4 ms·

"I think your dichotomy is a bit too stark" Kids are getting their lemonade stands shut-down by cops. Traveling vendors are getting shut-down in cities because

by smokeyj 14y ago

"I think your dichotomy is a bit too stark" Kids are getting their lemonade stands shut-down by cops. Traveling vendors are getting shut-down in cities because they're competing with established restaurants. The Amish are getting raided by feds for selling raw milk. I can keep going if you wish.

_delirium 14y ago
I agree, and I think that's why there will need to be exemptions for small-scale independent vendors. You didn't address my point about the continuing need for regulation of large-scale vendors for essentially the traditional reasons, though. Does the fact that we should let kids run lemonade stands without being hassled also mean that full-scale commercial hotels in Brooklyn should be unlicensed and not subject to health/safety inspections? On the latter point, I don't see the situation as much different than the 1950s: if someone is trying to convert 30 apartments in a building to a de-facto hotel, that's the use-case that hotel regulations were put in place to address. The new 2010s phenomenon is the person who's renting out their personal apartment intermittently, and which current regulations are too inflexible to accommodate. So I think a more flexible range of policies are needed.
- smokeyj 14y ago
  You're asking me if we should dictate to the entire population which risks are acceptable to take. I would say there is no logical methodology to accomplish this. It's okay to drive a motorcycle, but not okay to buy lemonade from a kid? It's okay to smoke cigarettes, but not okay to sell unregulated securities? Risk should be legal and honestly disclosed. The only crime should be intentionally misrepresenting risk -- and this can easily be done in contract.
- larrys 14y ago
  "The new 2010s phenomenon is the person who's renting out their personal apartment intermittently, and which current regulations are too inflexible to accommodate." I'm not a fan of regulation by any means as I see it adding to the cost of products and service. But by and large they also exist to protect people from their folly and what they don't know about. (The cancer comes of course from when that theory gets out of whack or when groups take advantage of that to exclude legitimate operators..) "Does the fact that we should let kids run lemonade stands without being hassled also mean that full-scale commercial hotels in Brooklyn should be unlicensed and not subject to health/safety inspections?" Kids running lemonade stands where you see the kids are running the stand is a risk any typical person would know exists (since they don't know if the kid mixed the lemonade or a parent etc. So they can judge the risk. (Besides being clearly grandfathered in so many ways.)) But kids making lemondade and selling it to the corner store is a risk that people need to be protected against. The key being is a person reasonably able to know the risk that is involved in what they are doing. So in the case of airbnb I'm not sure people understand the risk they are taking when doing this on a large scale (both from the renting end and the using end). And that is what they need to be protected against.
rmc 14y ago
Kids are getting their lemonade stands shut-down by cops Stuff like that is sometimes the case of laws designed to make life harder for the homeless and very poor now getting applied to cute little girls. You could decriminalise it, but you'd have to let the junkie on the street sell things too. The old days of police knowing which sort of people to apply laws to (based on class, skin colour, accent, etc.), and which sort of people they should not apply laws to, are, thankfully, ending.
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  You seem misinformed about multiple issues. First, while it's certainly true that people of every age have complained about the past, it's also true that some ages were really shitty. Rome went through several really bad emperors, for instance. If we are to learn anything from history, we should learn that there exist signs that we are entering an age of tyranny. It's fine to debate what they are, or whether they are prevalent today, but it's not okay just to toss out any observation about the way things currently are with "yeah but people always complain like this" That's a pretty scary throwaway. Second, and most tragically, the more laws we have the more the police have the ability to selectively choose. You seem to have it backwards. In a society with a few laws, if the cops bust you they have to pick one random one and try to make it fit. In a society with complicated, diverse, and sometimes conflicting laws, they have a lot more options over how to send you to jail, and it's more likely that one of these options will fit. In the states, for instance, we've made it a felony to lie to a federal official in the progress of his duties. That's so broad and free-ranging that even with an attorney present it's not clear what citizens should do to be sure they are not crossing the line into committing a major crime. The police get to decide. Likewise, many states are choosing not to enforce marijuana laws -- a stance I agree with -- but the national government is constantly enforcing them anyway. At a certain level of complexity, it's all about which laws get attention from officials and which don't. It might seem that creating a more complex system of laws is a natural consequence of having a more complex and modern society. That's also a fallacy, as complex societal interactions have been working just fine with few laws for recorded history. However, the reverse is true: when a certain degree of complexity is reached, society actually becomes much more simple. Once the system is not understandable to the common man, police can do what they want, prosecutors can pick and choose which laws to enforce or not, and politically-connected people get to live like kings. It is easy to think that each law we add somehow makes the world a more just and fair place to live in, but that's only because in our mind we pretend that this law will be applied universally. Authorities have long since passed the point where laws are applied universally. To hear and get excited about a new set of laws now is simply to desire to enforce one set of laws at the expense of another (we are never told which laws will be receiving less enforcement action). It's a way for politicians to get elected, not make society a more just place. All of this is counter-intuitive, I'll grant. But it's not like it's a secret.
rmc 14y ago
It is common for some people to claim that everything is shit now, and things were brilliant in the past. This has been going continuously on for ~2,000 years, and the world hasn't gone to shit yet. If you go back to your Golden Age, people were probly comparing themselves to a mythical past aswell. Roman poet Juvenal in 100 CE remarked how modern people had no sense of civic pride and hard work and instead all modern people wanted was "bread and circuses" (i.e. to eat food and watch entertainment)

by smokeyj 14y ago

_delirium 14y ago

I agree, and I think that's why there will need to be exemptions for small-scale independent vendors. You didn't address my point about the continuing need for regulation of large-scale vendors for essentially the traditional reasons, though. Does the fact that we should let kids run lemonade stands without being hassled also mean that full-scale commercial hotels in Brooklyn should be unlicensed and not subject to health/safety inspections? On the latter point, I don't see the situation as much different than the 1950s: if someone is trying to convert 30 apartments in a building to a de-facto hotel, that's the use-case that hotel regulations were put in place to address. The new 2010s phenomenon is the person who's renting out their personal apartment intermittently, and which current regulations are too inflexible to accommodate. So I think a more flexible range of policies are needed.

smokeyj 14y ago
You're asking me if we should dictate to the entire population which risks are acceptable to take. I would say there is no logical methodology to accomplish this. It's okay to drive a motorcycle, but not okay to buy lemonade from a kid? It's okay to smoke cigarettes, but not okay to sell unregulated securities? Risk should be legal and honestly disclosed. The only crime should be intentionally misrepresenting risk -- and this can easily be done in contract.
larrys 14y ago
"The new 2010s phenomenon is the person who's renting out their personal apartment intermittently, and which current regulations are too inflexible to accommodate." I'm not a fan of regulation by any means as I see it adding to the cost of products and service. But by and large they also exist to protect people from their folly and what they don't know about. (The cancer comes of course from when that theory gets out of whack or when groups take advantage of that to exclude legitimate operators..) "Does the fact that we should let kids run lemonade stands without being hassled also mean that full-scale commercial hotels in Brooklyn should be unlicensed and not subject to health/safety inspections?" Kids running lemonade stands where you see the kids are running the stand is a risk any typical person would know exists (since they don't know if the kid mixed the lemonade or a parent etc. So they can judge the risk. (Besides being clearly grandfathered in so many ways.)) But kids making lemondade and selling it to the corner store is a risk that people need to be protected against. The key being is a person reasonably able to know the risk that is involved in what they are doing. So in the case of airbnb I'm not sure people understand the risk they are taking when doing this on a large scale (both from the renting end and the using end). And that is what they need to be protected against.

rmc 14y ago

Kids are getting their lemonade stands shut-down by cops Stuff like that is sometimes the case of laws designed to make life harder for the homeless and very poor now getting applied to cute little girls. You could decriminalise it, but you'd have to let the junkie on the street sell things too. The old days of police knowing which sort of people to apply laws to (based on class, skin colour, accent, etc.), and which sort of people they should not apply laws to, are, thankfully, ending.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
You seem misinformed about multiple issues. First, while it's certainly true that people of every age have complained about the past, it's also true that some ages were really shitty. Rome went through several really bad emperors, for instance. If we are to learn anything from history, we should learn that there exist signs that we are entering an age of tyranny. It's fine to debate what they are, or whether they are prevalent today, but it's not okay just to toss out any observation about the way things currently are with "yeah but people always complain like this" That's a pretty scary throwaway. Second, and most tragically, the more laws we have the more the police have the ability to selectively choose. You seem to have it backwards. In a society with a few laws, if the cops bust you they have to pick one random one and try to make it fit. In a society with complicated, diverse, and sometimes conflicting laws, they have a lot more options over how to send you to jail, and it's more likely that one of these options will fit. In the states, for instance, we've made it a felony to lie to a federal official in the progress of his duties. That's so broad and free-ranging that even with an attorney present it's not clear what citizens should do to be sure they are not crossing the line into committing a major crime. The police get to decide. Likewise, many states are choosing not to enforce marijuana laws -- a stance I agree with -- but the national government is constantly enforcing them anyway. At a certain level of complexity, it's all about which laws get attention from officials and which don't. It might seem that creating a more complex system of laws is a natural consequence of having a more complex and modern society. That's also a fallacy, as complex societal interactions have been working just fine with few laws for recorded history. However, the reverse is true: when a certain degree of complexity is reached, society actually becomes much more simple. Once the system is not understandable to the common man, police can do what they want, prosecutors can pick and choose which laws to enforce or not, and politically-connected people get to live like kings. It is easy to think that each law we add somehow makes the world a more just and fair place to live in, but that's only because in our mind we pretend that this law will be applied universally. Authorities have long since passed the point where laws are applied universally. To hear and get excited about a new set of laws now is simply to desire to enforce one set of laws at the expense of another (we are never told which laws will be receiving less enforcement action). It's a way for politicians to get elected, not make society a more just place. All of this is counter-intuitive, I'll grant. But it's not like it's a secret.

rmc 14y ago

It is common for some people to claim that everything is shit now, and things were brilliant in the past. This has been going continuously on for ~2,000 years, and the world hasn't gone to shit yet. If you go back to your Golden Age, people were probly comparing themselves to a mythical past aswell. Roman poet Juvenal in 100 CE remarked how modern people had no sense of civic pride and hard work and instead all modern people wanted was "bread and circuses" (i.e. to eat food and watch entertainment)