I rarely see this mentioned, but why don’t people just support laws that expire? You can’t stifle innovation in the long run if the law doesn’t exist in the long run.

I’ve often espoused a law that requires USB-C to charge phones- that expires after 3-5 years. Just enough time to get everyone on the same standard and lock in a little, but not enough to kill innovation when the next big thing happens.

Worst case scenario, wait 3 years… but if it was really bad, the law would get repealed anyways.

This strategy would be great for many fields. Imagine if the world decided to make a law that expires in 3-5 years to require one specific electric car charging port. Or made an expiring law that required ebook sellers to use epub format in 2010 (I’m looking at you, Amazon, with your .mobi format). Or made an expiring law that unified every display cable under HDMI (ignoring patent issues).

I’m not saying that stuff like this should be enshrined in law forever, but a lot of stuff would be a lot easier if it was more socially/politically accepted to pass laws that expire.

Because then laws that people rely on become bargaining chips held hostage when the expiration date comes. And this creates horrible perverse incentives where the more obviously good and uncontroversial the law is, the more valuable it is as a hostage, so the more likely it is to disappear, which is a complete inversion of democracy. Like clean air? Well, give $MY_FACTION a billion billion dollars or it goes away.

This isn't a hypothetical either, you see this in American politics all the damn time with temporary laws and allocations.