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Comment by crc32 | Hacker News Reader

Consumers are not omniscient, and in my view should be able to pay (through taxes) to pre-vet products.

I think a good way of thinking about this is food laws - i am happy to pay for enforcement of laws that make sure when i buy beef it is not, in fact, horse meat, rather than having to carry round a testing kit or rely on reputation/brand etc.

Occasionally some work might be required to check new technologies are applied in a constructive way, e.g. that a new bleach used to whiten bread is safe.

Oh yes, and also there is a power imbalance between the individual consumer and corporations/market forces. Think of regulatory bodies as a "consumers union". Would it be possible to organise efficiently without the force of government?

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I see your point, but this will lead to uncontrollable growth of civil servant class and effectively will inhibit any growth, plus as a side effect you'll get people not aware that one should use so called common sense.

I can agree that such laws should exist for things directly responsible for someone's health, but that should end there.

Power imbalance exists largely because of the regulations that are significantly increasing the barrier of entry for the new players. More regulation will make this problem worse.

> Power imbalance exists largely because of the regulations that are significantly increasing the barrier of entry for the new players. More regulation will make this problem worse.

Markets and the nature of economies of scale create barriers to entry. They are a normal entity of any economic system. The "free market" only alleviates situations in which there is small added value in being an entrenched player, something which just doesn't happen in many situations and which disregards network effects and established knowledge in specific industries.

What "common sense" do you expect people to have for mobile tech? 99% of people do not and should not have to know what Google Play Services is, in the same way that you probably lack knowledge of things many doctors would tell you should be "common sense", or lawyers, or accountants.

It is absolutely acceptable that there should be people on the lookout for these basic privacy issues.

OTOH not doing it, will lead to an uncontrollable growth of privacy abusing services and products, plus as a side effect we might reach a place where every single vendor is doing it.

>Power imbalance exists largely because of the regulations that are significantly increasing the barrier of entry for the new players.

There is also a barrier of entry for the new player who wants to do 'the right thing' because of an established economy where only certain business models can succeed.

>More regulation will make this problem worse.

No regulation will also make it worse.

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