Comment by alphazard

7 months ago

Yeah this guy gets it.

Regardless of your stance on whether the government should regulate x or y, it's important to understand that the people driving this law do not care about you or your fingers. This is rent seeking; someone who makes safe saws wants to sell more of their saws, and they compete with people who sell less safe saws. They are using the legal system to benefit their own bottom line.

After the real goal is established, reasons like "think of the children" or "think of the fingers" can be fabricated.

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alphazard

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unethical_ban  7 months ago

>it's important to understand that the people driving this law do not care about you or your fingers

People and consumer advocates can feasibly have motives other than greed.

  • stuaxo  7 months ago

    Seatbelts is a good example: Volvo let any one use 3 point seatbelts so this could be standardised.

thereisnospork  7 months ago

But what do the goals matter? The only relevant question I can see is 'are the fingers worth the rent?'

To that point, a regulation requiring "if and only if" per unit licensing is available at (much) less than the worth of the fingers should be a no brainier.

  • InvertedRhodium  7 months ago

    Given the relatively small market share that SawStop enjoys, you can only assume that most people feel like the fingers aren't really worth the rent.

    • thereisnospork  7 months ago

      It's not really their choice to make though. (trivially, see seatbelts, smoking, airline regulations, ...).

      Should it be? Maybe, but that's a discussion out of scope from 'is it in society's interest to mandate inclusion of sawstop's technology, or it's equivalent?'.

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