It even is sometimes weaponized to help fight competition. For example, by making it expensive to conduct a certain type of business and requiring even higher entry costs (things like certification, licences, etc.) it actually favors large, established businesses.

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.

My favorite is the NY LLC publishing requirement. To start a business you must publish that you started a business for 6 consecutive weeks which costs thousands. Wonder what back door corrupt deal was made on that one.

That one is just an archaic rule, but I registered an LLC in NY for like $200 all in. Services will publish for you in random publications for that cost. Still annoying, but not a huge deal realistically.

What does the law achieve? It seems like such a massive waste of money. Why does it need to be a physical publication when a digital publication is cheaper and can have just as much if not more reach?

Got a better one. Try to buy a car in the USA, directly from a manufacturer.

Which is why there are many states in which you can't buy a Tesla (since they sell directly from the manufacturer).

Based on my reading of O'Henry stories, my guess is that law exists because people were selling stock in scam mining companies with mines in the West back in the late 1800s / early 1900s. If you had to advertise that you were starting a business, then people could look up your company and discover that it is unlikely that your company had $$$ of gold deposits in Colorado.

It doesn't cost thousands. It's at most $200 or so to publish in two newspapers. Where I'm from people always pick the Jewish Ledger because it's something like $79 for an ad publishing a LLC.

It's a dumb rule regardless, but please don't blow the costs out of proportion.

I can only suspect that this made sense at some point in time when wealthy people started their day with a pipe and a magazine to read.

Points to another issue that there is no active effort to reduce old laws so they just pile up.

Thousands?

This is called "Regulatory Capture" and is a form of corruption. It is not /why/ regulation exists any more than the murder of Mr Floyd is why police exist.

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.

> Regulatory capture is utterly rampant right now and a huge threat to democracy.

Rampant in the US. The EU has managed to avoid the worst of it so far.

The Leistungsschutzrecht is a disaster, though.

Please look a little harder.

Care to explain?

I call BS on that. US remains extremely competitive, what tech company has EU produced in last 20 years remind me ? EU is a regulatory black hole.

Intercom, Zalando, Spotify, Revolut, Transferwise, Skyscanner, ASOS, Raspberry PI, Betfair, Mojang.

Vote for people that want to reduce regulations.

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.

Be careful of abstract calls to action without specifics. Many calls to “reduce taxes” actually mean a subsidy for some industry in the form of targeted tax breaks. Reducing regulation just as often targets insiders as it does actually improve things.

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.

Fewer regulations should be the goal.

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.

Better regulations should be the goal.

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

>Fewer regulations should be the goal.

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.

More democracy seems like the answer there? If somebody wants regulatory capture, they should have to convince a plurality of people that it's a good thing, and do it again and again on a regular basis.

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.

> Vote for people that want to reduce regulations.

But those are the people who are usually focused on removing consumer protections more so than removing regulations based in corruption.

But opposing regulatory capture and wanting reduced regulations are not the same thing.

It's not naive, that's why we have laws.

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 point is regulations (and laws) are just tools - like a hammer they don't have inherent 'goodness'. A regulation can protect abusive business practices as easily as protect consumer rights.

Might doesn't make right but might writes. (regulations)

As you said, regulations and laws are tools. What you criticise about regulations can be said about laws. A law can protect a vile dictator as easily as protect a helpless citizen.

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.

Being skeptical of the motivations of those who write and lobby for regulation is not overly cynical - it's a recognition of reality.

The less skeptical we are, the more self-serving regulation we'll get.

Had a boss that tried very hard to get us to develop some Voice verification system.

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.

Multiple banks and credit card companies customer support lines now say "this call may be recorded and your voice may be used for identity verification".

I am very skeptical that Facebook has ever acted in their users best interest. The EU privacy laws and the GDPR are a clearly beneficial law to citizens, protecting them against hostile companies.

Its fine that you are skeptic of FB. It is just that you seen unable to get that others can be very skeptical of EU regulations also.

EU members have some ability to hold EU regulations accountable though. The only way to hold Facebook accountable is with EU regulations

We are people foremost, not consumers, especially in the context of privacy. Please do not use their terminology, it empowers them by framing everything in the eyes of corporate interests.

When you enter a shop you become a customer, not a human being with feelings. Same goes for those platforms. You enter it and you become a consumer. If you're like it or not.

You enter the shop as a human being, and there's certain (human) rights that should come with that.

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."

That makes little sense when you think about that. The constitution of your country does not stop at the door of a business. All your constitutional rights as a citizen enter the store with you. You have also human rights granted by international treaties. Nothing stops applying because you enter a shop.

Facebook isn't selling me anything though.

Neither is google

Regulations are fluid and often end up raising the barrier to entry often stifling the competition.

Companies are often fluid, especially smaller ones, and can more easily adapt to a changing world.

This just isn’t consistent with the empirical evidence whatsoever. An overwhelming amount of economic analysis shows that the burden of regulation disproportionately falls on small business.

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”

Yeah, we never see examples of small teams disrupting large markets with entrenched competitors. I'm afraid with taxi medallion regulations, we'll never see any competition in that space.

They wouldn't have, had they actually obeyed the same laws and regulations.

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.

Yes, and? This agrees with the statement that small companies are fluid and can find ways to work with regulations. Coming up with ways to avoid is that.

I do not believe that violating the spirit, if not the letter, of laws and regulations is a good strategy for enabling small teams to disrupt large incumbents.

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.

In every business I’ve been in success can be traced back to the wilingness to something grey. If you can find a loophole, profit.

The irony in all of this is that we somehow consider the uber of the world small businesses compared to taxi companies.

I don't understand the point you're making. Are you arguing that tax medallion regulations helped ride share companies enter the market?

Parent was attempting sarcasm, which makes their writing essentially meaningless because the reader has to gursst if they meant what they wrote or the opposite.

>Companies are often fluid, especially smaller ones, and can more easily adapt to a changing world.

Smaller companies have less capital to expend on compliance

or put more generally, rules exist to solve someone's problem. the "problem" may or may not be the one explicitly addressed by the rule, and the "someone" is usually the person who made the rule.

Regulations and laws define what game are we playing. Of course, players are going to try to change the game to their convenience.

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.

1. It's incredibly naive to think that the sole purpose of regulations is to protect powerful businesses. If you think that's the case, what would you describe the purpose of, say, worker safety regulations is? Food inspectors?

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.

> It's incredibly naive to think that the sole purpose of regulations is to protect powerful businesses.

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.

Sure. Businesses will try to protect themselves with regulation to whatever extent possible - it's what the market does (which is why I find it silly to discuss private markets and governance as if they were two separate and independent things). But "no regulations" isn't a solution to regulatory capture. It'll only make competition more cut throat (possibly involving real throats being cut), and companies more anticonsumer.

(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.)

Also, reguilations and rules can help to create trust, and this is what any business is based on. In this way, it helps business.

Agreed. I'd add that most regulations are designed by career politicians and corporate lobbyists. It's too bad the people aren't empowered to design these regulations amongst ourselves.