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In free market it's also OK to cut costs as much as possible, making chair that explode and kill the user one day after the warranty expires. That's why we hav

In free market it's also OK to cut costs as much as possible, making chair that explode and kill the user one day after the warranty expires. That's why we have regulation: to establish the minimum standards. Simple medical devices like wheelchairs (Class I or Class II) are also not super over-regulated, you don't need to do clinical trials to certify them. All-in-all it'll cost you around $10m, which is not at all a moat.

bravo22 3y ago
Liability still exists in a free market. Regulations are government's way of giving you immunity from liability laws, or not enacting them, in exchange for doing things a very specific ways. This creates moates.
- eropple 3y ago
  > Liability still exists in a free market Only if a wronged party has the resources (time, money, political capital) to pursue it. Which is but one reason why it is deeply silly to rely on it to make a society go.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > Only if a wronged party has the resources (time, money, political capital) to pursue it. In a free market, if there is a market need for more efficient achievement of redress for wronged parties, the market will produce it. > Which is but one reason why it is deeply silly to rely on it to make a society go. But of course relying on governments to achieve redress for wronged parties works just great. Not.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      > In a free market, if there is a market need for more efficient achievement of redress for wronged parties, the market will produce it. In our current market, many companies have worked around redress of wronged parties by mandating arbitration in various contracts.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Free markets are not a panacea, nor do ideal free markets ever exist anyway. Also, free markets require regulation to prevent powerful actors from making them non-free. > the market will produce it. Only if it's profitable. Feeding poor people, caring for the indigent, etc. isn't profitable.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        > Only if it's profitable. Are you confusing markets with business? To profit means that you accepted a debt instead of getting something in return for your efforts. Business seeks profit because the expectation is that it will pass the debt on to the stakeholders who will then call the debt and get something in return for their efforts. But it is people who participate in the market. If they demand profit continually, therefore not getting anything in return, that just means they're working for free. People won't feed the poor unless they can do it for free? Methinks that's not what you meant.
  - bravo22 3y ago
    And putting resources towards lowering that barrier would go significantly further than any regulation. Regulation is by nature slow and highly susceptible to corruption or stagnation. Whereas the courts, as onerous as they may be, essentially achieve the same thing through liability but it is more dynamic, more responsive, and more likely to error correct than the former.
  - bravo22 3y ago
    Don't forget the resources and money required to bring X to the limited attention of the regulators and to ensure the regulation is sufficiently up to date and not subject to capture. I would argue it is orders of magnitude more than exploring the same through liability.
- Latty 3y ago
  Liability can't magically undo damage to health. Regulation is vital when the potential damage is irreversible.
  - jjk166 3y ago
    Nor can regulation. But the idea is that, in seeking to avoid liability, people will avoid doing things that would foreseeably lead to such liability. Likewise regulation is limited to preventing foreseeable issues, and is often only implemented after somebody suffers damages. The difference is that regulations are imposed by a third party whose interests may not be aligned with those who are actually involved in the matter. This is good in circumstances where there are externalities, for example just because I'm okay with entering an agreement with a company to use my backyard to store toxic waste doesn't mean my neighbors would be very happy. But when people are making decisions that will only affect themselves, such as what wheelchair to purchase, liability really is the more sensible consumer protection.
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  Is liability not a regulation? See: All of the arguments/debates about how to regulate self-driving cars in cases where the car injures someone.
pdonis 3y ago
> In free market it's also OK to cut costs as much as possible, making chair that explode and kill the user one day after the warranty expires. No, it isn't, because nobody will buy chairs from a company that does that. In a free market, no company can use the get out of jail free card of "but I was following all the regulations". Businesses have to actually meet customer needs. And in a free market, customers can't delude themselves that Big Brother is looking out for them (even though Big Brother is not actually doing that); they know that they have to enforce quality if that's what they want. That means customers know that it's on them to be savvy enough to be able to evaluate the quality of products and services. > That's why we have regulation: to establish the minimum standards. That's what regulators claim, but all history shows that claim to be wrong. The end result of regulations is to reduce the quality and availability of products, not increase them. The wheelchair market described in the article is a classic example: it's regulated up one side and down the other, yet customers can't get simple things like proper footrests. > Simple medical devices like wheelchairs (Class I or Class II) are also not super over-regulated, you don't need to do clinical trials to certify them. Doesn't this contradict your claim that regulation is the only way to avoid exploding chairs? If you don't do clinical trials, how do you know the chairs won't explode one day after the warranty expires? Of course the answer to this is that the regulators just, you know, look at the design of the chairs to evaluate them for certification. But customers could do the same thing for themselves, at less cost (what, you think those government regulators work for free?). So the regulations are actually adding zero value. But they're certainly not adding zero cost. > All-in-all it'll cost you around $10m, which is not at all a moat. So you'll be going into the wheelchair business then? Looks like there's plenty of opportunity to out-compete the current incumbents.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  It's all theoretical. Do you see it actually working out this way? When and where? > regulators just, you know, look at the design of the chairs to evaluate them for certification. But customers could do the same thing for themselves, at less cost (what, you think those government regulators work for free?). So the regulations are actually adding zero value. But they're certainly not adding zero cost. I have little idea how to evaluate the safety of an electric wheelchair, and don't have the time to acquire the expertise to learn how to do that with everything I buy. But we all can chip in and pay someone, who has the expertise, to do it once rather than than millions of people doing it redundantly.
robertlagrant 3y ago
We might think we have regulation for minimum standards, but that's not necessarily why regulations are created.
xcdzvyn 3y ago
Why would I buy something that kills me the day after the warranty expires?
- Uehreka 3y ago
  Because you don’t know that it will. If it’s been out for less than a year perhaps no one has been harmed by it yet.
photonthug 3y ago
> All-in-all it'll cost you around $10m, which is not at all a moat. Ok, I know we’re assuming electric wheel chairs, we don’t want fires or stuck accelerators, but really? This is still fairly close to literally reinventing the wheel, or adding complexity, a RC car. It’s pretty sad to think this level of almost Stone Age technology only needs a 10 million dollar investment to bootstrap.
- cyberax 3y ago
  > This is still fairly close to literally reinventing the wheel, or adding complexity, a RC car. It's really not. If your chair overturns and traps a disabled user, it can be a death sentence for them. If your battery starts burning, your user _might_ _not_ _be_ _able_ to escape the flame.

bravo22 3y ago

Liability still exists in a free market. Regulations are government's way of giving you immunity from liability laws, or not enacting them, in exchange for doing things a very specific ways. This creates moates.

eropple 3y ago
> Liability still exists in a free market Only if a wronged party has the resources (time, money, political capital) to pursue it. Which is but one reason why it is deeply silly to rely on it to make a society go.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Only if a wronged party has the resources (time, money, political capital) to pursue it. In a free market, if there is a market need for more efficient achievement of redress for wronged parties, the market will produce it. > Which is but one reason why it is deeply silly to rely on it to make a society go. But of course relying on governments to achieve redress for wronged parties works just great. Not.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    > In a free market, if there is a market need for more efficient achievement of redress for wronged parties, the market will produce it. In our current market, many companies have worked around redress of wronged parties by mandating arbitration in various contracts.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Free markets are not a panacea, nor do ideal free markets ever exist anyway. Also, free markets require regulation to prevent powerful actors from making them non-free. > the market will produce it. Only if it's profitable. Feeding poor people, caring for the indigent, etc. isn't profitable.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      > Only if it's profitable. Are you confusing markets with business? To profit means that you accepted a debt instead of getting something in return for your efforts. Business seeks profit because the expectation is that it will pass the debt on to the stakeholders who will then call the debt and get something in return for their efforts. But it is people who participate in the market. If they demand profit continually, therefore not getting anything in return, that just means they're working for free. People won't feed the poor unless they can do it for free? Methinks that's not what you meant.
- bravo22 3y ago
  And putting resources towards lowering that barrier would go significantly further than any regulation. Regulation is by nature slow and highly susceptible to corruption or stagnation. Whereas the courts, as onerous as they may be, essentially achieve the same thing through liability but it is more dynamic, more responsive, and more likely to error correct than the former.
- bravo22 3y ago
  Don't forget the resources and money required to bring X to the limited attention of the regulators and to ensure the regulation is sufficiently up to date and not subject to capture. I would argue it is orders of magnitude more than exploring the same through liability.
Latty 3y ago
Liability can't magically undo damage to health. Regulation is vital when the potential damage is irreversible.
- jjk166 3y ago
  Nor can regulation. But the idea is that, in seeking to avoid liability, people will avoid doing things that would foreseeably lead to such liability. Likewise regulation is limited to preventing foreseeable issues, and is often only implemented after somebody suffers damages. The difference is that regulations are imposed by a third party whose interests may not be aligned with those who are actually involved in the matter. This is good in circumstances where there are externalities, for example just because I'm okay with entering an agreement with a company to use my backyard to store toxic waste doesn't mean my neighbors would be very happy. But when people are making decisions that will only affect themselves, such as what wheelchair to purchase, liability really is the more sensible consumer protection.
fzeroracer 3y ago
Is liability not a regulation? See: All of the arguments/debates about how to regulate self-driving cars in cases where the car injures someone.

pdonis 3y ago

> In free market it's also OK to cut costs as much as possible, making chair that explode and kill the user one day after the warranty expires. No, it isn't, because nobody will buy chairs from a company that does that. In a free market, no company can use the get out of jail free card of "but I was following all the regulations". Businesses have to actually meet customer needs. And in a free market, customers can't delude themselves that Big Brother is looking out for them (even though Big Brother is not actually doing that); they know that they have to enforce quality if that's what they want. That means customers know that it's on them to be savvy enough to be able to evaluate the quality of products and services. > That's why we have regulation: to establish the minimum standards. That's what regulators claim, but all history shows that claim to be wrong. The end result of regulations is to reduce the quality and availability of products, not increase them. The wheelchair market described in the article is a classic example: it's regulated up one side and down the other, yet customers can't get simple things like proper footrests. > Simple medical devices like wheelchairs (Class I or Class II) are also not super over-regulated, you don't need to do clinical trials to certify them. Doesn't this contradict your claim that regulation is the only way to avoid exploding chairs? If you don't do clinical trials, how do you know the chairs won't explode one day after the warranty expires? Of course the answer to this is that the regulators just, you know, look at the design of the chairs to evaluate them for certification. But customers could do the same thing for themselves, at less cost (what, you think those government regulators work for free?). So the regulations are actually adding zero value. But they're certainly not adding zero cost. > All-in-all it'll cost you around $10m, which is not at all a moat. So you'll be going into the wheelchair business then? Looks like there's plenty of opportunity to out-compete the current incumbents.

wolverine876 3y ago
It's all theoretical. Do you see it actually working out this way? When and where? > regulators just, you know, look at the design of the chairs to evaluate them for certification. But customers could do the same thing for themselves, at less cost (what, you think those government regulators work for free?). So the regulations are actually adding zero value. But they're certainly not adding zero cost. I have little idea how to evaluate the safety of an electric wheelchair, and don't have the time to acquire the expertise to learn how to do that with everything I buy. But we all can chip in and pay someone, who has the expertise, to do it once rather than than millions of people doing it redundantly.

robertlagrant 3y ago

We might think we have regulation for minimum standards, but that's not necessarily why regulations are created.

xcdzvyn 3y ago

Why would I buy something that kills me the day after the warranty expires?

Uehreka 3y ago
Because you don’t know that it will. If it’s been out for less than a year perhaps no one has been harmed by it yet.

photonthug 3y ago

> All-in-all it'll cost you around $10m, which is not at all a moat. Ok, I know we’re assuming electric wheel chairs, we don’t want fires or stuck accelerators, but really? This is still fairly close to literally reinventing the wheel, or adding complexity, a RC car. It’s pretty sad to think this level of almost Stone Age technology only needs a 10 million dollar investment to bootstrap.

cyberax 3y ago
> This is still fairly close to literally reinventing the wheel, or adding complexity, a RC car. It's really not. If your chair overturns and traps a disabled user, it can be a death sentence for them. If your battery starts burning, your user _might_ _not_ _be_ _able_ to escape the flame.