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Environmental regulations are a great example because large parts of the US population are in communities tied to industries that were eventually saddled with e

Environmental regulations are a great example because large parts of the US population are in communities tied to industries that were eventually saddled with environmental regulations. Many of those people believe that the regulations are part of why their industries declined. For them, the environmental regulations are not highly defensible. Similarly in tech, many of the people arguing against regulations are economically incentivized to minimize the regulations. FB knew exactly what they were doing, third party developers at the time sounded the alarm [1] about how FB's API structure guaranteed that abuse would happen. What we're seeing now is the digital equivalent of BP Deepwater, where people warned about the safety before the incident and no one cared. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-changes-good-bad-and-ugly https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-...

wgerard 9y ago
> Environmental regulations are a great example because large parts of the US population are in communities tied to industries that were eventually saddled with environmental regulations. I don't think that makes those regulations un-defensible. It just means there are tradeoffs. Maybe we're just disagreeing about what the word "defensible" means in this context. > Similarly in tech, many of the people arguing against regulations are economically incentivized to minimize the regulations Except in this particular instance, the people arguing FOR regulations are economically incentivized to maximize the regulations. That's what makes this particular proposal untenable. Outside of the renewable energy industry, the people pushing for environmental regulations don't have much economic incentive to do so (other than some very trivial ones, like that the economy will suffer if the planet declines).
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Environmental regulations are a great example of legacy spaghetti. Legislation not passed by a suitably large majority should automatically come with a 10yr sunset provision.

wgerard 9y ago

> Environmental regulations are a great example because large parts of the US population are in communities tied to industries that were eventually saddled with environmental regulations. I don't think that makes those regulations un-defensible. It just means there are tradeoffs. Maybe we're just disagreeing about what the word "defensible" means in this context. > Similarly in tech, many of the people arguing against regulations are economically incentivized to minimize the regulations Except in this particular instance, the people arguing FOR regulations are economically incentivized to maximize the regulations. That's what makes this particular proposal untenable. Outside of the renewable energy industry, the people pushing for environmental regulations don't have much economic incentive to do so (other than some very trivial ones, like that the economy will suffer if the planet declines).

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

Environmental regulations are a great example of legacy spaghetti. Legislation not passed by a suitably large majority should automatically come with a 10yr sunset provision.