Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattrighetti | Hacker News Reader

> The only antidote to this is regulations.

Well, I respectfully disagree, I'm a firm believer that regulations disproportionately hurt smaller businesses in the long run because those giants that have the monopoly move way faster than governments and they usually have thousands of smart lawyers ready to find holes and exploit/get around regulations made, usually, by people that does not understand the subject enough.

Want to take a guess and see who does not have thousands of smart lawyers?

Just FYI: We have the Apple's example with USB-C ready to showcase this exact thing.

View on HN

Yes, if you intend on doing something unethical then it's certainly easier as a big company.

I have so far had good experiences with the legal system and regulations by choosing industries that are not unethical.

Nobody is chasing people who are not in violation of the cardinal rule zero: "Do not act in a way that requires [me] to make a new rule"

Regulations can disproportionately affect small businesses and still be worthwhile by virtue of preventing the thing they're regulating. For example, might be harder to start a train company with rigid safety standards but not spilling toxic chemicals over small towns is ideal.

I think USB-C's relatively flimsily implemented open standard is kind of evidence of why Apple is hesitant to things like RCS. Good luck charging a Nintendo Switch or your laptop with just a random usb-c cable you found laying around that came with who knows what. Hope you have an entire day day.

Nintendo Switch AFAIR is not USB-C standard comply, they just use the same connector.

You just proved their point.

> Well, I respectfully disagree, I'm a firm believer that regulations disproportionately hurt

Yeah you made the point very clear already in all your other posts, no need to repeat it everywhere. Other point errors in your arguments like this being for 75b corps completely nullifying your core arguments, lets just say most of the forum including me, EU and indeed world doesn't share your view at all.

In fact, some healthy dose of regulations makes society actual modern society, less people dying and suffering because money-first. Speed of progress at any costs, believe it or not, is not the ultimate measure of how 'good', moral or developed society is, despite very very few getting richer quicker that way.

I did not make the case that ALL regulations must be erased to a zero, at all. I do believe that there must be a minimum of regulations that actually make everyone prosper and go along with each other. Unfortunately, regulating messaging so that anyone can have just a single app on their phone for that specific task is beyond unnecessary, but that's just my useless opinion I guess.

Regulation is also used as a euphemism for unelected bureaucrats creating policy with the force of law without real democratic input. Unless you consider the regulator retiring from government to take a seat on the board of a company he or she used to regulate or give $100k paid speeches to same a form of democracy I suppose.

I don't know if that's what it means in the EU, but operationally it's observably what it means in the USA. I will say from a distance it looks like the EU's unelected bureaucrats have even more power than the American ones do.

Your use of the term "unelected bureaucrats" as a delegitimizing pejorative is risible. Do yourself a favour and read Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk.

The EU's civil servants are, by and large, an exceptionally talented bunch of people, most of whom are multilingual in addition to being experts in the fields they were hired for.

As for their having power, it's subject to democratic constraint. Maybe you should inform yourself about the process by which EU regulations are made? (No, it isn't perfect; you could start with the Trilogue Process).

We'll regulate as we see fit in the EU. Businesses that don't like it are welcome and free to go do business elsewhere.

> We'll regulate as we see fit in the EU. Businesses that don't like it are welcome and free to go do business elsewhere.

I predict that if the US foreign policy elite deems it desirable that Google operate in Europe, then Google will operate in Europe. The US based empire is happy to let the EU regulate cheese and wine, but when it comes to geopolitics they keep them on a tight leash. The Ukraine affair has shown that beyond all doubt. Hats off to the French though for rejecting permanent occupying forces under De Gaulle and never letting them back.

It's nice to pretend that GDPR somehow struck a blow against corporate overreach, but in reality it was permitted because it didn't degrade the value of Big Tech for the Intelligence Community.

If it is a feature you consider "unneccesary", why argue against it so passionately? It just sounds like something you won't use.

> Well, I respectfully disagree, I'm a firm believer

You have proposed no mehcanism to keep monopolies in check. You are a firm beliver in what?

> giants that have the monopoly move way faster than governments

So governments should be even more agressive and disproportionate to be effevtive? That is the inevitable conclusion of your argument.

The conclusion of my argument is that regulations disincentive competition and that’s why you end up with monopolies, so keep regulations at minimum.

Do you have any examples? Net neutrality comes to mind, but that feels a quite extreme example due to complete regulatory capture of the FCC by big telecoms.

> regulations disincentive competition and that’s why you end up with monopolies,

Seriously? There was no regulation on search, so how did google become a monopoly?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com