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Comment by jmholla

7 months ago

Usually these types of laws come with a date in the future that they will actually be implemented giving such competitors time to figure these things out.

Yeah, i looked at the proposal in more depth and it proposes 36 months from publication until the rule takes effect [1]. That does seem like a lot of time (the proposal itself notes that this is longer than usual).

I guess the benefit to SawStop is that they sell a better product, but turns out most people won't pay 2-3x the price for the added benefit. If they can make everyone implement the same feature, then they still probably won't compete on price, but the price difference will go down, and perhaps people will pay a low to medium premium for a slightly better safety mechanism.

As far as regulatory capture goes, it doesn't sound particularly nefarious. I do believe that the folks at SawStop genuinely believe this is necessary regulation.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-23898/p-145