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Honestly without laws and regulations capitalist organizations would eventually just straight out rob and/or blackmail people and claim that doing anything less

Honestly without laws and regulations capitalist organizations would eventually just straight out rob and/or blackmail people and claim that doing anything less would be unfair to their shareholders. I hate bad and onerous regulations as much as the next person, but I'm always amazed by how ingrained the `regulations == bad` sentiment has become in society. Regulations are the rules that make systems stable. Without them we'd just cycle between abuse and violent revolution...

wccrawford 7y ago
They're also the rope that strangles innovation and progress. There's a balance to be struck here, and we're always working on finding it. The US seems to tend to come down on the side of "legal until proven it shouldn't be" and the EU seems to lean a little more towards "prevent bad things" than the US. Personally, I prefer the US version, and I'm glad I live in the US.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  > They're also the rope that strangles innovation and progress. I'd love to understand why you think allowing people to do bad things is necessary for innovation and progress.
  - haasteagle 7y ago
    I think you're being uncharitable here. He was clearly referring to the effect regulations generally have (reduced innovation). This is generally accepted by most people.
  - wccrawford 7y ago
    Because in order to prevent all bad things, you need to prevent many good things, too. Those good things are necessary for innovation and progress.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      > Because in order to prevent all bad things, you need to prevent many good things, too. That's nonsense. Please explain, for example, how you think making it illegal to sell people's telco data in the 80s when we already knew this was happening would have prevented some good thing. Preventing selling data would have only prevented a few rich sociopaths from getting a bit richer. They knew it was wrong, we knew it was wrong, the only reason it happened (and is still happening) was because people like you refuse to ever allow regulation, and people will likely prevent any regulation that does happen from having any teeth or a broad enough scope, so it will just keep happening. The "innovation" your ideology is incentivizing is just finding new loopholes to crawl through and screw people over. I get it, the concept that regulation might have side effects makes sense if you talk about it only in general terms. But whenever I find myself arguing against this ideology, it's in a specific situation where your ideology is just being used to let sociopaths profit off of amoral behavior. Your ideology makes sense in theory, but over and over again it simply doesn't play out in practice.
      - tombert 7y ago
        I think a counter example could be something like home video, like VHS or Betamax. VHS can (and did) lead to piracy, so you could make an argument to it by saying "the studios are going to lose money, that's a bad thing, and so it should be illegal", but fortunately the courts disagreed with that. I think home video is overall a net good. EDIT: Just to make it clear, I think I more agree with your point overall than the previous poster, I just felt the need to provide a counterexample.

wccrawford 7y ago

They're also the rope that strangles innovation and progress. There's a balance to be struck here, and we're always working on finding it. The US seems to tend to come down on the side of "legal until proven it shouldn't be" and the EU seems to lean a little more towards "prevent bad things" than the US. Personally, I prefer the US version, and I'm glad I live in the US.

kerkeslager 7y ago
> They're also the rope that strangles innovation and progress. I'd love to understand why you think allowing people to do bad things is necessary for innovation and progress.
- haasteagle 7y ago
  I think you're being uncharitable here. He was clearly referring to the effect regulations generally have (reduced innovation). This is generally accepted by most people.
- wccrawford 7y ago
  Because in order to prevent all bad things, you need to prevent many good things, too. Those good things are necessary for innovation and progress.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    > Because in order to prevent all bad things, you need to prevent many good things, too. That's nonsense. Please explain, for example, how you think making it illegal to sell people's telco data in the 80s when we already knew this was happening would have prevented some good thing. Preventing selling data would have only prevented a few rich sociopaths from getting a bit richer. They knew it was wrong, we knew it was wrong, the only reason it happened (and is still happening) was because people like you refuse to ever allow regulation, and people will likely prevent any regulation that does happen from having any teeth or a broad enough scope, so it will just keep happening. The "innovation" your ideology is incentivizing is just finding new loopholes to crawl through and screw people over. I get it, the concept that regulation might have side effects makes sense if you talk about it only in general terms. But whenever I find myself arguing against this ideology, it's in a specific situation where your ideology is just being used to let sociopaths profit off of amoral behavior. Your ideology makes sense in theory, but over and over again it simply doesn't play out in practice.
    - tombert 7y ago
      I think a counter example could be something like home video, like VHS or Betamax. VHS can (and did) lead to piracy, so you could make an argument to it by saying "the studios are going to lose money, that's a bad thing, and so it should be illegal", but fortunately the courts disagreed with that. I think home video is overall a net good. EDIT: Just to make it clear, I think I more agree with your point overall than the previous poster, I just felt the need to provide a counterexample.