Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is this, you're always violating some law.

Even in the US, there are over 20,000 laws and regulations at the federal level alone. In China, there are even more. Any small foreign operator in China naive enough to assert with 100% confidence that they are not in violation of any of those codes is being dangerously foolish.

So here's the thing, I actually agree with you. What China will do, they will do out of retaliation. However, I can pretty much guarantee that whoever the patsy is, that person will be in violation of some obscure code that no one in their right mind would have been paying attention to. They will definitely be in violation of some law. And they will condemn him/her to whatever ungodly prison camp for however many years.

So China will also be simply arresting someone for violating their laws. That's the issue.

Now my point is that if you are American, and a small operator without the clout to prevent this sort of thing from happening to you, it's best to try to get out in front of the problem. I know that I really don't want to be one of the poor stooges sitting in a Chinese prison for a decade because these people are trying to make tit-for-tat points.

I'm not talking politics or philosophy. I'm just saying that China is not like the US, and I'm advising people to be careful if they are small and plan to operate in what appears to be a dangerous legal environment that will likely be getting more treacherous with time.

I'm curious why you mention "small operators" twice here.

Huawei is a huge player in an inherently global business, complicated by the fact that selling telecoms network equipment necessitates dealing with quasi-state actors in most countries. Anyone playing at the C-level in such a company is definitely well advised around things like FCPA (and its non-US equivalents) and sanctions regimes.

Small operators get the short end of the stick, sure, but Huawei's CFO is not a small operator (and the sad recipient of China's likely retaliation probably won't be, either).

>The problem is this, you're always violating some law.

"21 USC §§331, 333, 343 & 21 CFR §133.113(a)(3) make it a federal crime for a cheesemaker to sell cheddar cheese unless the curd was matted into a cohesive mass."

https://twitter.com/crimeaday

Look for laws to be enforced cops need to be aware of them.

Specialists exist both on the government side as say food safty inspectors etc, and the private side as compliance officers. So, rules like this are not obscure for people building factory’s to manufacture cheddar and your local cops are not going to know about this crap they are searching your house for something else.

This actually works really well, as we want food to be safe to eat even if most people are not aware of how long food can be kept at what temperatures. Likewise what safty systems need to be part of nuclear reactors, or the minimum safty factor for bridges.

It's just a bit odd that highly specific examples like this make it into written law. A pretty clear example of what happens when you have a Government that can be heavily influenced by corporate lobbying.

I don't think your average reasonable person is in opposition to requirements to label food correctly and not mislead consumers. These things are already written in law, in the case of food it's governed by the FDA. However, when we start including overly specific laws like this, of which this is but one of many (sheesh, check-out what was in the TPP), then every other company in every other industry wants the same treatment, and we end up with a convoluted mess that we have today. This is a problem because your average citizen can't possibly keep up with all this; but more importantly these overly specific laws are a nightmare when it comes time to introduce new legislation. So much time is wasted on garbage like this.

The TPP actually had plenty of reasonable components to it, but it was also filled to the brim with corporate garbage. It's hard enough to form trade agreements and pass legislation without corporations insisting their obscure needs must be met. Particularly when legislation and agreements are either signed and passed as entire unit, or not at all. It just wastes everyone's time when there's a few odd sticking points holding up the whole process.

Why is it odd to have identity standards for food?

It's not, and I never said that it was; quite the opposite actually.

I said that it's odd that these things are written in law seems as we already have laws that cover this more broadly. Attempting to maintain in written law explicit definitions of every food that humans can fathom, and how they are presently produced, is clearly untenable.

Seems pretty clearly tenable to me. It is, in fact, being tened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Really? You're genuinely arguing that every single edible substance and combination thereof ought to be recorded in written law?

No. I didn't argue that. Happy to keep talking if you want to respond to what I actually did say.

My apologies, perhaps you need to elaborate on what you meant when you wrote:

> Seems pretty clearly tenable to me. It is, in fact, being tened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

in response to:

> Attempting to maintain in written law explicit definitions of every food that humans can fathom, and how they are presently produced, is clearly untenable.

If you have a vauger law you get all sorts of arguments that "well, cheddar doesn't have to be cheddared" and "10% meat is enough in meat sauce" etc, etc.

I don't understand your argument. You seem to be opposed to specificity in the written prohibition. So what's the alternative? You'd prefer it if FDA regulations didn't have the force of law? Or would you prefer it if FDA regulations were secret, unwritten, unavailable for cheddar manufacturers and cheddar manufacturer compliance officers to examine? Neither of those seem like good solutions.

It's called industry standards, and it's common practice and already in place in written legislation.

Written laws give Government bodies power to maintain and enforce theses standards, independent of legislation that needs to be passed through long slow processes involving many politicians who have no knowledge of the relevant field.

Industry standards don't have the force of law unless they are given the force of law.

> Written laws give Government bodies power to maintain and enforce theses standards, independent of legislation that needs to be passed through long slow processes involving many politicians who have no knowledge of the relevant field.

"Written laws ... independent of legislation" doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say here?

> "Written laws ... independent of legislation" doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say here?

You're right, it doesn't. That's what happens when you truncate a quote to completely remove the context.

It's not about local cops picking you for some arcane law. It's about anyone in government having the ability to find something to fuck you with at any time they want to.

That's not actually true. The cited regulation permits cheddar cheese produced "by the procedure set forth in paragraph (a)(3) of this section, or by any other procedure which produces a finished cheese having the same physical and chemical properties." 21 C.F.R. § 133.113(a)(1) (emphasis added), available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/21/133.113.

> you're always violating some law

Exactly.

Selective enforcement is indistinguishable from arbitrary arrest.

Which is what makes America, with elected and political DA's, so much less of a beacon compared to normal democratic countries where that would be considered insane.

I don’t agree with this, selective enforcement at least has a ceiling of what you can be arrested for. Arbitrary arrest does not have such a ceiling.

As the size of a set of rules approaches infinity, it becomes indistinguishable from selective enforcement.

I think the above poster's point is that there are so many laws on the books that effectively everyone is above said ceiling. Thus, selective enforcement is functionally identical to arbitrary arrest.

No, because the fine, jail time, and infamy of "public noodle eating" or whatever has a hard cap. Selective enforcement can only get harassers so far.

China's harassers get to use the much more powerful "lock up whoever I want for no reason at all, forever"

Sure, public noodle eating may not have a long sentence. But carring a lobster in a plastic bag is a felony: https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dd-7o9xYp7eE&ved=2ahUKEwjuy...

There are enough laws on the books to lock people up at essentially any time if the police care enough to do so.

You're off by several orders of magnitude. Last I checked, we're seeing 600,000+ regulations that have the force of law published _every_ year.

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