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Your question embeds a logical fallacy. You're challenging a statement of the form, "A causes B. I don't like B, so we shouldn't do A." You are challenging it
by RationalDino 3y ago
Your question embeds a logical fallacy.
You're challenging a statement of the form, "A causes B. I don't like B, so we shouldn't do A." You are challenging it by asking, "How does not doing A prevent B?" Converting that to logic, you are replacing "A implies B" with "not-A implies not-B". But those statements are far from equivalent!
To answer the real question, it is good to not guarantee a bad result, even though doing so doesn't guarantee a good result. So no, choosing not to regulate does not guarantee that we stop this particular problem. It just means that we won't CAUSE it.
- ethanbond 3y agoNo, GP specifically said it “enables” it, not that it contributes to it. If they meant to say “contributes to,” then the obvious question is: to what degree and for what benefit? Which is a very different conversation than a binary “enabling” of a bad outcome.
- RationalDino 3y agoWhen someone says that building ramps enables wheelchair users to get into buildings with stairs, would you be the person who argues that isn't actually enabling because they can just pay someone to carry them up the stairs? That clearly stupid argument exactly parallels what you are saying. Down to using the word "enables".
- ethanbond 3y agoIt’s clearly not an exact parallel, because there’s an obvious answer to “not building ramps prevents mobility… how exactly?” Anyway no need to get into the meta argument here. If GP thinks regulation just increases the risk of centralization, I’m more interested in thinking through the pros and cons of that.
- RationalDino 3y agoIf you're interested in that topic, reading through the discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072218 is a good place to start.