Comment by RHSeeger
10 hours ago
> The article is about a company trying to make an electric "converter dolly" that improves the fuel efficiency of diesel trucks by essentially turning them into hybrids. What actual harm and considerable negative impact on society in general are you referring to in this context?
For almost any regulation, no matter how important it is and how much good it does, there will be some things it does not allow that it should. A regulation will either need to let the bad stuff through, not let the good stuff through, or some mixture of the two.
Now consider that many individual regulations get added; the vast majority of them for good reasons. But since each one has some cases it fails for, the combination of them has a combination (generally larger than the sum of it's parts) that it fails for.
But that mean that regulations are bad in general. It means that making rules to protect society is HARD. Like REALLY hard, staggeringly so. And even doing the best you possibly can (which is a stretch for most government), you're still going to wind up with things that can't be done... but should be able to.
The solution isn't to get rid of (all) regulations... it's to try to figure out how to make them better.
The claim that something is hard to do properly is an argument for doing it less often, i.e. limiting it to the cases when the benefit is unambiguously large and staying away from borderline cases where overhead and collateral damage will leave you underwater.
It's also an argument for requiring the government to internalize the costs it imposes, e.g. if it wants testing done then it should pay for it from general revenue so that the cost of it is accounted for in the government budget instead of imposing an unfunded mandate. Then if the cost is reasonable this isn't a problem and if the cost is unreasonable the government is causing a problem for itself instead of innocent third parties, which puts the incentive to fix it in the right place.
> The claim that something is hard to do properly is an argument for doing it less often
I don't even believe that you believe this.
> the benefit is unambiguously large and staying away from borderline cases
If this was easy, don't you think maybe that's what people would be doing?
> if it wants testing done then it should pay for it from general revenue
???
So if I build a car, screw it up, have to test it 500 times just to pass and be allowed to sell it, that's the governments problem? If I open a bank and take peoples money, its up to the government to take initiative on making sure I'm not screwing them over?
> instead of imposing an unfunded mandate
What? So now any test the government mandates is an unfunded mandate? Like food tests?
This is obviously getting way to political because none of the arguments are making any sense, and are completely disconnected from reality.
I don't even consider myself pro regulation but this is just the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and shouting LALALALALALA.
> I don't even believe that you believe this.
Is your position that when something is intractably easy to screw up we should do it as much as possible?
> If this was easy, don't you think maybe that's what people would be doing?
Which people? The ones with a structural incentive to not do that?
> So if I build a car, screw it up, have to test it 500 times just to pass and be allowed to sell it, that's the governments problem?
It seems like it's still your problem because you want to sell the car and therefore want it to pass.
Whereas if the test is unreasonably expensive then the government has a problem, but the problem is of its own making and it now has the incentive to fix the problem instead of burdening someone else with it.
> If I open a bank and take peoples money, its up to the government to take initiative on making sure I'm not screwing them over?
It is indeed the role of law enforcement to enforce the laws.
> What? So now any test the government mandates is an unfunded mandate? Like food tests?
Is your argument that it isn't an unfunded mandate supposed to be that the test isn't mandated or that the government is actually funding it?
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