7 ms·

Overregulation and bureaucracy are the downfall of the west. The sooner we realise that, the sooner we can fix it.

by Laarlf 5y ago

enkid 5y ago
What does this mean? I'm pretty sure the main alternative- China - is both over regulated and is very bureaucratic.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  You might be surprised. Enforcement is certainly draconian, but there are not absurdly many regulations, and it is also surprisingly (to westerners) Feudal - personal relationships and high agency in a narrowly defined area are very important to the system functioning.
  - quixoticelixer- 5y ago
    Sorry but you can't be serious that a feudal system is actually a good idea
    - phkahler 5y ago
      Good for who? I'd add Effective at what?
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      Bureaucracy and Feudalism are just opposite poles of a spectrum. Of course the extremes lead to bad outcomes. Not sure what I said that suggested otherwise.
- Aperocky 5y ago
  > China - is both over regulated and is very bureaucratic. It's complicated, but that's not a correct assessment. China is not very much regulated at all - a regulation must be regular, but the enforcement of rules in China is anything but regular. On one side, you have the wild west (east?) of unregulated capitalism, on the other side, you have the Party coming down with the hammer over things it doesn't like, The bureaucracy mainly serves the latter. Obviously, this is recognized as a problem, rule of law has been the drive for years but the system cannot and does not change over a day.
  - enkid 5y ago
    Sure. I was being mostly flippant, and you're correct, a regulation has to be regular. But I doubt the OP is seriously advocation we start inconsistently applying laws.
    - sfink 5y ago
      Start? I have been reading many, many news reports that I can summarize as inconsistently applying laws. The US just went through 4 years of an administration that flagrantly violated laws, got caught, and escaped punishment. The wave of evidence associated with police brutality proves that not all are equal before the law. Corruption is endemic in our whole system -- people with resources can avoid punishment for embezzlement, theft, rape, "disorderly conduct", and a long list of other crimes. The system has enormous opportunity for deciding what to prosecute and how tough of punishments to mete out -- which is good, in many ways, since rigid universally applied rules don't actually produce good outcomes -- and we have overwhelming evidence that that leeway is applied to systemically advantage certain groups and disadvantage others. This shouldn't be hard to believe, since it's everywhere. Not just racial or otherwise disadvantaged groups; it includes "old boys' clubs", friends protecting friends, and cases where harmed people resort to a pastor or elder rather than the justice system. It's really not hard to find examples where the favored people are given special treatment, including immunity to laws. So starting to inconsistently apply laws isn't really the issue. We'd have to, at some point in time, have consistently applied laws in the first place for that to matter. It's only a matter of degree, and flavor -- eastern systems seem to be more ok with granting leeway based on personal relationships. Western systems tend to be very suspicious of that, and depend more on who has the resources or formal connections. But no system in the world has long lasted without some amount of leeway / wiggle room / corruption.
- Laarlf 5y ago
  The main alternative is noticing what went wrong over the last 70 or so years in the west and fixing that. You cannot escape the madness because globalisation made most countries very similiar. Growing the governments further and further did not help anyone but the biggest of companies. And because the chinese really don't care a lot about regulations or bureaucracy, they actually achieve something.
  - throwaway6734 5y ago
    Achieve what exactly? Where is china producing cutting edge tech? They've consistently failed at in house chip design and production over the last 50 years. Most major tech breakthroughs are still coming out of west plus japan and SK.
    - Laarlf 5y ago
      Comparably rapid growth of economy and political influence
      - idiotsecant 5y ago
        At the cost of enormous damage to the health of Chinese citizens, the repression of Chinese minorities, and rampant destruction of Chinese ecology. Make no mistake, China is just as deeply sick as the west, perhaps more so - it just manifests in different ways.
    - thesuitonym 5y ago
      Where do you think cutting edge tech is actually produced?
      - throwaway6734 5y ago
        the US, Europe, Japan, SK
        CRConrad 5y ago
periheli0n 5y ago
There is a whole spectrum of bureaucracy and overregulation in the “West”. The EU is probably worst. The US are quite relaxed in comparison. The UK is somewhere in the middle.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > The US are quite relaxed in comparison. This is basically a myth at this point, bolstered by how much more we complain about it. The US made the colossal mistake of trying to do regulation at the federal level, basically equivalent to doing it at the EU level, which the EU is now attempting to do more of and discovering what a trash fire it is. And one of the big reasons for that is that the more centrally the regulation happens, the more corruption it attracts. That's where the US got the reputation for not regulating -- it's not that there aren't rules or that the rules aren't long and arduous and inefficient. It's that they're, on top of that, less effective because there is more regulatory capture by incumbents.
  - Laarlf 5y ago
    YES YES YES. Policies and laws should be more local to adhere to the local situations in local areas. A politician in Berlin cannot understand the situation in a random town with 500 inhabitants and therefore should rarely have something to say about how life functions there.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      Do the needs of that town with 500 inhabitants require different streaming laws? Freedom to repair laws. Special export restrictions? Should they be allowed to dump chemicals in the water we all share? Host servers that serve copyrighted material? What needs do they have that evil laws are ignoring.
      - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
        > Do the needs of that town with 500 inhabitants require different streaming laws? Freedom to repair laws. Special export restrictions? A town with 500 inhabitants isn't required to have different streaming laws or freedom to repair laws etc. They could all pass the same ones. But if the state of Colorado thinks that the rules in New York are too favorable to device makers and the state of Alaska doesn't care to have any laws on the matter at all then why shouldn't the people there be able to make their own choices? If the cost of living is dramatically lower in Wichita Falls, Texas than it is in San Francisco, California, what sense does it make to have a federal minimum wage instead of allowing each place to choose appropriate to their local economy? > Should they be allowed to dump chemicals in the water we all share? Pollution that crosses state lines is the purpose of federal courts. You don't need federal regulations for that, just an outright complete prohibition on it and penalties for the offending state. > Host servers that serve copyrighted material? That ship has sailed, hasn't it? It's a global internet. The Pirate Bay is still up. Does it really matter if it's hosted in North Dakota or Sweden or wherever it is now? And we could most certainly stand to not have DMCA 1201 everywhere.
createmyname 5y ago
this is the best thing you as a person have. believe me. the point you lost all those regulations etc. some idiot will come and make you miserable... you won't even be able to believe you are controlled and manipulated by a idiot bunch! until then have fun...
- Laarlf 5y ago
  You are always controlled and manipulated by idiots. The question is: how much can you do about that without doing something unlawful?
jjk166 5y ago
The problem is not so much that we have excessive regulation and bureaucracy but rather that we have a strong tendency to put regulations in place but never evaluate how they are actually performing nor modify them if they are performing poorly. For some reason we equate implementing a rule intended to solve a problem with actually solving the problem - those who implement the policy are praised for doing so long before any improvement in the actual situation is ever seen, and being opposed to the policy intended to solve the problem is widely construed as being opposed to solving the problem itself, even if there is evidence the policy makes the real problem worse. Finally policies are often evaluated based on the message their implementation conveys rather than the actual effects of the policies - for example despite zero tolerance policies being almost universally seen as extremely poor way to deal with complicated issues, they are frequently implemented to express how important the problem they were meant to solve is. So long as we don't make decisions based on efficacy, of course effectiveness will degrade over time.
duxup 5y ago
Bureaucracy seems like it is tied to human nature.
hayst4ck 5y ago
> Overregulation and bureaucracy are the downfall of the west. [citation needed] I think it's pretty clear we are both over and under regulating. Can you tell me the basis/primary purpose of regulation? Can you tell me what the the primary benefit of bureaucracy is?
Nasrudith 5y ago
Bueracracies and overregulation are essentially alternatives to fiefdoms by constraining abusable levels of discretion. Fiefdoms lead to outright open corruption which make the readilly lobbied look like choir boys in comparison. The stereotypical "third world levels of corruption" situations where secured loyalty to the regime matters more than competence. It is yet another tiresome situation of "sucks but we don't really have anything better". We can and should attempt to streamline them but that is nontrivial, especially politically.
mbrodersen 5y ago
Luckily for the west, over regulation and bureaucracy is done equally "well" by non-westerners. If the competition is equally incompetent, you can still do quite well.

Overregulation and bureaucracy are the downfall of the west. The sooner we realise that, the sooner we can fix it.

by Laarlf 5y ago

Overregulation and bureaucracy are the downfall of the west. The sooner we realise that, the sooner we can fix it.

enkid 5y ago

What does this mean? I'm pretty sure the main alternative- China - is both over regulated and is very bureaucratic.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago
You might be surprised. Enforcement is certainly draconian, but there are not absurdly many regulations, and it is also surprisingly (to westerners) Feudal - personal relationships and high agency in a narrowly defined area are very important to the system functioning.
- quixoticelixer- 5y ago
  Sorry but you can't be serious that a feudal system is actually a good idea
  - phkahler 5y ago
    Good for who? I'd add Effective at what?
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    Bureaucracy and Feudalism are just opposite poles of a spectrum. Of course the extremes lead to bad outcomes. Not sure what I said that suggested otherwise.
Aperocky 5y ago
> China - is both over regulated and is very bureaucratic. It's complicated, but that's not a correct assessment. China is not very much regulated at all - a regulation must be regular, but the enforcement of rules in China is anything but regular. On one side, you have the wild west (east?) of unregulated capitalism, on the other side, you have the Party coming down with the hammer over things it doesn't like, The bureaucracy mainly serves the latter. Obviously, this is recognized as a problem, rule of law has been the drive for years but the system cannot and does not change over a day.
- enkid 5y ago
  Sure. I was being mostly flippant, and you're correct, a regulation has to be regular. But I doubt the OP is seriously advocation we start inconsistently applying laws.
  - sfink 5y ago
    Start? I have been reading many, many news reports that I can summarize as inconsistently applying laws. The US just went through 4 years of an administration that flagrantly violated laws, got caught, and escaped punishment. The wave of evidence associated with police brutality proves that not all are equal before the law. Corruption is endemic in our whole system -- people with resources can avoid punishment for embezzlement, theft, rape, "disorderly conduct", and a long list of other crimes. The system has enormous opportunity for deciding what to prosecute and how tough of punishments to mete out -- which is good, in many ways, since rigid universally applied rules don't actually produce good outcomes -- and we have overwhelming evidence that that leeway is applied to systemically advantage certain groups and disadvantage others. This shouldn't be hard to believe, since it's everywhere. Not just racial or otherwise disadvantaged groups; it includes "old boys' clubs", friends protecting friends, and cases where harmed people resort to a pastor or elder rather than the justice system. It's really not hard to find examples where the favored people are given special treatment, including immunity to laws. So starting to inconsistently apply laws isn't really the issue. We'd have to, at some point in time, have consistently applied laws in the first place for that to matter. It's only a matter of degree, and flavor -- eastern systems seem to be more ok with granting leeway based on personal relationships. Western systems tend to be very suspicious of that, and depend more on who has the resources or formal connections. But no system in the world has long lasted without some amount of leeway / wiggle room / corruption.
Laarlf 5y ago
The main alternative is noticing what went wrong over the last 70 or so years in the west and fixing that. You cannot escape the madness because globalisation made most countries very similiar. Growing the governments further and further did not help anyone but the biggest of companies. And because the chinese really don't care a lot about regulations or bureaucracy, they actually achieve something.
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  Achieve what exactly? Where is china producing cutting edge tech? They've consistently failed at in house chip design and production over the last 50 years. Most major tech breakthroughs are still coming out of west plus japan and SK.
  - Laarlf 5y ago
    Comparably rapid growth of economy and political influence
    - idiotsecant 5y ago
      At the cost of enormous damage to the health of Chinese citizens, the repression of Chinese minorities, and rampant destruction of Chinese ecology. Make no mistake, China is just as deeply sick as the west, perhaps more so - it just manifests in different ways.
  - thesuitonym 5y ago
    Where do you think cutting edge tech is actually produced?
    - throwaway6734 5y ago
      the US, Europe, Japan, SK
      - CRConrad 5y ago

periheli0n 5y ago

There is a whole spectrum of bureaucracy and overregulation in the “West”. The EU is probably worst. The US are quite relaxed in comparison. The UK is somewhere in the middle.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> The US are quite relaxed in comparison. This is basically a myth at this point, bolstered by how much more we complain about it. The US made the colossal mistake of trying to do regulation at the federal level, basically equivalent to doing it at the EU level, which the EU is now attempting to do more of and discovering what a trash fire it is. And one of the big reasons for that is that the more centrally the regulation happens, the more corruption it attracts. That's where the US got the reputation for not regulating -- it's not that there aren't rules or that the rules aren't long and arduous and inefficient. It's that they're, on top of that, less effective because there is more regulatory capture by incumbents.
- Laarlf 5y ago
  YES YES YES. Policies and laws should be more local to adhere to the local situations in local areas. A politician in Berlin cannot understand the situation in a random town with 500 inhabitants and therefore should rarely have something to say about how life functions there.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Do the needs of that town with 500 inhabitants require different streaming laws? Freedom to repair laws. Special export restrictions? Should they be allowed to dump chemicals in the water we all share? Host servers that serve copyrighted material? What needs do they have that evil laws are ignoring.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      > Do the needs of that town with 500 inhabitants require different streaming laws? Freedom to repair laws. Special export restrictions? A town with 500 inhabitants isn't required to have different streaming laws or freedom to repair laws etc. They could all pass the same ones. But if the state of Colorado thinks that the rules in New York are too favorable to device makers and the state of Alaska doesn't care to have any laws on the matter at all then why shouldn't the people there be able to make their own choices? If the cost of living is dramatically lower in Wichita Falls, Texas than it is in San Francisco, California, what sense does it make to have a federal minimum wage instead of allowing each place to choose appropriate to their local economy? > Should they be allowed to dump chemicals in the water we all share? Pollution that crosses state lines is the purpose of federal courts. You don't need federal regulations for that, just an outright complete prohibition on it and penalties for the offending state. > Host servers that serve copyrighted material? That ship has sailed, hasn't it? It's a global internet. The Pirate Bay is still up. Does it really matter if it's hosted in North Dakota or Sweden or wherever it is now? And we could most certainly stand to not have DMCA 1201 everywhere.

createmyname 5y ago

this is the best thing you as a person have. believe me. the point you lost all those regulations etc. some idiot will come and make you miserable... you won't even be able to believe you are controlled and manipulated by a idiot bunch! until then have fun...

Laarlf 5y ago
You are always controlled and manipulated by idiots. The question is: how much can you do about that without doing something unlawful?

jjk166 5y ago

The problem is not so much that we have excessive regulation and bureaucracy but rather that we have a strong tendency to put regulations in place but never evaluate how they are actually performing nor modify them if they are performing poorly. For some reason we equate implementing a rule intended to solve a problem with actually solving the problem - those who implement the policy are praised for doing so long before any improvement in the actual situation is ever seen, and being opposed to the policy intended to solve the problem is widely construed as being opposed to solving the problem itself, even if there is evidence the policy makes the real problem worse. Finally policies are often evaluated based on the message their implementation conveys rather than the actual effects of the policies - for example despite zero tolerance policies being almost universally seen as extremely poor way to deal with complicated issues, they are frequently implemented to express how important the problem they were meant to solve is. So long as we don't make decisions based on efficacy, of course effectiveness will degrade over time.

duxup 5y ago

Bureaucracy seems like it is tied to human nature.

hayst4ck 5y ago

> Overregulation and bureaucracy are the downfall of the west. [citation needed] I think it's pretty clear we are both over and under regulating. Can you tell me the basis/primary purpose of regulation? Can you tell me what the the primary benefit of bureaucracy is?

Nasrudith 5y ago

Bueracracies and overregulation are essentially alternatives to fiefdoms by constraining abusable levels of discretion. Fiefdoms lead to outright open corruption which make the readilly lobbied look like choir boys in comparison. The stereotypical "third world levels of corruption" situations where secured loyalty to the regime matters more than competence. It is yet another tiresome situation of "sucks but we don't really have anything better". We can and should attempt to streamline them but that is nontrivial, especially politically.

mbrodersen 5y ago

Luckily for the west, over regulation and bureaucracy is done equally "well" by non-westerners. If the competition is equally incompetent, you can still do quite well.