8 ms·

I was thinking about getting in to the car market but all these pesky requirements that I sell a car with airbags and seatbelts and fuel efficiency compliance a

I was thinking about getting in to the car market but all these pesky requirements that I sell a car with airbags and seatbelts and fuel efficiency compliance are just there to protect existing incumbents.

rdlecler1 8y ago
False equivalency.
gohbgl 8y ago
Airbags and seat belts were installed in cars long before they were required by regulators. The same goes for improvements in fuel efficiency. This all is driven by competing companies trying to make a profit.
- inscionent 8y ago
  Air bags were 'installed before they were required' because auto manufactures in the US were given a 7 year period to add them, not out of competition based on safety. This only after a decade of the auto industry fighting to keep those safety features from being required, exactly because the auto makers were worried about profits and not consumer safety. "A Federal agency today abandoned the longdisputed requirement that automobile manufacturers install automatic crash protection, such as airbags or ''passive'' safety belts. The action by the agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drew immediate protest from safety groups and praise from the automobile industry." https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/24/us/airbag-regulation-on-cars-rescinded.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/24/us/airbag-regulation-on-c...
- astura 8y ago
  No... this is just pure revisionist history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed
TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago
I think the phrase "You're oversimplifying a complex situation to the point of no longer adding anything to the discussion" applies to your comment. No one here is saying that ALL regulations are bad or should be removed, just that all regulations have unintended consequences.
- vilmosi 8y ago
  The grand parent did the exactly the same thing.
  - TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago
    He was certainly quite terse, but I wouldn't necessarily call that an oversimplification
    - abritinthebay 8y ago
      I would. It’s much more of a gross (and inaccurate) oversimplification than the sarcastic response to it was.
  - taysic 8y ago
    Not really, all regulation will favor incumbents - its just that some may with worth it. And it's worth noting that not all regulation is universally seen as useful.
paulddraper 8y ago
You jest, but to use another example, aggressive regulations is exactly why manufactures produce private aircraft designed 50 years ago. Onerous regulations are always overcome, one way or another. (And airbags are not onerous.)
lajhsdfkl 8y ago
>I was thinking about getting in to the car market but all these pesky requirements that I sell a car with airbags and seatbelts and fuel efficiency compliance are just there to protect existing incumbents. I think by going to cars to prove your point proves how ridiculous regulation for websites are. For some reason there exists a group of people that believe that websites like facebook need regulations that are as strict as those required for developing cars. People die from cars that are badly designed. People don't die from facebook (yes I'm sure you can find some contrived example.) Unrelated but something that further adds to the irony of using cars as an example is that companies such as VW haven't even been fined for cheating on their emissions test. I doubt a country like Germany would ever consider allowing the EU to fine 4% of Vws global revenue even though they broke the law in a way that has resulted in people's deaths.
- monkeynotes 8y ago
  > VW haven't even been fined for cheating on their emissions test. Exec has been fined and sentenced to 7 years[0] VW have been fined $2.8B[1] [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/judge-sentences-volkswagen-executive-to-7-years-in-prison-plus-a-fine/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/judge-sentences-... [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/judge-approves-largest-fine-u-s-history-volkswagen-n749406 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/judge-approves-larges...
  - lajhsdfkl 8y ago
    By the US and 2.8B is a fraction of what they deserved to be fined. All VW execs should be in prison for the rest of their lives for what they have done.
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      > All VW execs should be in prison for the rest of their lives for what they have done. You must point to the laws violated. E.g. Schmidt made a false statement to the California Air Resources Board under the Clean Air Act. Trial in the court of opinion and mob lynching is not compatible with the Western tenements of law.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
str33t_punk 8y ago
Ones related to safety. The other ones related to a nebulous concept of data privacy
- oaiey 8y ago
  If my car crashes or I am extorted due to my sexuality or killed for my religion. All the same. It is deadly. Data Privacy is not a nebulous concept. It is a human right. It is for that reason in the German constitution.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    If you have to keep your religion secret to avoid being killed, you have MUCH bigger problems in your society that I don't think "nobody knowing who is secretly Jewish" is actually going to fix. It's not like a future hypothetical fascist dictatorship isn't going to have access to the necessary records to piece it together or would follow its own GDPR constraints, nor would the GDPR stop it from arbitrarily deciding some people are Jewish without detailed evidence. I'd like to think the GDPR is underpinned by better philosophy than a false hope it could prevent a future Holocaust.
    - oaiey 8y ago
      I think it is generally based against discrimination and not focused on something extreme as a state organized Holocaust. Also GDPR does not care about this. For the GDPR these are just attributes which should be protected. A core rule of data privacy is to restrict yourself to the necessary information you need. Religion like sexual orientation is rarely justifiable why it is collected at all.
- zorpner 8y ago
  Right now, people in Saudi Arabia are being arrested for protesting in 1990: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/25/saudi-arabia-arrests-human-rights-campaigner-mohammed-al-bajadi-women-right-drive https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/25/saudi-arabia-a... In the US, people who gave their information to the government as part of a program to protect them from deportation are being deported. Privacy and safety/security are not distinct concepts.
manigandham 8y ago
Vast difference between those examples, not least of which is that there are concrete rules around automotive safety to easily calculate the cost of implementation and verify compliance. GDPR is full of vague terms and is global regulation based on principle rather than actual hard rules, which will increase costs and come nowhere near accomplishing the objectives it claims to do.
bmelton 8y ago
Snark aside, that doesn't dispute the thesis that regulations tend to favor incumbents. Some regulations are good. Some regulations are bad. Some regulations are smart. Some regulations are dumb. Reasonable people can disagree on the quality or intelligence of a given regulation, or its impact on a given industry, but that doesn't change that most regulations do tend to make products more expensive to manufacture and by proxy, more expensive to buy. In Europe, if you want to sell eggs, you're required not to wash them or get them wet, because doing so erodes the natural coating that protects them from diseases. This is a regulation implemented to prevent salmonella. In America, if you want to sell eggs, you're required to wash them in water at least 90 degrees, to make sure that they're clean, then rinse them with a chemically infused spray, then because you've got them wet, they need to be thoroughly dried to prevent bacterial growth. Further, because you've now washed and dried them, removing the natural protective coating, they need to be refrigerated in transit, at the store, and at home. Both regulations are imposed to defend against Salmonella, and both are apparently quite effective, but the American regulations in play require the purchase of (conservatively) thousands of dollars in washing, sanitizing and drying equipment, and at least a partnership with a refrigerated trucking company. If you're selling the eggs in California, there's the additional requirement that the eggs were laid by free-range hens, which of course increases the amount of land required to raise the chickens upon, which of course makes it harder to prevent and protect the hens against predators. Like I said, reasonable people can disagree on any given regulation, but it's hard to make the claim that egg regulations in America are more effective than those in Europe, or that the American regulatory environment doesn't make it the egg business a more capital intensive affair.
- eyeinthepyramid 8y ago
  There are benefits to washing the eggs, isn't there? I have read that in Europe as a consumer it's a lot more important to wash the eggs before using them.
  - bmelton 8y ago
    You should definitely wash the eggs before you cook with them. As you mention, that is de rigueur for Europeans, as it is in America for things like lettuce and potatoes.
ams6110 8y ago
Car market in what sense? Making new automobiles? Yes you'll need to comply with the safety requirements of the markets in which you sell. Selling used cars? Generally, as long as the car is sold as originally equipped, there's no issues. I can sell or drive a 1970s era car without having to add modern emissions equipment, bumpers, and airbags for example. At least I can where I live.
cbhl 8y ago
Regulation can both help make people safer and also get in the way of innovation. A more realistic example: Regulations say cars are required to have steering wheels. They also say cars are expected to be under the control of a driver at all times. Good and all if you expect to have human drivers. But it increases the cost of self-driving cars. And humans are terrible at mode-switching right before an emergency (we know this from studies on airplanes, as well as from studies on self-driving cars). The two ways of solving this: (1) develop a self-driving car that doesn't need a steering wheel (ala trains under positive train control) or (2) restrict operation of self-driving cars to people who are highly trained and regularly operate cars in manual mode (ala the airplane industry). Alphabet/Waymo/Google can afford the army of lawyers and lobbyists required to make this happen. All the other start-ups in this space had to get acquired by an incumbent (GM or Uber) or restrict their domain to something with less regulation (e.g. private land -- golf courses; university campuses; the Las Vegas Strip).
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
What is this, 1995? You're gonna need more than airbags and seat-belts and fuel efficiency. Modern cars need ABS, TPMS, electronic stability control, passenger airbags, a backup camera and crash test standards all but demand side curtain airbags. Don't get me started on emissions. Fuel economy really isn't a big deal or hard to meet. It's the half million other little things that need to be in a specific range that really waste the R&D time and money. For something like a low end subcompact compliance is a huge chunk of the price. Given the choice between a 1999 Toyota Solara (or whatever) which has one or two airbags for $5k or a new subcompact hatch with none of the listed safety features for $6k or $7k I'd probably take the subcompact. There's been huge improvements in all sorts of non-safety aspects of vehicle design in the past ~20yr that the subcompact has that the old sedan doesn't. There's rapidly diminishing returns for regulating cars because by driving up the price of new cars you extend the time that the old ones stick around and the people who choose less safe alternatives (see mopeds in Asia) Saying "regulation that mandates $goodthing is good" as a blanket statement is approximately of the same dumbness as saying "regulation is bad" as a blanket statement.
fixermark 8y ago
You can make fun of it, but there's a reason that Silicon Valley venture capital goes to software engineering (where regulations have generally been lower) while significant disruption in the automotive space is coming from incumbents and one company founded by a guy with a net worth of $18 billion.
- giobox 8y ago
  This is a hugely simplistic comparison. There's far, far more complexity to why the automotive space sees less "disruption" than just regulations. You can launch and run a business similar to Facebook from a dorm room. A car factory? Not so much, regardless of the regulatory issues.
- oldcynic 8y ago
  That would be the self same reason the net is starting to attract regulation. Some of that significant disruption basically involves extending a middle finger to the laws and regulations of the country they want to do business in. I might call it taking the piss. Taking the piss with laws and employment rights such as Deliveroo etc, or taking the piss with user data and personal privacy. We'll be left with some of the regulation long after many of the disruptors that caused it have burnt out.
  - taysic 8y ago
    Conversely, people have also seen how some laws - like those protecting taxi drivers in this example - did nothing to help consumers. Not all regulations are being missed.
    - oldcynic 8y ago
      From the times I've been to the US I can see how disrupting NYC taxis could be a very good thing indeed. UK taxis? Nope, happy to keep those regulations and want to see them applied to Uber etc.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > there's a reason that Silicon Valley venture capital goes to software engineering (where regulations have generally been lower) while significant disruption in the automotive space is coming from incumbents and one company founded by a guy with a net worth of $18 billion. Maybe it's because the auto industry is far more capital-intensive than software. I don't see anyone taking on incumbents in capital-intensive IT businesses, such as cloud services (do you want to compete with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft with your VC money?), or in software, operating systems in entrenched markets (desktop and smartphone).
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
Relations, the regulators that make them, and the incumbents that support those regulators are under a sort of survival of the fittest to optimize for regulations that protect the incumbents but do so without being obvious and with some benefit to the consumer. Regulations that clearly support the incumbent and which clearly have no benefit to consumers will be the easiest to attack and remove. So if you want to cherry pick regulations, you can make them seem like perfect things that no sane person would ever have an issue with. Look at how fines work, say with the GDPR. The maximum fine is 20 million or 4% of revenue, which ever is larger, which means that small businesses see a much larger risk as a percent of revenue from these regulations. This is independent of the chance of the max fine being applied. This inherently creates a pro-incumbent bias even if nothing else about the law created pro-incumbent bias.
the8472 8y ago
Wouldn't it be sufficient to regulate outcome? I.e. mortality rate per passenger mile? Then, hypothetically, an AI company might be able to dispense with a lot of physical safety devices by taking advantage of the lower reaction times of a non-human driver.
hackeraccount 8y ago
What if - hypothetically - you came up with something safer then airbag & seatbelt? Even if all your customers found it to be self-evidently true that it was safer the only thing that would matter would be if the regulator thought it was safer. A regulator who is likely controlled by the incumbents. Now with something like car safety it's easy to say - no one will come up with something like this or if they do then the regulator will immediately allow it. But what about something like Internet privacy? I think it's more likely in that case for the rules like the GPDR to be used to protect incumbents by keeping out competition.
- merinowool 8y ago
  Not only that - this is great weapon to shut down websites that are against current political agenda since virtually every site could be found non complaint.

rdlecler1 8y ago

False equivalency.

gohbgl 8y ago

Airbags and seat belts were installed in cars long before they were required by regulators. The same goes for improvements in fuel efficiency. This all is driven by competing companies trying to make a profit.

inscionent 8y ago
Air bags were 'installed before they were required' because auto manufactures in the US were given a 7 year period to add them, not out of competition based on safety. This only after a decade of the auto industry fighting to keep those safety features from being required, exactly because the auto makers were worried about profits and not consumer safety. "A Federal agency today abandoned the longdisputed requirement that automobile manufacturers install automatic crash protection, such as airbags or ''passive'' safety belts. The action by the agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drew immediate protest from safety groups and praise from the automobile industry." https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/24/us/airbag-regulation-on-cars-rescinded.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/24/us/airbag-regulation-on-c...
astura 8y ago
No... this is just pure revisionist history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed

TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago

I think the phrase "You're oversimplifying a complex situation to the point of no longer adding anything to the discussion" applies to your comment. No one here is saying that ALL regulations are bad or should be removed, just that all regulations have unintended consequences.

vilmosi 8y ago
The grand parent did the exactly the same thing.
- TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago
  He was certainly quite terse, but I wouldn't necessarily call that an oversimplification
  - abritinthebay 8y ago
    I would. It’s much more of a gross (and inaccurate) oversimplification than the sarcastic response to it was.
- taysic 8y ago
  Not really, all regulation will favor incumbents - its just that some may with worth it. And it's worth noting that not all regulation is universally seen as useful.

paulddraper 8y ago

You jest, but to use another example, aggressive regulations is exactly why manufactures produce private aircraft designed 50 years ago. Onerous regulations are always overcome, one way or another. (And airbags are not onerous.)

lajhsdfkl 8y ago

>I was thinking about getting in to the car market but all these pesky requirements that I sell a car with airbags and seatbelts and fuel efficiency compliance are just there to protect existing incumbents. I think by going to cars to prove your point proves how ridiculous regulation for websites are. For some reason there exists a group of people that believe that websites like facebook need regulations that are as strict as those required for developing cars. People die from cars that are badly designed. People don't die from facebook (yes I'm sure you can find some contrived example.) Unrelated but something that further adds to the irony of using cars as an example is that companies such as VW haven't even been fined for cheating on their emissions test. I doubt a country like Germany would ever consider allowing the EU to fine 4% of Vws global revenue even though they broke the law in a way that has resulted in people's deaths.

monkeynotes 8y ago
> VW haven't even been fined for cheating on their emissions test. Exec has been fined and sentenced to 7 years[0] VW have been fined $2.8B[1] [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/judge-sentences-volkswagen-executive-to-7-years-in-prison-plus-a-fine/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/judge-sentences-... [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/judge-approves-largest-fine-u-s-history-volkswagen-n749406 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/judge-approves-larges...
- lajhsdfkl 8y ago
  By the US and 2.8B is a fraction of what they deserved to be fined. All VW execs should be in prison for the rest of their lives for what they have done.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    > All VW execs should be in prison for the rest of their lives for what they have done. You must point to the laws violated. E.g. Schmidt made a false statement to the California Air Resources Board under the Clean Air Act. Trial in the court of opinion and mob lynching is not compatible with the Western tenements of law.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

str33t_punk 8y ago

Ones related to safety. The other ones related to a nebulous concept of data privacy

oaiey 8y ago
If my car crashes or I am extorted due to my sexuality or killed for my religion. All the same. It is deadly. Data Privacy is not a nebulous concept. It is a human right. It is for that reason in the German constitution.
- fixermark 8y ago
  If you have to keep your religion secret to avoid being killed, you have MUCH bigger problems in your society that I don't think "nobody knowing who is secretly Jewish" is actually going to fix. It's not like a future hypothetical fascist dictatorship isn't going to have access to the necessary records to piece it together or would follow its own GDPR constraints, nor would the GDPR stop it from arbitrarily deciding some people are Jewish without detailed evidence. I'd like to think the GDPR is underpinned by better philosophy than a false hope it could prevent a future Holocaust.
  - oaiey 8y ago
    I think it is generally based against discrimination and not focused on something extreme as a state organized Holocaust. Also GDPR does not care about this. For the GDPR these are just attributes which should be protected. A core rule of data privacy is to restrict yourself to the necessary information you need. Religion like sexual orientation is rarely justifiable why it is collected at all.
zorpner 8y ago
Right now, people in Saudi Arabia are being arrested for protesting in 1990: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/25/saudi-arabia-arrests-human-rights-campaigner-mohammed-al-bajadi-women-right-drive https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/25/saudi-arabia-a... In the US, people who gave their information to the government as part of a program to protect them from deportation are being deported. Privacy and safety/security are not distinct concepts.

manigandham 8y ago

Vast difference between those examples, not least of which is that there are concrete rules around automotive safety to easily calculate the cost of implementation and verify compliance. GDPR is full of vague terms and is global regulation based on principle rather than actual hard rules, which will increase costs and come nowhere near accomplishing the objectives it claims to do.

bmelton 8y ago

Snark aside, that doesn't dispute the thesis that regulations tend to favor incumbents. Some regulations are good. Some regulations are bad. Some regulations are smart. Some regulations are dumb. Reasonable people can disagree on the quality or intelligence of a given regulation, or its impact on a given industry, but that doesn't change that most regulations do tend to make products more expensive to manufacture and by proxy, more expensive to buy. In Europe, if you want to sell eggs, you're required not to wash them or get them wet, because doing so erodes the natural coating that protects them from diseases. This is a regulation implemented to prevent salmonella. In America, if you want to sell eggs, you're required to wash them in water at least 90 degrees, to make sure that they're clean, then rinse them with a chemically infused spray, then because you've got them wet, they need to be thoroughly dried to prevent bacterial growth. Further, because you've now washed and dried them, removing the natural protective coating, they need to be refrigerated in transit, at the store, and at home. Both regulations are imposed to defend against Salmonella, and both are apparently quite effective, but the American regulations in play require the purchase of (conservatively) thousands of dollars in washing, sanitizing and drying equipment, and at least a partnership with a refrigerated trucking company. If you're selling the eggs in California, there's the additional requirement that the eggs were laid by free-range hens, which of course increases the amount of land required to raise the chickens upon, which of course makes it harder to prevent and protect the hens against predators. Like I said, reasonable people can disagree on any given regulation, but it's hard to make the claim that egg regulations in America are more effective than those in Europe, or that the American regulatory environment doesn't make it the egg business a more capital intensive affair.

eyeinthepyramid 8y ago
There are benefits to washing the eggs, isn't there? I have read that in Europe as a consumer it's a lot more important to wash the eggs before using them.
- bmelton 8y ago
  You should definitely wash the eggs before you cook with them. As you mention, that is de rigueur for Europeans, as it is in America for things like lettuce and potatoes.

ams6110 8y ago

Car market in what sense? Making new automobiles? Yes you'll need to comply with the safety requirements of the markets in which you sell. Selling used cars? Generally, as long as the car is sold as originally equipped, there's no issues. I can sell or drive a 1970s era car without having to add modern emissions equipment, bumpers, and airbags for example. At least I can where I live.

cbhl 8y ago

Regulation can both help make people safer and also get in the way of innovation. A more realistic example: Regulations say cars are required to have steering wheels. They also say cars are expected to be under the control of a driver at all times. Good and all if you expect to have human drivers. But it increases the cost of self-driving cars. And humans are terrible at mode-switching right before an emergency (we know this from studies on airplanes, as well as from studies on self-driving cars). The two ways of solving this: (1) develop a self-driving car that doesn't need a steering wheel (ala trains under positive train control) or (2) restrict operation of self-driving cars to people who are highly trained and regularly operate cars in manual mode (ala the airplane industry). Alphabet/Waymo/Google can afford the army of lawyers and lobbyists required to make this happen. All the other start-ups in this space had to get acquired by an incumbent (GM or Uber) or restrict their domain to something with less regulation (e.g. private land -- golf courses; university campuses; the Las Vegas Strip).

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

What is this, 1995? You're gonna need more than airbags and seat-belts and fuel efficiency. Modern cars need ABS, TPMS, electronic stability control, passenger airbags, a backup camera and crash test standards all but demand side curtain airbags. Don't get me started on emissions. Fuel economy really isn't a big deal or hard to meet. It's the half million other little things that need to be in a specific range that really waste the R&D time and money. For something like a low end subcompact compliance is a huge chunk of the price. Given the choice between a 1999 Toyota Solara (or whatever) which has one or two airbags for $5k or a new subcompact hatch with none of the listed safety features for $6k or $7k I'd probably take the subcompact. There's been huge improvements in all sorts of non-safety aspects of vehicle design in the past ~20yr that the subcompact has that the old sedan doesn't. There's rapidly diminishing returns for regulating cars because by driving up the price of new cars you extend the time that the old ones stick around and the people who choose less safe alternatives (see mopeds in Asia) Saying "regulation that mandates $goodthing is good" as a blanket statement is approximately of the same dumbness as saying "regulation is bad" as a blanket statement.

fixermark 8y ago

You can make fun of it, but there's a reason that Silicon Valley venture capital goes to software engineering (where regulations have generally been lower) while significant disruption in the automotive space is coming from incumbents and one company founded by a guy with a net worth of $18 billion.

giobox 8y ago
This is a hugely simplistic comparison. There's far, far more complexity to why the automotive space sees less "disruption" than just regulations. You can launch and run a business similar to Facebook from a dorm room. A car factory? Not so much, regardless of the regulatory issues.
oldcynic 8y ago
That would be the self same reason the net is starting to attract regulation. Some of that significant disruption basically involves extending a middle finger to the laws and regulations of the country they want to do business in. I might call it taking the piss. Taking the piss with laws and employment rights such as Deliveroo etc, or taking the piss with user data and personal privacy. We'll be left with some of the regulation long after many of the disruptors that caused it have burnt out.
- taysic 8y ago
  Conversely, people have also seen how some laws - like those protecting taxi drivers in this example - did nothing to help consumers. Not all regulations are being missed.
  - oldcynic 8y ago
    From the times I've been to the US I can see how disrupting NYC taxis could be a very good thing indeed. UK taxis? Nope, happy to keep those regulations and want to see them applied to Uber etc.
forapurpose 8y ago
> there's a reason that Silicon Valley venture capital goes to software engineering (where regulations have generally been lower) while significant disruption in the automotive space is coming from incumbents and one company founded by a guy with a net worth of $18 billion. Maybe it's because the auto industry is far more capital-intensive than software. I don't see anyone taking on incumbents in capital-intensive IT businesses, such as cloud services (do you want to compete with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft with your VC money?), or in software, operating systems in entrenched markets (desktop and smartphone).

PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago

Relations, the regulators that make them, and the incumbents that support those regulators are under a sort of survival of the fittest to optimize for regulations that protect the incumbents but do so without being obvious and with some benefit to the consumer. Regulations that clearly support the incumbent and which clearly have no benefit to consumers will be the easiest to attack and remove. So if you want to cherry pick regulations, you can make them seem like perfect things that no sane person would ever have an issue with. Look at how fines work, say with the GDPR. The maximum fine is 20 million or 4% of revenue, which ever is larger, which means that small businesses see a much larger risk as a percent of revenue from these regulations. This is independent of the chance of the max fine being applied. This inherently creates a pro-incumbent bias even if nothing else about the law created pro-incumbent bias.

the8472 8y ago

Wouldn't it be sufficient to regulate outcome? I.e. mortality rate per passenger mile? Then, hypothetically, an AI company might be able to dispense with a lot of physical safety devices by taking advantage of the lower reaction times of a non-human driver.

hackeraccount 8y ago

What if - hypothetically - you came up with something safer then airbag & seatbelt? Even if all your customers found it to be self-evidently true that it was safer the only thing that would matter would be if the regulator thought it was safer. A regulator who is likely controlled by the incumbents. Now with something like car safety it's easy to say - no one will come up with something like this or if they do then the regulator will immediately allow it. But what about something like Internet privacy? I think it's more likely in that case for the rules like the GPDR to be used to protect incumbents by keeping out competition.

merinowool 8y ago
Not only that - this is great weapon to shut down websites that are against current political agenda since virtually every site could be found non complaint.