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That's why regulation always comes to be - no company can be trusted to do the right thing on its own.
by bantunes 9y ago
That's why regulation always comes to be - no company can be trusted to do the right thing on its own.
- goatlover 9y agoAnd that's what libertarians fail to grasp.
- DINKDINK 9y agoMethods for choosing to ensure a market that operates how the public wants: Regulation: Laws that mandate exactly how something should be done and if the company doesn't do it that way they are shut down - with no regard to whether or not the legally-mandated process achieves the end. Quite literally it's politicians controlling the means to hope that a certain end occurs, regardless of that end being achieved. Prone to regulatory capture, rent seeking, anticompetitive practices. Apt for: when a negative outcome will absolutely devastate the public, there isn't much variability in how to achieve the end, the domains in which the market operates are stable. Tort Law: A company is free to change how some process works but is able to be held financially liable for all ramifications of their process. Prone to failure if the assets of a company are less than the damage they can produce. Apt for: a new market which is highly dynamic, the state of the art is constantly changing, ruin is limited to customers who have chosen to engage with the company (no to little externalities). Neocons: in favor of no regulation and castrated tort remedies Neoliberals: in favor of bloated regulation (rent seeking) and symbolic tort remedies: Libertarians: in favor of /extremely/ limited regulation and strong tort remedies.
- tyfon 9y agoThe problem with tort law is that by the time the government or court reacts, the perpetrators are long gone with the money and only a shell of a limited liability company is left. For that to work the owners of a company has to be personally responsible for the damages they create.
- pjc50 9y agoFor tort law to work, you need a very effective universal legal aid system. It can't all be done by no-win-no-fee and class actions, and it takes an extremely long time.
- camillomiller 9y agoBut... the market... Oh, the damage that neolibertarianism has done.
- daodedickinson 9y agoNeolibs are dead. Trump was elected on "'free' trade is unfair trade" and if Dems want to change some things on this front it can happen.
- FranzFerdiNaN 9y agoAnd yet most of what he does is just business as usual for Republicans and in common with neoliberal ideas. He is a bit of a wildcard so sometimes he yells something about tarifs, which might come out of nowhere, but looking at the stock markets they are perfectly happy with the current administration.
- plehoux 9y agoWhat about ... Nafta, Steel tariff, Boeing VS Bomboardier, Trans-Pacific Partnership... all those moves go against neoliberal ideas.
- castle-bravo 9y agoI don't think it's about ideology as much as interests. In the 80s and 90s, the US was the world's most economically powerful country and was able to use free trade to further its own interests; the ideological arguments for free trade were constructed to justify policies which were deemed to be in the interest of the US and its owners. Now that the US is facing serious competition, protectionism is gradually becoming a more rational policy, and the public ideology of American politicians is adapting.
- kodablah 9y agoThat's a strange statement. What about all the regulation that doesn't come to be? To take your statement to its logical conclusion would allow no company to do anything on its own. Also, a statement like "no company can be trusted to do the right thing on its own" is obviously untrue, doesn't account for many of us with companies out here, and harms your overall point when you make these kinds of broad generalizations.
- gt_ 9y ago‘can’t be trusted to do’ != ‘does not do’
- kodablah 9y agoOf course they aren't the same. I still don't agree with the statement. And if the pitchforks weren't out, most people would realize that they trust companies to do the right thing quite frequently even when there are no regulations to prevent the wrong thing from being done instead.
- bantunes 9y agoI don't think bakeries or flower retail companies doing the right thing are the crux of the argument here, on HN of all places. We're talking about startups that are braving new grounds in terms of what they're able to do, mostly without a legal framework to restrain them. These companies, once they reach a certain size will eventually need to be regulated because they come to wield too much power. See AirBnB, Uber, 23&Me, Amazon, Google, etc., etc.
- zerostar07 9y ago.. or government
- Aunche 9y agoDespite what Redditors like to say, the big banks have done a surprisingly good job at self regulating since the financial crisis. That said, these regulations will probably lax as people get more confident and comfortable with taking risks.
- munificent 9y ago> a surprisingly good job at self regulating since the financial crisis. The financial crisis was less than ten years ago. That's like calling a drunk driver "responsible" for going a whole week sober since that time they crashed into a minivan and killed an entire family.
- jonathanyc 9y agoDo people who think banks and corporations are good at self-regulating not look at history? The same pattern has repeated for hundreds of years—it’d be embarrassing and horrible if a drunk driver didn’t learn their lesson after a decade, but we haven’t learned our lesson after at least a century.
- throwaway2048 9y agoThe ideology of regulation and big government = bad is more important than any amount of evidence to some.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoThis is the internet where vast troves of historical data are stored and shared but everyone decides to rely on their recent memory instead.
- rafiki6 9y agoHundreds is a bit of a hyperbole here. We've only had modern corporate America for maybe the last 150 years. Pre-industrial companies didn't have as much power or clout as large behemoth enterprises do today.
- marcell 9y agoFWIW having worked at Google, I can tell you they take these issues pretty seriously there. This is largely because of a few self inflicted wounds early in the company’s life.
- jonathanyc 9y agoWhich is why Google collects location data even when location services are disabled, right? Let’s not pretend Google is holier-than-Facebook. https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locations-even-when-location-services-are-disabled/ https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio...
- mintplant 9y agoAnd the "Sign Into Chrome" feature slurps up all your history, cookies, etc. in a form Google can read and which their terms allow them to data-mine, unless you know to dig into the settings and configure a separate encryption key.
- marcell 9y agoI mean..it's a Cell Phone. The "cell" part of it means that you move between different "cells" which correspond to different towers, so that the carrier can best route your call. Even feature phones tracked your location in this way, it's used in criminal cases sometimes.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]