Comment by jmward01
5 hours ago
!00% agree. 'we need less regulation' is never the right answer, 'we need the right regulations' is. The article points out areas that improvements to regulation, and process, would help and that second part 'and process' is often overlooked. A complex regulatory structure may be needed but that doesn't mean it has to be as hard as it is. Is it really the problem that the regulations were complex or was it a problem that navigating them was a challenge? I've had this discussion with local permitting where I live. Permits are needed, but that doesn't mean they should be hard or that the job of the city is to just tell you no. There is a world where the city is a partner trying to help you achieve something so when permitting comes up, and you pay your fees, the answer they give isn't just 'yes/no' but 'you may want to consider' and 'let's work together on a plan that...'. There isn't a regulation here, just a process improvement and the difference can be massive. A similar view of how to improve federal regulations, through simple process improvement and not just regulatory change, could really make a difference.
Sure, but sometimes a repealing a bad piece of regulation doesn’t necessitate a replacement.
Policy reform decisions need to be evidence based and sometimes evidence suggests ditching the law over updating. And sometimes it’ll say update it.
What makes Good regulation is path dependent (in respect to existing institutions) and context sensitive, it’s important to analysis the costs of enforcement, not just the administrative side but in terms of lost opportunities. Do they make a suite of desirable economic activity infeasible or unjustifiable more expensive (relative to the goal of the policy)
> There isn't a regulation here, just a process improvement and the difference can be massive
Are those binding constraints? If so it’s effectively regulation or part of the regulatory regime even if they aren’t the rules themselves
I was typing that in the shower, but a more complete version of "Do they make a suite of desirable economic activity infeasible or unjustifiable more expensive (relative to the goal of the policy)" is
Does the added benefit or reduced cost of the law outsize any cost or lost benefit from the introduction of the law? This question isn't always asked and in many cases it's only asked after someone picks up on a problem well after the fact.
Understandably you can't always wait for measurements to come in to evaluate a policy, it's also a political environment in which these decisions are made. That fact also leads to reactionary regulation as its the easiest way for leaders to show they're responding to a problem.
Having the ability to gather evidence to assess policy in a timely manner is actually pretty hard without some kind of history of research in the space, and you need to develop institutions that help answer these questions faster and with some level of independence from the government to demonstrate a level of legitimacy. Even in a scenario where evidence continues to come in, saying "the existing legislation is unideal", you'll have people with who have made a living out of the existing regime defend that status quo. And the longer that legislation is in place the harder it will be to challenge those people as they will only become more organised as time goes on, but in a democracy all you need is the people by and large on your side, but an organised beneficiary of the status quo will definitely not go down without a fight.
It's very difficult to generalise stuff like this.
> 'we need less regulation' is never the right answer
Sometimes it is. For example some countries had or have regulation that only nobles can work in specific professions or wear specific clothes or live in specific places. Some had the same but race-based.
This entire class of regulation deserved to be thrown out. And yes, at least partially there are claims how it was necessary for safety or whatever else.
There are are also some dumb taxes with bad side effects like tax on windows.
Some regulation is terrible and deserves to be removed rather than replaced or improved.
I think you may be misinterpreting the point. It's not that we never need less regulation, this may be the case. We should never make 'less regulation' the target. The right regulation may be less in some cases.
Less regulation is a good target.
Just not sole one.
Harm reduction (a good reason for regulation) also needs to be balanced with it.
But piles of regulation have costs - both in reduction of competitiveness, increasing expenses, reducing willingness of people to follow and support it and so on.
Regulation is bad, just it is often less bad than alternatives.
But reducing amount of regulation is a good goal.
Otherwise you end in situation where you need lawyer to understand anything, you are not allowed to throw torn socks into garbage and general population applauds people breaking law and happily support it.
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What we "we need" is less corruption, this means better educations, educations that actually teach the secondary considerations of why these regulations exist, and how many corruptions they prevent. Then that education should continue with how our over regulated situation is caused by not teaching critical analysis such that these corruptions look like a good idea at all, they become exploited, and the end result is over regulation.
https://grugbrain.dev/#grug-on-complexity I think this section on complexity sums it up really well whether you’re talking about code or laws
> It's not that we never need less regulation
this would be going against
> 'we need less regulation' is never the right answer
Based on your opinion of local permitting I have a strong suspicion you've never applied for any sort of local permit for something where issuance of the permit requires any real consideration.
Petty homeowner renovation stuff is basically a weird tax in disguise. They don't care, they were never gonna tell you no. They just want your money and want you to make work for whatever trade is being made work for in the process.
Go for a variance and then see how you feel about it. Better yet, go try and create any sort of occupied structure or commercial use where one doesn't already exist.
Local permitting is riddled with bike shedding, people trying to avoid responsibility, people trying to advance their pet interests at other people's cost and probably more stuff I'm forgetting. At least with state level stuff you can be all "I've paid my engineer big bucks, here's there work output, here's why it's GTG, and if it is in fact GTG they typically rubber stamp it. But little guys can't afford to play in that arena unfortunately.
The HN bias towards state regulation of, well, everything comes from the epistemic invincibility felt by people who have never seriously failed.
Understanding that we should let markets, prices, and individual choices guide policy comes out of personal experience of having been 100% certain of something and having been wrong. Once that happens to you a few dozen times, you start to appreciate that your feeling of being certain does not necessarily correspond to your having discovered a predictive theory of reality.
You must understand that much of HN is literally too young to have had a chance to interact in any way with building regulations. It's not literally every user of course, but it's obvious that HN is biased towards the brashness of youth.
Isn't the purpose of many regulations to stop people who are wrong from harming themselves and others? That is, the experience of being wrong also teaches respect for rules one doesn't understand.
You’re possibly right that HN is young, but in that case you’re missing how the circumstances of their youth and young adulthood have made them wary of deregulation in the macro sense.
> !00% agree. 'we need less regulation' is never the right answer, 'we need the right regulations' is.
Well, much of the time the right regulation is 'let existing general laws (eg around safety and fraud) and contract law and private agreements handle it'.
But it's pretty fair to sum that Right Regulation up as 'less regulation'.
To give a crazy example: the Right Regulation about the colour of your underwear is to just let you decide what you want to wear, also known as no regulation of the colour of your underwear.
See https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation.html for less silly example of airline regulation.