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Everything is a hassle. Building permits, operating licenses, legal compliance, etc. All those things arguably exist for good reasons, but it's a huge hurdle t

Everything is a hassle. Building permits, operating licenses, legal compliance, etc. All those things arguably exist for good reasons, but it's a huge hurdle to doing anything useful. I can't have a 20 foot radio tower in town, I can't subdivide smaller than 10 acres outside of town, I can't build any facility out there to operate the experimental tower without building permits, radio licenses, compliance with tracking (for the police) any radio customer I might get if I qualify as a "communication service provider", etc. There are (major) hurdles in just about every conceivable industry, and hardly any provision for "hey I'm a guy who wants to experiment, perhaps even noncommercially". You can overcome the hurdles, but how many people will just stay at their 9 to 5 and not bother because its a huge pain in the ass with no guaranteed benefit? I wonder how much this holds us back, it's hard to say.

jjoonathan 7y ago
I'm a fan of the chemistry analogy here: you can catalyze (reduce barriers) and you can incentivize (increase rewards). If the incentives point the wrong way, catalyzing won't help. If the barriers are too high, incentivizing won't help. I strongly suspect we're in a "barriers too high" regime rather than an "incentives are too low" regime, and that our money would be better spent reducing barriers than increasing incentives.
- bumby 7y ago
  I think I agree but the question seems to be how do we lower the barriers smartly while still keeping the intent of the rules and regulations? Add to it our own bias to put more emphasis on the regulations that concretely prevent us from doing what we want now, rather than those that abstractly benefit us and its easy to point to them being the problem. It's like the "one mans trash is another mans treasure" cliche, something that you see as an impediment I see as a social good. Finding the right balance is tricky and unfortunately in a polarized political environment it's easy for people to fall into the far sides of the argument.
  - abakker 7y ago
    The real question is: why did we install the protections(barriers) in the first place? I assume that a major component of that was as a reaction to the increasing complexity of modern life. Self sufficiency is fine, but it is difficult to take the consequences for many things knowingly. As such, we created, one at a time, experientially driven barriers designed to protect people from new, novel issues. I don’t think we need to offer more incentives or reduce barriers per se, but I think we really ought to be talking about refactoring our laws. The amount of legislative “technical debt” is intense and problematic.
    - alchemism 7y ago
      For the many regulations in American society, there is usually a dead body buried underneath, possibly many dead bodies, including those of women and children, etc. For each and every one, someone suffered terribly or died.
      - NhanH 7y ago
        Yes, but that doesn't mean the regulations are still relevant, or that they were ever been a good regulation to start with. The PATRIOT act came from a horrible tragedy, and many people would tell you how terrrible it is.
      - thrower123 7y ago
        Unfortunately, many times, the dead body belonged to an idiot, whose foolishness won them a Darwin Award, and the legacy of inconveniencing millions of people. We place too high a value on human life, and it's no wonder that we can't accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable.
        jhayward 7y ago
        > We place too high a value on human life, and it's no wonder that we can't accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable. This is too close to another formulation of the same thought: "we should allow corporations to kill people for profit, with impunity" for comfort.
nscalf 7y ago
On this topic, I felt this while looking into building a healthcare startup. HIPAA seemed like some goosebumps character, don’t say it’s name 3 times or else you’re in violation. Not only are hurdles a pain, they’re not easily understood. Edit: beetle juice, not goosebumps
- alchemism 7y ago
  That is precisely why it is (potentially) lucrative, too. It’s an awfully tall fence.
delfinom 7y ago
>All those things arguably exist for good reasons, but it's a huge hurdle to doing anything useful. Humans are good at coming up at ideas, the problem is, not all ideas are good ideas. But humans are especially good at ideas to maximize their profit resulting in permits and compliance are written in resulting blood along with the engineering standards enforced. Unfortunately the threat of jail does not deter those ideas, but putting enough barriers that everyone working under them have to jump through does a really good job at reducing the amount that follow through with them. The other aspect, it doesn't take much to kill a human. The rules may seem overkill, but a human is a soft squishy fleshbag where tripping on a pencil could kill you.
mncharity 7y ago
> Everything is a hassle. Building permits, operating licenses, [...] Tesla's politically-connected Shanghai Gigafactory 3 looks to be going from bare field to production in around a year. Part of that was apparently government inspection being done in parallel with construction, to minimize sign-off delays.

jjoonathan 7y ago

I'm a fan of the chemistry analogy here: you can catalyze (reduce barriers) and you can incentivize (increase rewards). If the incentives point the wrong way, catalyzing won't help. If the barriers are too high, incentivizing won't help. I strongly suspect we're in a "barriers too high" regime rather than an "incentives are too low" regime, and that our money would be better spent reducing barriers than increasing incentives.

bumby 7y ago
I think I agree but the question seems to be how do we lower the barriers smartly while still keeping the intent of the rules and regulations? Add to it our own bias to put more emphasis on the regulations that concretely prevent us from doing what we want now, rather than those that abstractly benefit us and its easy to point to them being the problem. It's like the "one mans trash is another mans treasure" cliche, something that you see as an impediment I see as a social good. Finding the right balance is tricky and unfortunately in a polarized political environment it's easy for people to fall into the far sides of the argument.
- abakker 7y ago
  The real question is: why did we install the protections(barriers) in the first place? I assume that a major component of that was as a reaction to the increasing complexity of modern life. Self sufficiency is fine, but it is difficult to take the consequences for many things knowingly. As such, we created, one at a time, experientially driven barriers designed to protect people from new, novel issues. I don’t think we need to offer more incentives or reduce barriers per se, but I think we really ought to be talking about refactoring our laws. The amount of legislative “technical debt” is intense and problematic.
  - alchemism 7y ago
    For the many regulations in American society, there is usually a dead body buried underneath, possibly many dead bodies, including those of women and children, etc. For each and every one, someone suffered terribly or died.
    - NhanH 7y ago
      Yes, but that doesn't mean the regulations are still relevant, or that they were ever been a good regulation to start with. The PATRIOT act came from a horrible tragedy, and many people would tell you how terrrible it is.
    - thrower123 7y ago
      Unfortunately, many times, the dead body belonged to an idiot, whose foolishness won them a Darwin Award, and the legacy of inconveniencing millions of people. We place too high a value on human life, and it's no wonder that we can't accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable.
      - jhayward 7y ago
        > We place too high a value on human life, and it's no wonder that we can't accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable. This is too close to another formulation of the same thought: "we should allow corporations to kill people for profit, with impunity" for comfort.

nscalf 7y ago

On this topic, I felt this while looking into building a healthcare startup. HIPAA seemed like some goosebumps character, don’t say it’s name 3 times or else you’re in violation. Not only are hurdles a pain, they’re not easily understood. Edit: beetle juice, not goosebumps

alchemism 7y ago
That is precisely why it is (potentially) lucrative, too. It’s an awfully tall fence.

delfinom 7y ago

>All those things arguably exist for good reasons, but it's a huge hurdle to doing anything useful. Humans are good at coming up at ideas, the problem is, not all ideas are good ideas. But humans are especially good at ideas to maximize their profit resulting in permits and compliance are written in resulting blood along with the engineering standards enforced. Unfortunately the threat of jail does not deter those ideas, but putting enough barriers that everyone working under them have to jump through does a really good job at reducing the amount that follow through with them. The other aspect, it doesn't take much to kill a human. The rules may seem overkill, but a human is a soft squishy fleshbag where tripping on a pencil could kill you.

mncharity 7y ago

> Everything is a hassle. Building permits, operating licenses, [...] Tesla's politically-connected Shanghai Gigafactory 3 looks to be going from bare field to production in around a year. Part of that was apparently government inspection being done in parallel with construction, to minimize sign-off delays.