Comment by dangus
15 hours ago
I was just reading an NYT article about lead battery recyclers in Africa and how their operations are basically unregulated and are poisoning entire towns.
Things going a little slow or costing a little more is very often preferable to the alternative where you begin operations recklessly and negatively impact neighbors, sometimes irreparably.
When someone says being overweight is bad, do you think they are saying they shouldn't exist at all?
Of course not, they want to be a normal weight. That's the discussion reasonable people hope to have about regulation. Your strawman isn't welcome here -- I've never seen anyone seriously argue that ALL regulations should be removed.
> I've never seen anyone seriously argue that ALL regulations should be removed.
I've been seeing it in real time this entire year in my country.
And yes, on certain topics I see it here quite a bit. Maybe not "ALL" regulation, but some members of the community have an extremely libertarian take on conducting business.
Even the anti-government types don't want big companies pouring cyanide in the river they fish in.
I think you're continuing to mischaracterize the other position in order to feel like there's some daylight between you and the "anarcho-capitalists". If you stop erecting strawmen, you might find you agree on more than you think.
1 reply →
I think part of the story here is that as we regulate things at home we also out source activity that wouldn't fly here to those African regions?
That may keep it out of sight but if it's still happening it might have been better to do it in a managed way at home.
Its exactly this. And the majority of persons in powerful regulatory roles completely don’t get or comprehend this effect.
When regulatory efforts depart from reality,and fail to find the correct middle ground, this happens:
The reality still exists, and will always find its expression in one of the following:
- people circumvent rules and go criminal
- undesired behaviours move elsewhere where the regulation doesn’t exist
- sections of an economy die
- issues remain unaddressed with the over regulated issues becoming too taboo to even discuss in a sane way.
But of course, in the case of this article the OP is presenting just their side of the story. It doesn’t present the other side of the story where companies rushed dangerous products to market with no oversight which made the regulations necessary.
They find that $27 million in regulatory cost is a huge burden.
But I think if their product is successful it seems like it could be the kind of thing that a large percentage of semi trucks install.
If even 10% of semi trucks purchase the product, $27 million is a drop in the bucket.
Instead of bitching at the world over regulatory costs, OP should bitch as his investors for not being generous enough. Or maybe his investors should be firing him for failing to account for regulatory cost and time.
And all this bitching is happening despite the fact that he was successful in having the regulatory agent expedite the process. 14 months to get a brand new instrument of this sort approved doesn’t seem crazy to me. It seems quite in line with the estimated time needed for a company like Toyota to crash test and certify a new vehicle model with the various emissions and safety agencies.
If OP would like to move faster they need to get out of the sort of industry that makes products that can very easily kill people.
The US can't do much about other countries. We can definitely control how and who we outsource to, but the past 30 years of US government doesn't make me confident that we'll do that anytime soon.
But that's a tiny bit tangential from regulations.
“All outsourced, vendor, and subcontractor companies down the entire production/waste chain to the raw material must meet US environmental regulations.”
Done, fixed the loophole.
Oh of course, just identify your entire supply chain in both directions and make sure they're compliant. What an obviously easy thing to do.
3 replies →
Congratulations! Now just wait until next election when you get the boot in a landslide because of how much you raised prices for consumers.