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In an ideal world regulations would work like technological standards. By following web standards you benefit from a huge body of previous work and effort. Yo

by 7952 8y ago

In an ideal world regulations would work like technological standards. By following web standards you benefit from a huge body of previous work and effort. You can deploy a website without needing to build a web browser or worry about designing a transfer protocol. You can concentrate on things that have real customer value. The same can apply to regulations. It can reduce competition in areas that damage the consumer and wider society. You don't have to invent your own safety rules (for example), you just have to adopt the existing standard. The problem of course is that regulators can be heavy handed, sometimes innefficient and make it more difficult for small companies to compete. But that does not mean that regulations are intrinsically bad.

nickpp 8y ago
Regulations are compulsory - no matter if they are bad or not. Technical standards on the other hand, are optional. People will adopt them only if the benefits will outweight their drawbacks, thus ensuring that only beneficial technical standards survive. That little difference (optional vs compulsory) changes everything. Good ideas, when compulsory, are still a dictature, while free choice is what makes a democracy.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  s/good ideas/ideas directly beneficial to implementer/ Technical standards are not adopted when they interfere with business goals. That's why we have no ubiquitous computing yet, that's why it took regulation to make a standard charging port for phones happen. Regulations are necessary to solve coordination problems on the market - the very problem that's defined by individual voluntary choices leading to bad outcomes for everyone.
  - nickpp 8y ago
    s/good ideas/ideas directly beneficial on the free market/ - to the implementer and/or the customer. The implementer doesn't do things in a vacuum. Customers and competition will swiftly punish ideas beneficial to the implementer but bad for the market. That being said, the regulators do tend to have the arrogance of thinking they know better than the consumer. They take non-issues on the market (charging port) and impose crappy solution (micro-usb) while the eventual better solution (usb-c) is still much worse than some of the offers on the market (Apple's lightning port). With thinking like that we would end up with zero innovation or competition on the OS platform just to solve the "coordination problems on the market". Because who needs Mac OS or Linux, right?! Windows should've been good enough for anyone! Of course, that is why big-cos like Microsoft love that kind of regulatory thinking.
    - Silhouette 8y ago
      Customers and competition will swiftly punish ideas beneficial to the implementer but bad for the market. That has demonstrably not been the case in practice. Proprietary hardware components, legally encumbered "standards" and protocols, software licensing restrictions, and locking up user data are all examples of barriers to competition that are clearly bad for the market and yet have been widely and successfully employed. Typically it has required significant legal/regulatory changes to bring those barriers down, and in some cases we still haven't.

by 7952 8y ago

nickpp 8y ago

Regulations are compulsory - no matter if they are bad or not. Technical standards on the other hand, are optional. People will adopt them only if the benefits will outweight their drawbacks, thus ensuring that only beneficial technical standards survive. That little difference (optional vs compulsory) changes everything. Good ideas, when compulsory, are still a dictature, while free choice is what makes a democracy.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
s/good ideas/ideas directly beneficial to implementer/ Technical standards are not adopted when they interfere with business goals. That's why we have no ubiquitous computing yet, that's why it took regulation to make a standard charging port for phones happen. Regulations are necessary to solve coordination problems on the market - the very problem that's defined by individual voluntary choices leading to bad outcomes for everyone.
- nickpp 8y ago
  s/good ideas/ideas directly beneficial on the free market/ - to the implementer and/or the customer. The implementer doesn't do things in a vacuum. Customers and competition will swiftly punish ideas beneficial to the implementer but bad for the market. That being said, the regulators do tend to have the arrogance of thinking they know better than the consumer. They take non-issues on the market (charging port) and impose crappy solution (micro-usb) while the eventual better solution (usb-c) is still much worse than some of the offers on the market (Apple's lightning port). With thinking like that we would end up with zero innovation or competition on the OS platform just to solve the "coordination problems on the market". Because who needs Mac OS or Linux, right?! Windows should've been good enough for anyone! Of course, that is why big-cos like Microsoft love that kind of regulatory thinking.
  - Silhouette 8y ago
    Customers and competition will swiftly punish ideas beneficial to the implementer but bad for the market. That has demonstrably not been the case in practice. Proprietary hardware components, legally encumbered "standards" and protocols, software licensing restrictions, and locking up user data are all examples of barriers to competition that are clearly bad for the market and yet have been widely and successfully employed. Typically it has required significant legal/regulatory changes to bring those barriers down, and in some cases we still haven't.