3 ms·

This kind of approach never works except for in the most egregious of situations. Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left

This kind of approach never works except for in the most egregious of situations. Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left up to the market. Regulations work.

NegativeLatency 3y ago
This is a great example especially considering how injuries inside cars have continued to drop (which is regulated) but injuries outside of cars have increased (we don't regulate visibility or hood/bumper height for example)
- digging 3y ago
  Right. Regulation is what works, but it's not a magic wand. We can't keep allowing industries to write their own regulations without meaningful public input.
- jdietrich 3y ago
  Unlike the NHTSA tests, the Euro NCAP tests include tests of pedestrian, cyclist and motorcyclist protection - both passive protection to mitigate injury in the event of a collision, and active protection to prevent a collision in the first place. Performance in these tests count towards the overall 5 star rating. My understanding is that NHTSA is working on preliminary research into the issue, but they're a clear 15-20 years behind Euro NCAP. https://www.euroncap.com/en/car-safety/the-ratings-explained/vulnerable-road-user-vru-protection/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/car-safety/the-ratings-explained...
- jacobolus 3y ago
  A lack of visibility regulation is the biggest problem in current vehicle design in my opinion. A 5' (152 cm) tall driver should be able to clearly see a small child standing a few feet away in front of or to either side of any vehicle allowed on public streets. Any vehicle modification compromising that should be strictly prohibited. Steep financial liability for pedestrian/cyclist accidents for not only the driver but also the vehicle manufacturer or anyone involved in modifying a vehicle would also help.
gruez 3y ago
>Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left up to the market. Regulations work. I think even diehard libertarians would admit that "regulations work" in the sense that using the government's monopoly on violence to force companies to do something will cause them to do said thing. The debate is whether the upsides outweigh the downsides (eg. due to regulatory capture). For a point of comparison, software security is largely unregulated. There's no law that says Google needs to deliver security patches for 5 years, or they need to implement security measures like verified boot, yet they do so anyways, presumably to compete with Apple which is doing something similar.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  > think even diehard libertarians would admit that "regulations work" in the sense that using the government's monopoly on violence to force companies to do something will cause them to do said thing. The debate is whether enacting them is better than the alternative (eg. due to regulatory capture). That isn't really the debate, because we had that debate and decided it was (see seatbelts for an example). Though I guess literally every issue could technically be relitigated and debated constantly ad infinitum, so you're not technically wrong. But we didn't listen to people who said "if you want seatbelts required, just stop buying cars that don't have them". What we see now, for the most part, are individuals who disagree with our consensus, but that's to be expected no matter what we had ultimately decided. So in this case, "it worked" is shorthand for "it successfully got us closer to achieving the goals we decided on"
- spacemadness 3y ago
  You’re talking about life or death vs. computer security. Surely there is a difference?
nickff 3y ago
Car safety is an interesting one, because most of the 'safety innovations' we employ today were invented as 'factory options', not as a result of regulations (which were later used to make the features mandatory). Most economists evaluate safety features as 'luxury goods', usually employed in high-cost vehicles before migrating downmarket. The question how valuable consumers perceive safety features to be, and what their rate of adoption would be; additionally, which ones would they choose? Two interesting examples are seat-belts and air-bags; the former is in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per life saved, and the latter is generally estimated to be in the millions of dollars per life saved. Was mandating the air-bag the optimal way to use that money, or did the government commit statistical murder (a term often used in the field).
Shekelphile 3y ago
Vote with your wallet has never worked. Even the most basic economic principles like supply and demand have been shown to be broken in the last few years. Countless businesses have begun rent-seeking with quarterly price increases, opaque markups hidden until it's time to swipe your card, outright theft from customers and employees, etc. Even if they alienate a few people, there's always more ignorant/stupid people who won't research before they make a purchase and who will go along with whatever is done to them anyway. And it's compounded with things like housing and food. You can't go without either unless you want to live a completely undignified existence and with a vastly shortened lifespan. Another example to throw in there is indoor smoking too. People never stopped going out to eat or to bars when you were forced to sit in a thick haze of second hand smoke, and even if you did avoid it there were hundreds of other people who didn't care. I can't imagine how things would be if the push to get rid of it happened in more recent times rather than 20-25 years ago. Red states certainly would have never banned it and there would be droves of people going out intentionally to force you to inhale their second hand smoke to own the libs.

This kind of approach never works except for in the most egregious of situations. Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left up to the market. Regulations work.

NegativeLatency 3y ago

This is a great example especially considering how injuries inside cars have continued to drop (which is regulated) but injuries outside of cars have increased (we don't regulate visibility or hood/bumper height for example)

digging 3y ago
Right. Regulation is what works, but it's not a magic wand. We can't keep allowing industries to write their own regulations without meaningful public input.
jdietrich 3y ago
Unlike the NHTSA tests, the Euro NCAP tests include tests of pedestrian, cyclist and motorcyclist protection - both passive protection to mitigate injury in the event of a collision, and active protection to prevent a collision in the first place. Performance in these tests count towards the overall 5 star rating. My understanding is that NHTSA is working on preliminary research into the issue, but they're a clear 15-20 years behind Euro NCAP. https://www.euroncap.com/en/car-safety/the-ratings-explained/vulnerable-road-user-vru-protection/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/car-safety/the-ratings-explained...
jacobolus 3y ago
A lack of visibility regulation is the biggest problem in current vehicle design in my opinion. A 5' (152 cm) tall driver should be able to clearly see a small child standing a few feet away in front of or to either side of any vehicle allowed on public streets. Any vehicle modification compromising that should be strictly prohibited. Steep financial liability for pedestrian/cyclist accidents for not only the driver but also the vehicle manufacturer or anyone involved in modifying a vehicle would also help.

gruez 3y ago

>Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left up to the market. Regulations work. I think even diehard libertarians would admit that "regulations work" in the sense that using the government's monopoly on violence to force companies to do something will cause them to do said thing. The debate is whether the upsides outweigh the downsides (eg. due to regulatory capture). For a point of comparison, software security is largely unregulated. There's no law that says Google needs to deliver security patches for 5 years, or they need to implement security measures like verified boot, yet they do so anyways, presumably to compete with Apple which is doing something similar.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
> think even diehard libertarians would admit that "regulations work" in the sense that using the government's monopoly on violence to force companies to do something will cause them to do said thing. The debate is whether enacting them is better than the alternative (eg. due to regulatory capture). That isn't really the debate, because we had that debate and decided it was (see seatbelts for an example). Though I guess literally every issue could technically be relitigated and debated constantly ad infinitum, so you're not technically wrong. But we didn't listen to people who said "if you want seatbelts required, just stop buying cars that don't have them". What we see now, for the most part, are individuals who disagree with our consensus, but that's to be expected no matter what we had ultimately decided. So in this case, "it worked" is shorthand for "it successfully got us closer to achieving the goals we decided on"
spacemadness 3y ago
You’re talking about life or death vs. computer security. Surely there is a difference?

nickff 3y ago

Car safety is an interesting one, because most of the 'safety innovations' we employ today were invented as 'factory options', not as a result of regulations (which were later used to make the features mandatory). Most economists evaluate safety features as 'luxury goods', usually employed in high-cost vehicles before migrating downmarket. The question how valuable consumers perceive safety features to be, and what their rate of adoption would be; additionally, which ones would they choose? Two interesting examples are seat-belts and air-bags; the former is in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per life saved, and the latter is generally estimated to be in the millions of dollars per life saved. Was mandating the air-bag the optimal way to use that money, or did the government commit statistical murder (a term often used in the field).

Shekelphile 3y ago

Vote with your wallet has never worked. Even the most basic economic principles like supply and demand have been shown to be broken in the last few years. Countless businesses have begun rent-seeking with quarterly price increases, opaque markups hidden until it's time to swipe your card, outright theft from customers and employees, etc. Even if they alienate a few people, there's always more ignorant/stupid people who won't research before they make a purchase and who will go along with whatever is done to them anyway. And it's compounded with things like housing and food. You can't go without either unless you want to live a completely undignified existence and with a vastly shortened lifespan. Another example to throw in there is indoor smoking too. People never stopped going out to eat or to bars when you were forced to sit in a thick haze of second hand smoke, and even if you did avoid it there were hundreds of other people who didn't care. I can't imagine how things would be if the push to get rid of it happened in more recent times rather than 20-25 years ago. Red states certainly would have never banned it and there would be droves of people going out intentionally to force you to inhale their second hand smoke to own the libs.