Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

In a word, regulation.

Tech has been mostly hands-off politically, an oasis of limited targeted regulation, over the post WW2 era. While the rest of the US economy has practically been regulated to death.

Bloomberg had an opinion piece a few days ago, noting how several of the tech giants (eg Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco) had higher profit margins than the S&P 500 average and argued that it was due to lack of regulation (something akin to saying we must regulate tech to make everything fair with the rest of the over-regulated economy). Such arguments in the main-stream media are increasingly becoming a daily occurrence.

View on HN

"regulated to death"? Hyperbole much? You make it sound as if regulations have no goal other than to limit the growth of industries. As if the wellbeing of the people and the planet have nothing to do with it. The main reason other industries are regulated more than tech is because other industries usually have a lot more physical repercussions to their actions (affecting health, finances, etc. in a very tangible way). Most tech companies offer free products in exchange for data or advertising space, and the dissemination of personal data is not viewed at the same level as destroying someone's finances or health.

This is not a good diagnosis of why Tech companies have such high profit margins IMO. Software is incredibly scalable: once you build a software, you sell it to millions of people, or build a platform that's used by millions of people. Tech is building off the shift of the economy to more automation and less dependence on labor. There's also the thing where entire new markets are being created and Tech companies are the only participants (e.g. rideshare, search etc.).

In most instances reasonable regulations allow for more innovation in the economy by making it easier for smaller companies to compete with big businesses, and to make sure that businesses don't hurt the societies and economies they operate in.

While there are good instances of over regulations, much like the myth of the welfare queen, I think its much overblown, and not an accurate diagnosis for the problems businesses are facing today in America.

I wish they took it as an example of reducing regulation in the others, instead of adding regulation to these ones..

There is a reason regulations exist. While I don't think regulations should be so onerous as to destroy businesses, they are definitely a good way to ensure that our economy is working for the benefit of everyone, including the environment.

There are many reasons for regulations to exist, most of them are pretty terrible. There is a typical reaction that if people are bound by some limitation, and some other, then we should create artificial limitations on the latter.

Regulatory capture, increasing costs, increasing tax revenue, all things that are not aligned with the general public. Just by the opportunists on the other side of the table.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com