Comment by dijit
5 years ago
Correct.
But the axiom is misguided.
Legislation on the safety of cars for instance is not free, but necessary.
You could argue that the makers of go-karts are being priced out of the market: after all, the free market should make people put a price on their own safety.
But the issue is often that people don’t really have a good grasp of what it truly means and you can’t put a monetary number on things like that.
I’m not an anarchist, I just don’t think people always realize or recognize that there will be downsides as well as upsides to the latest “sounds good” piece of legislation.
Sure. But the way you framed it makes it sound as if the legislation is a net bad thing. But when I get a GDPR block warning I’m actually happy because it means that company can’t operate without mishandling or selling my data. — sure the cost for them is higher, but it’s not unreasonable. I think a lot of people unduly criticise the GDPR because there is an industry building that requires fear mongering to get its way.
> You could argue that the makers of go-karts are being priced out of the market: after all, the free market should make people put a price on their own safety.
> But the issue is often that people don’t really have a good grasp of what it truly means and you can’t put a monetary number on things like that.
Furthermore, here in Europe everyone pays for health care for everyone to some degree so allowing people to do outrageously stupid stuff ends up increasing the tax for everyone.