Hacker News Reader

Comment by nforgerit | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that those regulatory committees always put some kind of idealistic nonplus ultra standards into the regulations without respecting the real world.

"Sorry kids, no kindergarden here for you because the regulator requires us to build parking space for SUVs and obeying this means we can't build enough parking space for all your parents which would break another rule. So we'll do nothing."

View on HN

And what are the "idealistic nonplus ultra standards" in the concrete USB-C example we're discussing?

Parent was discussing systematic issues and I was answering to that. In fact, what I'm getting downvoted for (the problem of outsourced over-engineered regulations that frequently contradict each other) is openly discussed, at least in Germany.

Maybe you should check yourself in "seeing anti Europeans everywhere".

Sure, but here we have a concrete example of a regulatory committee making a rule that apparently doesn't do what you fear. So it seems like it's certainly possible for regulatory committees not to do what you described?

I get your point, but painting with such broad strokes honestly just poisons the discussion. If you're rejecting everything on principle by applying a slippery slope, why should people care about your position?

Lastly, I'm not sure I understand what "seeing anti Europeans everywhere" you're talking about, could you expand on that?

Parking minima are a distinctly American phenomenon.

Not at all. E.g. Germany requires housing projects to build "enough parking lots" for newly built flats[0]. The result is that flats either don't get built at all or "green surfaces" (or playgrounds) get transformed into parking lots.

So the _real world_ result is, as a society, we favor parking lots over homelessness or green surfaces which is contradictory to pretty much everything else we're discussing. These laws are from times in which the legislator thought of them to be a good idea. Times have changed, the regulation hasn't and nobody is talking about exactly those issues. There's plenty more of those examples which can only lead you to the conclusion that most finely granular regulation is rather harmful than helpful.

[0] https://dejure.org/gesetze/LBO/37.html (German, it might be different from federal state to state)

Of course these get revisited (e.g. here[0] for your example) but in the case of parking spots there‘s a sizable pro-car lobby.

0: https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.landesbauordnung-b...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com