Democrats Push Bill to Outlaw Bots from Buying Up Retail Goods | Hacker News Reader

Democrats Push Bill to Outlaw Bots from Buying Up Retail Goods

pcmag.com

6 pointsdrewrem114 comments

The company behind a bot buys goods with the intention of selling them later, and since this does not change the overall supply of goods, it should not have much effect on prices. Loose monetary policy and excess government spending do cause inflation. The bill is being pushed to distract people from these causes.

It raises prices where the products are purchased second hand because they aren't on store shelves (see GPU prices on eBay)

Interesting, this one would be better to trot out at an election time, unless their political opponents have an opposing view that would actually be popular with voters.

It's too bad that our first instincts are always to see this in terms of the next election, rather than whether it's a good idea or not.

It's also unfortunate that voters have the memories of demented goldfish in a tank filled with LSD. Nothing they think in November 2021 has the least bearing on what they will think in November 2022. They'll say otherwise, but they won't.

So if the cynicism is justified (and it usually is), this may well be long-term thinking. Nothing they introduce today will have any bearing on this Christmas shopping season. Anything they do will end up being run through the executive branch, which will take time to draw up rules and more time before they can enforce them. It might, barely, have some effect on the 2022 Christmas shopping season.

We could, of course, have a discussion about the merits of the bill -- government interference in markets vs justified regulation. And we know all those usual arguments, with the bonus that this time it gets a name like "Stopping Grinch Bots Act" to put a thumb on the scale.

I would actually be genuinely curious to see if experienced regulators think this will actually do much, since it's always hard to piece genuine data on effectiveness out of the economic noise. But that sounds like I'm just engaging in wishful thinking for a time when people thought about government as a way to live together, rather than Wrestlemania 254.

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