gained anything?
  - bjelkeman-again 9y ago
    Yes, because I can request it and ask for deletion.
    - briandear 9y ago
      Are you willing to pay more for products and services? Because ultimately you will.
      - jadedhacker 9y ago
        If hiring one person changes the calculus that much, it's nonetheless easy to afford if profitable companies paid their workers more instead of sending it to shareholders or doing stock buybacks. The proportion of wealth held by the managerial class exceeds the Roman Empire at its height. https://persquaremile.com/2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-the-roman-empire/ https://persquaremile.com/2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-th... For reference, the gini coefficient of the united states in 2016 was 0.48. Rome at its population peak was between 0.42-0.44 according to the article. A gini coefficient of 0 is a perfectly equal society and a coefficient of 1 is perfectly unequal. Small startups also often get the benefit of reduced regulatory burden, which is fitting because they have less overall impact on society. Once they become large, it is fitting that they play by rules that benefit the majority.
        hueving 9y ago
        How is a gini coefficient relevant to higher priced products due to regulatory overhead? It seems you have an axe to grind and derailed the conversion to compare the US with ancient Rome. Please provide a citation showing a correlation between increased privacy regulations and reduced gini coefficients.
        jadedhacker 9y ago
        I was responding to the claim that increased privacy would lead to possibly unacceptable price increases. I accept as axiomatic that increased privacy reduces profits, because, for one, you can't sell data that is private let alone the regulatory burden. My position is that these vociferous critiques of even minor bequests to the public are ill founded.
- briandear 9y ago
  Nobody dies from Google Analytics. People die from failing to follow fire codes or food safety laws. This is a false equivalence.
  - EnFinlay 9y ago
    Most people don't die from food safety violations, they just have a really bad day. I would say this is equivalent to the harm done by something like the Equifax breach.
    - FireBeyond 9y ago
      > they just have a really bad day And those who end up in hospital, in the US, possibly without insurance? I guess that, and the ensuing bills is "just" an _extremely_ bad day then?
      - girvo 9y ago
        Not a worry in most other developed countries.
  - 00N8 9y ago
    of course they do! what magical kingdom of the future do you think you're living in, where economic ends have no bearing on survival?! your business on the brink succeeds or fails; a personal relationship blossoms or sours. sure, we mustn't rely too much one any one thing going a certain way on these kinda things that data sharing or Google Analytics can impact. but in aggregate these factors have significant bearing on one's access to medical, nutritional, & fitness resources & technology, even will to live, thus they do drive life or death outcomes all the same.
    - cromwellian 9y ago
      So Google Analytics kills people? It saps your bodily fluids, I mean, will to live, at the same level as fluoridated water, and is equally dangerous with building fires. Gotcha. This is the best example of false equivalence I've yet seen.
davidjgraph 9y ago
You hear the advice for new startups; only recruit the best from the start, cut away the fat from your task lists to only focus on the critical issues that generate business. Here's another, bake privacy into your company from the start. Create a culture that takes it seriously and threads it through everything it does. Once you have this culture you'll find it costs less than when you try to retrofit it after 3 years. In terms of the benefits, I can only assume you're American to ask this. In Europe we view our privacy as a human right and that our lawmakers should protect that right, it's that simple.
- nine_k 9y ago
  > bake privacy into your company from the start. Create a culture that takes it seriously and threads it through everything it does. Replace "privacy" with "security" above, and you'll get the widely accepted best practice approach: "you cannot bolt on security later", etc. Likely it will work for privacy equally well.
  - fvdessen 9y ago
    It also works for performance, reliability, UX quality, etc. What GDPR does is forcing business to make privacy their core concern. Since time & budgets are inherently limited, this will come at the expense of something else.
    - def_true_false 9y ago
      As it should.
    - arkh 9y ago
      > What GDPR does is forcing business to make privacy their core concern. Not really. It will mostly be a problem for companies which use a lot of SaaS services with no on-premise solution and companies in the business of selling their users data. Not gonna shed a lot of tears for those.
      - 9y ago
sameline 9y ago
If a business cannot afford to properly handle and audit customer data then it should avoid any sort of collection. Businesses that produce value from customer data should be able to pay for necessary protections.
cleansy 9y ago
I usually register on non essential websites with a custome address like website.com@domain. Over the years I experienced several hidden data breaches as I look once in a while into my spam folder. This regulation gives me as a customer a good feeling as businesses are required now to think hard about their data protection strategy. As a business owner I have no problem answering these requests as I designed my software with data protection from the get go. Now it’s at least a requirement for all businesses which is good. This is a huge benefit for the consumer.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Yes, this also gives great insight on who's selling data.
bunderbunder 9y ago
I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's actually cheaper for smaller businesses to properly handle personal data than it is for big ones. Big ones tend to have much bigger, more complex data systems that require complicated oversight and governance, and are presumably much more likely to engage in risky behaviors like dumping stuff into a data lake. This might have an outsize impact on startups that deal primarily in data about people. I'm actually pretty OK with that. Some kinds of activities really should have high barriers to entry.
spanktheuser 9y ago
The benefits are to me as a consumer, of course. Just because companies would prefer to treat data and security as burdensome doesn't mean that I should let them. As an argument to reverse this regulation, this seems unconvincing.
groby_b 9y ago
I don't give a fig about startup survival rates. I care about the fact that they're currently making money by externalizing costs. Yes, it makes it harder to get into some areas. If that means a net positive for society, I'm surprisingly OK with that. There's no intrinsic reasons why we should care how many companies survive.
Jach 9y ago
Of those small businesses how many had business in Europe? You can aggregate or split by success/failure.
kartan 9y ago
> The concern is the drip/drip effect of more and more regulation making those numbers even worse. There are industries, like construction, that have a lot more regulations that this one. And small companies survive. > What are the costs compared to the benefits? Benefit: Citizens have the right to protect their privacy, to not be tracked without reason, to be notified when a data breach put their safety at risk, etc. Cost: Companies need to have reasonable data governance that will increase short-term cost, but probably have a long-term positive impact on cost as bad data governance is just technical debt.
_o_ 9y ago
If you have taken GDPR into account from the start, the costs are trivial, it only means you will organize data differently so this "startup worrying" thing is a nonsense. Those worries are trying to do PR from companies/developers that are used to capture as much as possible from customers (potentially also sell those data) and are basing their bussiness model on that. The real cost comes in "old" companies. Those should complain, but those are also responsible for need for GDPR.

EnFinlay 9y ago

Everything there might be true. Everything might also be false. It might be cheaper to start a business because PPI information will be handled properly from the start and not be a cost centre. This might increase new business viability. Maybe there are no "costs". Just benefits and benefits?

dsjoerg 9y ago

In general I strongly agree that regulations can be one of the slow drip/drips that crush a society over time. However there are two forms of complexity at war here; complexity for business (regulation) and complexity for ordinary people (having data about you everywhere, about everything, forever). So we have to decide which kind of complexity is worse, or how to strike the right balance.

DenisM 9y ago

Your logic applies to fire codes and food sanitary rules just as well. Doing the right thing is a burden, that’s why it’s called the right thing and not the convenient thing.

jcriddle4 9y ago
Yes you are correct. What are the costs compared to the benefits? Is the additional privacy going to be worth it? If we discover a few years from now that European companies are sharing roughly the same amount of data with other companies as their American counterparts, just documenting it better, have you gained anything?
- bjelkeman-again 9y ago
  Yes, because I can request it and ask for deletion.
  - briandear 9y ago
    Are you willing to pay more for products and services? Because ultimately you will.
    - jadedhacker 9y ago
      If hiring one person changes the calculus that much, it's nonetheless easy to afford if profitable companies paid their workers more instead of sending it to shareholders or doing stock buybacks. The proportion of wealth held by the managerial class exceeds the Roman Empire at its height. https://persquaremile.com/2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-the-roman-empire/ https://persquaremile.com/2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-th... For reference, the gini coefficient of the united states in 2016 was 0.48. Rome at its population peak was between 0.42-0.44 according to the article. A gini coefficient of 0 is a perfectly equal society and a coefficient of 1 is perfectly unequal. Small startups also often get the benefit of reduced regulatory burden, which is fitting because they have less overall impact on society. Once they become large, it is fitting that they play by rules that benefit the majority.
      - hueving 9y ago
        How is a gini coefficient relevant to higher priced products due to regulatory overhead? It seems you have an axe to grind and derailed the conversion to compare the US with ancient Rome. Please provide a citation showing a correlation between increased privacy regulations and reduced gini coefficients.
        jadedhacker 9y ago
        I was responding to the claim that increased privacy would lead to possibly unacceptable price increases. I accept as axiomatic that increased privacy reduces profits, because, for one, you can't sell data that is private let alone the regulatory burden. My position is that these vociferous critiques of even minor bequests to the public are ill founded.
briandear 9y ago
Nobody dies from Google Analytics. People die from failing to follow fire codes or food safety laws. This is a false equivalence.
- EnFinlay 9y ago
  Most people don't die from food safety violations, they just have a really bad day. I would say this is equivalent to the harm done by something like the Equifax breach.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    > they just have a really bad day And those who end up in hospital, in the US, possibly without insurance? I guess that, and the ensuing bills is "just" an _extremely_ bad day then?
    - girvo 9y ago
      Not a worry in most other developed countries.
- 00N8 9y ago
  of course they do! what magical kingdom of the future do you think you're living in, where economic ends have no bearing on survival?! your business on the brink succeeds or fails; a personal relationship blossoms or sours. sure, we mustn't rely too much one any one thing going a certain way on these kinda things that data sharing or Google Analytics can impact. but in aggregate these factors have significant bearing on one's access to medical, nutritional, & fitness resources & technology, even will to live, thus they do drive life or death outcomes all the same.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    So Google Analytics kills people? It saps your bodily fluids, I mean, will to live, at the same level as fluoridated water, and is equally dangerous with building fires. Gotcha. This is the best example of false equivalence I've yet seen.

davidjgraph 9y ago

You hear the advice for new startups; only recruit the best from the start, cut away the fat from your task lists to only focus on the critical issues that generate business. Here's another, bake privacy into your company from the start. Create a culture that takes it seriously and threads it through everything it does. Once you have this culture you'll find it costs less than when you try to retrofit it after 3 years. In terms of the benefits, I can only assume you're American to ask this. In Europe we view our privacy as a human right and that our lawmakers should protect that right, it's that simple.

nine_k 9y ago
> bake privacy into your company from the start. Create a culture that takes it seriously and threads it through everything it does. Replace "privacy" with "security" above, and you'll get the widely accepted best practice approach: "you cannot bolt on security later", etc. Likely it will work for privacy equally well.
- fvdessen 9y ago
  It also works for performance, reliability, UX quality, etc. What GDPR does is forcing business to make privacy their core concern. Since time & budgets are inherently limited, this will come at the expense of something else.
  - def_true_false 9y ago
    As it should.
  - arkh 9y ago
    > What GDPR does is forcing business to make privacy their core concern. Not really. It will mostly be a problem for companies which use a lot of SaaS services with no on-premise solution and companies in the business of selling their users data. Not gonna shed a lot of tears for those.
    - 9y ago

sameline 9y ago

If a business cannot afford to properly handle and audit customer data then it should avoid any sort of collection. Businesses that produce value from customer data should be able to pay for necessary protections.

cleansy 9y ago

I usually register on non essential websites with a custome address like website.com@domain. Over the years I experienced several hidden data breaches as I look once in a while into my spam folder. This regulation gives me as a customer a good feeling as businesses are required now to think hard about their data protection strategy. As a business owner I have no problem answering these requests as I designed my software with data protection from the get go. Now it’s at least a requirement for all businesses which is good. This is a huge benefit for the consumer.

mirimir 9y ago
Yes, this also gives great insight on who's selling data.

bunderbunder 9y ago

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's actually cheaper for smaller businesses to properly handle personal data than it is for big ones. Big ones tend to have much bigger, more complex data systems that require complicated oversight and governance, and are presumably much more likely to engage in risky behaviors like dumping stuff into a data lake. This might have an outsize impact on startups that deal primarily in data about people. I'm actually pretty OK with that. Some kinds of activities really should have high barriers to entry.

spanktheuser 9y ago

The benefits are to me as a consumer, of course. Just because companies would prefer to treat data and security as burdensome doesn't mean that I should let them. As an argument to reverse this regulation, this seems unconvincing.

groby_b 9y ago

I don't give a fig about startup survival rates. I care about the fact that they're currently making money by externalizing costs. Yes, it makes it harder to get into some areas. If that means a net positive for society, I'm surprisingly OK with that. There's no intrinsic reasons why we should care how many companies survive.

Jach 9y ago

Of those small businesses how many had business in Europe? You can aggregate or split by success/failure.

kartan 9y ago

> The concern is the drip/drip effect of more and more regulation making those numbers even worse. There are industries, like construction, that have a lot more regulations that this one. And small companies survive. > What are the costs compared to the benefits? Benefit: Citizens have the right to protect their privacy, to not be tracked without reason, to be notified when a data breach put their safety at risk, etc. Cost: Companies need to have reasonable data governance that will increase short-term cost, but probably have a long-term positive impact on cost as bad data governance is just technical debt.

_o_ 9y ago

If you have taken GDPR into account from the start, the costs are trivial, it only means you will organize data differently so this "startup worrying" thing is a nonsense. Those worries are trying to do PR from companies/developers that are used to capture as much as possible from customers (potentially also sell those data) and are basing their bussiness model on that. The real cost comes in "old" companies. Those should complain, but those are also responsible for need for GDPR.