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> But why do you think legislation should be the one forcing that choice on everyone, rather than the market allowing consumers to choose? You paint a rosy lib

by cwkoss 4y ago

> But why do you think legislation should be the one forcing that choice on everyone, rather than the market allowing consumers to choose? You paint a rosy libertarian picture about choice, but choice is not an inherently good. I don't want to live in a society that allows the use of consumer data to be used adversarially against consumers to defraud and manipulate them. It is good when laws prohibit fundamentally immoral behavior.

throw10920 4y ago
You paint a rosy utopian picture about regulation, but regulation is not inherently good. I don't want to live in a society that allows regulation to be used adversarially against business owners to control them and manipulate the market. > It is good when laws prohibit fundamentally immoral behavior. Sure, but that's not relevant, because people don't agree on what "fundamentally immoral behavior" is to begin with (for instance - I see nothing wrong with voluntarily trading some of your personal data away for a product, subject to lots of terms and conditions). However, even if people agreed on what "immoral behavior" was, you couldn't regulate it away, because you don't have the ability to directly affect laws. Regulation is by definition a very coarse instrument. Regulation is necessary because people are evil. But who puts laws and regulations into place? Also people, who are evil. The very fact that you can have greedy CEOs who destroy the environment for profit means that you also get corrupt regulators who write twisted laws for a bit of extra money. So, regulation is inherently subject to corruption - that's exactly how you get regulatory capture[1]. So, given this fundamental truth about humanity, the only reasonable thing to do is to design a system that acknowledges the truth about corruption and is designed to resist it. In this particular case, that means putting labelling and transparency regulation into place, which is much simpler and harder to corrupt and depends far less heavily on the moral frameworks of individuals. Your proposal to regulate the market to conform to your personal moral code is highly authoritarian and in denial of a basic truth about human nature. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- cwkoss 4y ago
  I am glad that regulation prohibits human trafficking, despite the 'loss of choice' business owners have as a result. Prohibition is never perfect, but there is certainly a lot less human trafficking than if the market was less 'authoritarian'. In 70 years, I suspect people will view the ad/consumer surveillance industry much like we view the 1950s tobacco industry today.
  - throw10920 4y ago
    Your response to my comment is as irrelevant to the original one you posted. I never said anything about "regulation being inherently bad" or "all regulation should be abolished". I certainly never said or implied anything remotely along the lines of "slavery-adjacent things should be legal". Please make sure that your comments actually have a connection to the thing you're commenting on before posting them.

by cwkoss 4y ago

throw10920 4y ago

You paint a rosy utopian picture about regulation, but regulation is not inherently good. I don't want to live in a society that allows regulation to be used adversarially against business owners to control them and manipulate the market. > It is good when laws prohibit fundamentally immoral behavior. Sure, but that's not relevant, because people don't agree on what "fundamentally immoral behavior" is to begin with (for instance - I see nothing wrong with voluntarily trading some of your personal data away for a product, subject to lots of terms and conditions). However, even if people agreed on what "immoral behavior" was, you couldn't regulate it away, because you don't have the ability to directly affect laws. Regulation is by definition a very coarse instrument. Regulation is necessary because people are evil. But who puts laws and regulations into place? Also people, who are evil. The very fact that you can have greedy CEOs who destroy the environment for profit means that you also get corrupt regulators who write twisted laws for a bit of extra money. So, regulation is inherently subject to corruption - that's exactly how you get regulatory capture[1]. So, given this fundamental truth about humanity, the only reasonable thing to do is to design a system that acknowledges the truth about corruption and is designed to resist it. In this particular case, that means putting labelling and transparency regulation into place, which is much simpler and harder to corrupt and depends far less heavily on the moral frameworks of individuals. Your proposal to regulate the market to conform to your personal moral code is highly authoritarian and in denial of a basic truth about human nature. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

cwkoss 4y ago
I am glad that regulation prohibits human trafficking, despite the 'loss of choice' business owners have as a result. Prohibition is never perfect, but there is certainly a lot less human trafficking than if the market was less 'authoritarian'. In 70 years, I suspect people will view the ad/consumer surveillance industry much like we view the 1950s tobacco industry today.
- throw10920 4y ago
  Your response to my comment is as irrelevant to the original one you posted. I never said anything about "regulation being inherently bad" or "all regulation should be abolished". I certainly never said or implied anything remotely along the lines of "slavery-adjacent things should be legal". Please make sure that your comments actually have a connection to the thing you're commenting on before posting them.