I think this is possibly a bit naive. Regulations also exist to protect powerful people's businesses, to push personal agendas, and to further political aims even if those are not actually in the interests of any consumers. Also sometimes people think they're making a regulation to protect consumers, but actually it makes things worse.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t other justifications for any given regulation. But ain’t no small business owner or entrepreneur in history ever said “Boy! All these regulations sure are making my life easy”
Instead, they offered a nearly identical service (arranged via app rather than hailing streetside) and skirted around all of the regulations that had kept the incumbents entrenched for so long.
If we want a healthy market where small and large players alike can thrive, enabling regulatory capture and expecting small players to ignore regulations as long as they can is just bad policy.
Smaller companies have less capital to expend on compliance
We're talking here about the right to get a copy of your own data, the right to be forgotten when you want to leave, the right to be informed about data breaches, and a right to agree to types of data processing.
Your analogy is "you enter a shop and cannot leave again, may be abused, and lose control."
Neither is google
Case in point: Uber suggesting minimum wage for their workers, some time ago. Think about this, the company refuses to recognize them as their work force but are fine to suggest a minimum wage. As it happens, the minimum wage would put their competition out of business at that time so it must have been seen as favorable for Uber. The competition was not so well funded and so this would be an attrition war at a point in time when Uber was potentially able to win it and wipe all competition out.
This shows that you don't even need corrupt bureaucrats to have regulation steered this or that way by private business.
It's a dumb rule regardless, but please don't blow the costs out of proportion.
Without laws, the people/groups you mention would just use the law of the jungle - might makes right - to get what they want. At least with laws they have to somewhat accommodate this process to get what they want, frequently compromising along the way.
I'm not saying that all laws are perfect, but let's not get overwhelming cynicism get the best of us.
The less skeptical we are, the more self-serving regulation we'll get.
Apparently he knew all the right senators to get a regulation passed making it so all health companies would be forced to license our software.
Wasn’t technically feasible at the time. Might be now.
Freaked me out as to how evil it was.
Might doesn't make right but might writes. (regulations)
The problem isn't the laws or regulations, but the fact that we leave corrupt politicians to write them.
Of course, fixing that is much easier than done, because even if you have a functioning democracy, corrupt politicians are still propped up by propaganda. Corporate's wishing to write the laws contribute much to support those politicians with lobbying and propaganda (Murdoch news empire)
To solve this you need a well-educated, politically conscious population, which is easier said than done.
2. Of course they further political aims. Anything that has to do with law is political, by definition. This statement makes regulations sound scary and sinister, but actually imparts no information to the discussion.
A world without regulations won't be some libertarian paradise. It'll be an authoritarian dystopia, where the powerful can do what they please, and you will have zero proactive recourse against them, and very limited reactive recourse.
PS. Consider that a rule, or even aversion against regulation is itself a regulation. Which absolutely has side effects[1] that protect powerful businesses, and is pursued for personal and political aims.
[1] Very obvious ones, actually.
I listed two other example purposes in my comment alone! So obviously I don't think this.
> Of course they further political aims.
Did you miss the rest of the sentence? I said specifically ...even if those are not actually in the interests of any consumers.
Regulatory capture is utterly rampant right now and a huge threat to democracy. This is true regardless of one's personal politics or beliefs about big vs small government or political party of preference. It's a cancer and more dangerous than people think.
They’re easy to spot as news/entertainment all mocks them for being “mean”
There is also the plainspeak people. Law written so that average people can understand them. Lawyers less needed.
Often after a dictator takes power they do a crackdown on ‘corruption’ which has popular support. What their actually doing is consolidating power, but if you call it a corruption crackdown then it sounds like a great thing.
What you want is someone that says something specific not platitudes which can mean anything, and are impossible to hold people accountable. Remove a single regulation and they can call it a win. But fail to go to the moon, build a wall, reduce spending etc, and they just failed.
Simplified tax goals.
Fairtax was a great attempt at this. One tax rate. Everyone got a check so that poor people didn’t suffer.
Millions of tax attorneys and government would need to find something else to do.
That goal is lost while regulatory capture is the norm.
Others say "better regulations protecting people should be the goal"
That goal is lost while regulatory capture is the norm.
Whatever our cause, without reform of the norm of regulatory capture, our cause is lost.
I'd much rather reform that corruption and the "other side" win power than "my side" win with the corruption raging on.
I'd love it if most people felt the same way about it and were willing to switch voting from Sanders style democratic socialism to Amash style libertarianism to get it done. Or the other way. I'm not sure what's more important politically right now. The corruption disease rages on with a change in ruling party.
Add to that more transparency in corporation ownership, especially in trade deals, and strong controls on what regulators are allowed to do during and after their time working as regulators.
Fewer can mean keeping the bad ones while getting rid of the good ones.
One tax rate sounds like junk to me. A progressive tax rate that applies to all things that get you money: income, gains, loans, etc makes more sense. Along with some way of getting taxes when money leaves local borders.
... And you need subsidies for the things you want to promote. Always doing that as explicit subsidies makes sense though. If you want people to take out loans, you can grant subsidies for their loan repayments
But those are the people who are usually focused on removing consumer protections more so than removing regulations based in corruption.
Rampant in the US. The EU has managed to avoid the worst of it so far.
It's our work, as a society, to be watchful and try that the game is one that everybody have a chance to enjoy.
You can't do that without rules, in fact you can't have a game without rules. Even private property is just a rule.
(Not that any of this matters much these days - companies like Uber demonstrate that you can absolutely run an illegal operation in western countries, and end up with a double-digit billion dollars IPO.)
Elon Musk's emotions certainly dictate a lot of his companies' behavior.
Companies aren't emotionless if they are essentially an extension of an individual.
This is what people want to believe.
But I think you'll find that regulations exist for a large number of reasons, some of which seem noble and others much less so. Frequently, they exist to provide disproportionate protections and perks to the connected.
So, when regulations do not work for your advantage as a normal citizen, maybe the problem is not the existence of regulation but the lack of democratic representation and integrity in your government and the bodies it creates and controls.
In the UK we do have very well established "Consumer Law" which is there explicitly to protect the consumer and recognises that they are often not otherwise in a powerful position.
The most relevant stuff for Facebook is the data protection stuff, but another example, relevant to other online transactions, is the Distance Selling Regulations ( https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesse... ). This gives the customer the right to cancel, without a reason, for up to 14 days after the goods are delivered. If the business doesn't explicitly tell you this then your right to cancel is extended to 12 months.
The best innovations around privacy have come from the desire to prove to users that the company respects your privacy. Regulation has mostly given us fake cookie related banners that have become a spam in themselves.
Don't let Facebook make 7 bucks a month on every user.
I don't think so. The actions behind the words will disappear for sure, but not the message itself
Regulations exist because the government created them. Everything else is secondary.