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No! Absolutely do not do this! Do not listen to this idea! Regulation is the wrong solution here! Warning! Jaguars will eat you if you do this! Prosecute the d

No! Absolutely do not do this! Do not listen to this idea! Regulation is the wrong solution here! Warning! Jaguars will eat you if you do this! Prosecute the dumb startups for breaking the law. Don't force everyone to comply with some stupid pricing regulations and fill out a trillion forms when they're not doing anything wrong. Legislators should legislate, law enforcement should enforce laws. Regulators will just be captured by private equity and forced to set rules to that make the regulatory burden higher and higher for new companies, unless they have "friends" who can "cut" the "red tape", which means being financed by these predators. Regulation is the lazy answer for politicians who want to have no understanding of the issues of business responsibility, and just pay some unaccountable "experts" to decide what is acceptable.

sidr 6y ago
Do you have any evidence that this particular rule actually involves any additional cumbersome paperwork? Is this just a knee-jerk reaction to the word "regulation"? Would it be better if the word "law" was used instead?
- andrewla 6y ago
  The post I was replying to said "Or just regulate the dumb behavior of these dumb start ups to not distort the market in dumb damaging ways," I assume that the proposed regulation here was larger in scope than the Portland City Council rule, especially since that rule does not do anything to correct the market distortion -- arguably, it makes it worse, by mandating that they undercut economically viable approaches, rather than just letting them do so. That was what I was addressing. This particular rule is innocent enough on the face of it -- it has only two requirements [1]; that they cannot charge more than 10% of the purchase price, and that they cannot reduce payments based on compliance with the first part. To enforce this (especially given how broad the definition of a delivery service is) will be a supreme act of discretion, and clarifying this rule and eventually handing it off to the local commissioners of the counties' health departments for enforcement will complete the slide into the endless land of bureaucracy. [1] https://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditor/article/763323 https://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditor/article/763323
dml2135 6y ago
I don't really see your distinctions here. Regulations have the force of law, and regulators are law enforcement. Unless you are referring to some of the anti-trust laws which are actually criminal statutes? In that case I'm on the same page that we should actually start enforcing those.
- andrewla 6y ago
  I am referring to existing anti-trust laws, and I do favor criminal action in almost every case here. Regulations do have the force of law, theoretically, but rarely have the ability to enforce at scale, and would much rather deal with a couple of giant companies rather than try to deal with a variety of different companies, so there's a natural push back in that direction.
heisenbit 6y ago
/s is missing. There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is bad. But that is not true for sane appropriate rules. Absence of public rules is not a vacuum of rules but a universe where rules are made by the strongest. Also laws do often not prescribe details but empower regulators to manage the details. There may be laws against predatory pricing. There is also case laws against predatory pricing. But markets also evolved and it us extremely costly and time consuming to prosecute monopoly cases based on principles (read up on e.g. the case against IBM way back). It is more efficient to put in place industry specific rules which then can be enforced with much simpler reasoning.
- andrewla 6y ago
  > It is more efficient to put in place industry specific rules which then can be enforced with much simpler reasoning. I could not disagree more strongly. If you could point me to a rule that meets these criteria I'd love to see them -- all the rules that I've had to deal with in my professional life have been contrived to benefit the small number of companies actually capable of complying with them, rather than supporting the end goal of the regulation directly, and most of the time, allowed sufficiently large players to circumvent them entirely. Antitrust legislation is hard to enforce, costly and time consuming, as you say, but it should be hard, and it should be time consuming, because the alternative is that you outsource the hard and time consuming parts to the industry, which is just "weaponizing the complexity" -- the cost to comply does not scale linearly with the benefits, so small players are just wiped off of the board. (Note: I think you got confused with the double negatives in your first sentence -- you say "There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is bad" but I think you mean "There is this misconception that regulation is bad" or "There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is good". Not that I agree with you, but the rest of your post argues for sane regulation rather than deregulation)
  - heisenbit 6y ago
    Rules e.g. establish markets and enable competition: Standard screws or standard contracts. The absence of basic rules like disclosure of service prices is doubling the cost of US health care. Other rules force the airlines to compete on services and price but not on safety.

sidr 6y ago

Do you have any evidence that this particular rule actually involves any additional cumbersome paperwork? Is this just a knee-jerk reaction to the word "regulation"? Would it be better if the word "law" was used instead?

andrewla 6y ago
The post I was replying to said "Or just regulate the dumb behavior of these dumb start ups to not distort the market in dumb damaging ways," I assume that the proposed regulation here was larger in scope than the Portland City Council rule, especially since that rule does not do anything to correct the market distortion -- arguably, it makes it worse, by mandating that they undercut economically viable approaches, rather than just letting them do so. That was what I was addressing. This particular rule is innocent enough on the face of it -- it has only two requirements [1]; that they cannot charge more than 10% of the purchase price, and that they cannot reduce payments based on compliance with the first part. To enforce this (especially given how broad the definition of a delivery service is) will be a supreme act of discretion, and clarifying this rule and eventually handing it off to the local commissioners of the counties' health departments for enforcement will complete the slide into the endless land of bureaucracy. [1] https://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditor/article/763323 https://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditor/article/763323

dml2135 6y ago

I don't really see your distinctions here. Regulations have the force of law, and regulators are law enforcement. Unless you are referring to some of the anti-trust laws which are actually criminal statutes? In that case I'm on the same page that we should actually start enforcing those.

andrewla 6y ago
I am referring to existing anti-trust laws, and I do favor criminal action in almost every case here. Regulations do have the force of law, theoretically, but rarely have the ability to enforce at scale, and would much rather deal with a couple of giant companies rather than try to deal with a variety of different companies, so there's a natural push back in that direction.

heisenbit 6y ago

/s is missing. There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is bad. But that is not true for sane appropriate rules. Absence of public rules is not a vacuum of rules but a universe where rules are made by the strongest. Also laws do often not prescribe details but empower regulators to manage the details. There may be laws against predatory pricing. There is also case laws against predatory pricing. But markets also evolved and it us extremely costly and time consuming to prosecute monopoly cases based on principles (read up on e.g. the case against IBM way back). It is more efficient to put in place industry specific rules which then can be enforced with much simpler reasoning.

andrewla 6y ago
> It is more efficient to put in place industry specific rules which then can be enforced with much simpler reasoning. I could not disagree more strongly. If you could point me to a rule that meets these criteria I'd love to see them -- all the rules that I've had to deal with in my professional life have been contrived to benefit the small number of companies actually capable of complying with them, rather than supporting the end goal of the regulation directly, and most of the time, allowed sufficiently large players to circumvent them entirely. Antitrust legislation is hard to enforce, costly and time consuming, as you say, but it should be hard, and it should be time consuming, because the alternative is that you outsource the hard and time consuming parts to the industry, which is just "weaponizing the complexity" -- the cost to comply does not scale linearly with the benefits, so small players are just wiped off of the board. (Note: I think you got confused with the double negatives in your first sentence -- you say "There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is bad" but I think you mean "There is this misconception that regulation is bad" or "There is this misconception that the absence of regulation is good". Not that I agree with you, but the rest of your post argues for sane regulation rather than deregulation)
- heisenbit 6y ago
  Rules e.g. establish markets and enable competition: Standard screws or standard contracts. The absence of basic rules like disclosure of service prices is doubling the cost of US health care. Other rules force the airlines to compete on services and price but not on safety.