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Indigenous solutions typically develop differently for a reason. Building standards in a wet humid climate prone to flooding differ from those in the desert bec

Indigenous solutions typically develop differently for a reason. Building standards in a wet humid climate prone to flooding differ from those in the desert because they have different needs: if you make a standard set of guidelines that applies universally, it will inherently need to be more complicated than the guidelines adapted for a specific scenario. Part of the brilliance of the internet is the way things are layered; you can have all kinds of different solutions for different layers while keeping things interoperable. If Australia has a different wifi standard than America, it doesn’t mean they can’t connect. While I understand the impulse to have some central body moderate unproductive standards wars, if you enforce overly strict standards by law you stagnate industries whether you’re trying to capture them. Just imagine how much time and effort would be wasted trying to get every software engineer to use the same programming language. Arguably it would lead to way less duplicated effort, but you’re never going to get everyone to agree on all aspects of the language. And that’s as it should be; people should have the freedom to chose what works best for them. If we’re smart and focus more on building base, opt in, very generic/low level infrastructure that can federate responsibility and adapt to differing higher level standards rather than getting everyone on the same set of high level standards, I think we’re better off. I’m not sure exactly what the regulatory equivalent of a tcp/ip layer would be, but some sort of very basic, fill in the blanks kind of regulatory template would be better than enforcing various discrete world standards.

hyko 7y ago
Good points. I think the regulatory equivalent of TCP/IP is probably some form federalism. There are many regional examples of this, to varying degrees. You want the minimum set of laws to provide the conditions for local human flourishing everywhere. “If Australia has a different wifi standard than America, it doesn’t mean they can’t connect.” This would be great IRL! All digital protocols could be reduced to one; but then IRL is also made of physics, so I guess you’d need one physical standard too (USB-C is our obvious candidate), and one harmonised set of radio frequencies etc. It’s those physical properties that are hard to reduce to a virtualised layer. Kind of impossible when it comes to driving on the wrong side of the road, unless you abstracted the interface in some kind of VR (so everyone is apparently driving however they please, while confirming to one physical standard).
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Having worked in a lot of banks, I can appreciate the desire for standardization. But remove competing standards, and you will never innovate again. In any situation, whatever standard you prefer, it was originally created as a new-comer competing standard. I think this perspective is very narrow minded, in the sense that it only really considers a very narrow category of problem. If you want regulations to be more effective, you need to bring the regulators closer to the people they’re regulating, not further away from them. If that means people end up doing things differently, fine. It’s better than having regulations the either work for nobody, or only a portion of all people. For an analogy, who would you rather be managed by, a manager with 4 direct reports, or a manager with 50 direct reports? (Or a manager with 7,500,000,000 direct reports...)
- im3w1l-alt 7y ago
  > I think the regulatory equivalent of TCP/IP is probably some form federalism. There are many regional examples of this, to varying degrees. You want the minimum set of laws to provide the conditions for local human flourishing everywhere. This has been tried and it doesn't work. What ends up happening is that more and more people decide that their pet issue is more important than regional autonomy.
mbrameld 7y ago
I think the analogy is a little short-sighted. Having a universal building code doesn't mean every building has to meet the same standard in every way. They can contain conditional logic. Flood-resistance would only be required if the building is in an area with a likelihood of flooding above some threshold.
- didericis 7y ago
  My point is that you get increased complexity when trying to handle all of the various different situations local solutions were specifically adapted for. Adding the type of logic you describe in that particular example might seem manageable, but there’s a real risk of it ballooning and making what used to be simple rules for a given area require a lot more paperwork/checks/etc, much of which would be irrelevant. Like with all things, you need balance; some standards can work universally while remaining simple. Others can’t. But in general I think trying to impose universal, robust standards leads to a lot of the over regulation the article and other commenters fault for the lack of building in the west. Fewer, minimal standards decided by people on a local level seems generally better, imo. There will still be incentives to use universal, simple standards where appropriate, as that typically enables access to a wider range of products and services, and the complex logic of deciding when certain standards should apply vs when they shouldn’t can be distributed/allowed to be flexible and adaptive.

hyko 7y ago

Good points. I think the regulatory equivalent of TCP/IP is probably some form federalism. There are many regional examples of this, to varying degrees. You want the minimum set of laws to provide the conditions for local human flourishing everywhere. “If Australia has a different wifi standard than America, it doesn’t mean they can’t connect.” This would be great IRL! All digital protocols could be reduced to one; but then IRL is also made of physics, so I guess you’d need one physical standard too (USB-C is our obvious candidate), and one harmonised set of radio frequencies etc. It’s those physical properties that are hard to reduce to a virtualised layer. Kind of impossible when it comes to driving on the wrong side of the road, unless you abstracted the interface in some kind of VR (so everyone is apparently driving however they please, while confirming to one physical standard).

AmericanChopper 7y ago
Having worked in a lot of banks, I can appreciate the desire for standardization. But remove competing standards, and you will never innovate again. In any situation, whatever standard you prefer, it was originally created as a new-comer competing standard. I think this perspective is very narrow minded, in the sense that it only really considers a very narrow category of problem. If you want regulations to be more effective, you need to bring the regulators closer to the people they’re regulating, not further away from them. If that means people end up doing things differently, fine. It’s better than having regulations the either work for nobody, or only a portion of all people. For an analogy, who would you rather be managed by, a manager with 4 direct reports, or a manager with 50 direct reports? (Or a manager with 7,500,000,000 direct reports...)
im3w1l-alt 7y ago
> I think the regulatory equivalent of TCP/IP is probably some form federalism. There are many regional examples of this, to varying degrees. You want the minimum set of laws to provide the conditions for local human flourishing everywhere. This has been tried and it doesn't work. What ends up happening is that more and more people decide that their pet issue is more important than regional autonomy.

mbrameld 7y ago

I think the analogy is a little short-sighted. Having a universal building code doesn't mean every building has to meet the same standard in every way. They can contain conditional logic. Flood-resistance would only be required if the building is in an area with a likelihood of flooding above some threshold.

didericis 7y ago
My point is that you get increased complexity when trying to handle all of the various different situations local solutions were specifically adapted for. Adding the type of logic you describe in that particular example might seem manageable, but there’s a real risk of it ballooning and making what used to be simple rules for a given area require a lot more paperwork/checks/etc, much of which would be irrelevant. Like with all things, you need balance; some standards can work universally while remaining simple. Others can’t. But in general I think trying to impose universal, robust standards leads to a lot of the over regulation the article and other commenters fault for the lack of building in the west. Fewer, minimal standards decided by people on a local level seems generally better, imo. There will still be incentives to use universal, simple standards where appropriate, as that typically enables access to a wider range of products and services, and the complex logic of deciding when certain standards should apply vs when they shouldn’t can be distributed/allowed to be flexible and adaptive.