Welcome to 2018 [LWN.net]

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 14:43 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Welcome to 2018 by felixfix
Parent article: Welcome to 2018

> Riiiiight, because the solution to everything is bureaucrats making decisions with no accountability.

How is government middle management (ie "bureaucrats") or executives (ie "political appointees") making decisions worse than corporate middle management or executives making the same decisions?

And how is the former somehow less accountable than the latter?

to post comments

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 15:31 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (25 responses)

Governments by definition are monopolies. Businesses have to satisfy customers in the face of competition or they go out of business.

The worst possible solution is government regulation of businesses, because of "regulatory capture", where the bureaucrats picked to staff the government bureaucracies must have knowledge of the industry, thus they come from the very industry they are regulating. The alternative is to pick bureaucrats who know nothing of the industry, but guess who educates them? -- those same experts who were expressly not picked as the regulating bureaucrats in the first place.

It's a common theme that businesses are greedy and government bureaucrats are noble, but it's nonsense. An economist named Buchanan won a Nobel Prize for "public choice" theory which debunked this fairy tale and showed that bureaucrats are as full of self-interest and bias as anybody else. The difference is competition, ie, lack of monopoly.

Yes, businesses do lots of stupid things. The difference is they go out of business and are susceptible to lawsuits for malpractice.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 15:40 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (23 responses)

> Governments by definition are monopolies. Businesses have to satisfy customers in the face of competition or they go out of business.

Governments that don't satisfy their "customers" don't tend to last either. Be it through the ballot box or the ammo box.

> Yes, businesses do lots of stupid things. The difference is they go out of business and are susceptible to lawsuits for malpractice.

Yeah, that's working so well in the ISP, Energy, Banking/Financial, and Medical sectors.

Meanwhile, courts have jurisdiction over the Government too.

You have "rights" as a citizen of a country. You have no rights when it comes to being a customer of a company. Except for those rights the government enforces through laws and regulations.

If you want a true "free market" free from government regulation and interference, I hear Somalia is a veritable utopia these days. Hope you can afford your own milita.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 16:28 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (22 responses)

> Yeah, that's working so well in the ISP, Energy, Banking/Financial, and Medical sectors.

Every single instance is in collusion with government. That's what regulatory capture is. That's what the problem is.

> Meanwhile, courts have jurisdiction over the Government too.

And usually side with government, or have you never been to traffic court or anything which relies on police testimony? Meanwhile, markets respond much faster.

And if you rely on elections, remember that half the US got the wrong result, precisely because it's a monopoly. But if you don't like your grocery store or gas station or insurance company, there's almost always other choices.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 17:13 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (20 responses)

> Every single instance is in collusion with government

Yeah, to prevent it from being regulated *by* government. This is usually called "corruption".

> And usually side with government

Which neeeds to be fixed (a law to unconditionally fire any policeman who's caught lying would be a god first step), but no police whatsoever is way worse. Residential speed limits don't exist to make money for the police and environmental protection laws don't exist for bureaucrats to have something to do. They exist to protect people.

> Meanwhile, markets respond much faster.

Wrong. The markets do not respond at all when, as is usually the case when there are problems, the people affected either aren't the consumers or the sellers collude to not offer them any choice.

Also, you can't sue a company for polluting the hell out of a river after it's gone bankrupt, which also doesn't un-pollute the river, just like you can't resurrect a child that's been run over by a speeding car. You need to enforce conditions that prevent that from happening in the first place, which requires a government.

> remember that half the US got the wrong result, precisely because it's a monopoly

So? How could you possibly have a non-monopoly government? Your wrong results (like Trump effectively getting elected by a minority) are the fault of broken election laws that nobody is angry enough about to fix. Have fun. Meanwhile other countries don't seem to have that problem.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 17:57 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (19 responses)

How fast is Apple responding to battery slowdown complaints?

How fast would it have taken government bureaucrats? There are huge automobile safety recalls taking far longer just to write the memos.

Again, you are making the same mistake described by public choice theory: government bureaucrats are not noble just because they have government paychecks. They are just people with all the normal biases, with unaccountability to make it worse. You can find innumerable instances of government bureaucrats stonewalling solutions, and nothing holds them accountable. Businesses only get away with murder when government allows it; they would not get away with murder if they were held accountable by lawsuits, but the government blocks that. AT&T was a terrible company in its infancy, and when competitors began to hold it accountable with lawsuits, AT&T begged the government to make them a federal utility. How long were modems, fax machines, answering machines, and other advances, blocked by federal regulations on behalf of AT&T? It was only brought asunder by MCI/Sprint finally suing to stop it -- competition for innovation and progress, government against it.

The auto industry is replete with advances blocked by government bureaucrats because they aren't listed in the safety regulations.

Every system has failures and flaws, just as with humans; and just as what counts with humans is how they rectify their mistakes, so with systems. Free markets have competition, and market haters who scream about greedy profit motive ought to understand how that greedy profit motive uncovers competitors mistakes. Monopoly shields organizations from accountability by the market. Government-enforced monopoly makes it much harder, and government monopoly is the worst.

You think pollution is bad here? It was far worse in those paragons of government monopoly known as the Eastern block. Tell those people how grand all that freedom-from-competition and freedom-from-choice and freedom-from-accountability was. Or look into Love Canal, where the initial pollution was required by government, hidden by government, covered up by government, and the cleanup was fumbled by government.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 20:46 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (7 responses)

> they would not get away with murder if they were held accountable by lawsuits
Lawsuits? How quaint.

Look at your agreement with AT&T that you've used to buy an iPhone. And now look at the mandatory arbitration clause in it. But you're not forced to buy from AT&T, there are plenty of competitors to choose from: T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon. And just 3 of these competitors also have mandatory arbitration in their contracts. Freedom!

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 21:58 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (6 responses)

You think 3 competitors is too few, yet you want to reduce it to 0 with the government. How consistent! What freedom!

Odds are you didn't like the results of the last US election. Now you get to cast a meaningless vote again in 3 years. There's freedom for you.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 22:24 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

This is a curious case of projection. Libertarians want to totally destroy the government and they are extrapolating that their opponents want to have the total government control.

This is not the case. Sane people want sane government regulation so that these 4 players won't screw their customers.

Direct government control makes sense only for areas with natural monopolies, where you can't feasibly have more than 1-2 competitors.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 4, 2018 0:18 UTC (Thu) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link] (4 responses)

Free market competition solving consumer issues only really works when there are tens or hundreds of competitors, and when none of them are dominant compared to the others.

Unfortunately that is an increasingly rare circumstance in this world where all companies try to become bigger & bigger… because that allows them to avoid most competition.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 4, 2018 0:55 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (1 responses)

Wrong. See. eg. Microsoft and Apple. There's a lot more to market conditions than just size.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 4, 2018 4:45 UTC (Thu) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link]

Both Microsoft & Apple are perfect examples of why real competition can't exist when only one or a couple companies dominate the market…

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 5, 2018 20:11 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

Government taxes and regulations are a major driver of company size increase.

Is your company paying for road transport, including taxes? Buy your own trucks. Is your company of five people having trouble following ALL of the current HR regulations for hiring and firing employees? Get big enough or get acquired. Now you have an HR and legal team that fills an entire building so you're on top of every legality. Are you providing Internet to end-users but your upstream transit costs are killing you? Buy the upstream and become Tier 1. Now YOU can charge transit fees to reach your end-users.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 6, 2018 21:00 UTC (Sat) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link]

In most countries HR regulations are much less strict for small companies (to the point where some companies are split up in many small divisions to avoid them).

The trend also seems to be that companies sell all their trucks/vans and hire self-employed truck/van owners instead. (It's much easier to exploit individual owner-drivers than it is to exploit hundreds of employees, I guess.)

And I do understand some of the economic reasons why companies want to become bigger & bigger (although in many cases it's also based on a cult-like belief), but that doesn't mean a small number of big companies is better for consumers or for society.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 21:13 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

> How fast is Apple responding to battery slowdown complaints?

How fast is Comcast responding to complaints that Netflix is unuseable?

> Businesses only get away with murder when government allows it

Right. Exactly.

> The auto industry is replete with advances blocked by government bureaucrats because they aren't listed in the safety regulations.

It's also replete with safety, cartel, or environmental problems which didn't get fixed until government bureaucrats stepped in and told the car makers to get their shit together. VW's Dieselgate is just the latest example.

You can't have one without the other.

Also, I'm definitely not arguing for a communist-style government monopoly, so please stop putting up that kind of strawman argument. Thanks.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 21:55 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (9 responses)

> The auto industry is replete with advances blocked by government bureaucrats because they aren't listed in the safety regulations.
I'm quite curious about these safety advances.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 22:01 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (8 responses)

Most recently, the IIHS safety bureaucrats have been complaining that headlights are awful. Yet their regulations suffocate innovation there. Some experiments with LED headlights were impossible because they violated regulations.

A bit of googling will find many more.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 22:21 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (7 responses)

I checked it. There are plenty of lighting advances: http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/sc-co...

The only problem is the high-end laser headlights that don't have a high/low beam setting. They are approved in Europe but not in the US.

So I fail to see the problem here. Regulation works and it doesn't create safety problems. Meanwhile, before the regulation we were in the "Unsafe at any speed" territory.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 22:44 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (6 responses)

Car ads at least back to the 1950s bragged about safety improvements. Do you remember when Volvo got caught cheating in their ads bragging about how tough their cars were? They stacked seven high, I think, but had wood supports inside. This demonstrates that safety matters to both consumers and producers, and that there is more accountability in markets than in government.

Have you kept track of how many times the US nutritional guidelines have changed at the whim of crony industries? Ever see any heads roll for changing opinions on eggs, red meat, dairy, coffee, chocolate? Remember Saccharin, falsely labeled a carcinogen against all evidence, until the government finally admitted 30 years later they had been wrong from the start? How many heads rolled over that?

Banks before the Fed used to advertise who their directors were, how much reserves they had, and the general safety of their business.

There were many financial panics in the US, including the 1929 crash, and including the curious 1920 recession which was as bad as the 1929 crash but never escalated because Woodrow Wilson had had a stroke and no one was in charge; it was over in 18 months. Several of these panics affected Canada too, but not a single bank collapsed in Canada while thousands dis in the US. This was because regulations tied the banks hands and prevented branch banking, whereby funds could be transferred at will to cover short-term market demands.

History is full of such examples. I make no claims that private enterprise is less prone to greed and mistakes than government, only that competitive markets provide accountability that simply does not exist in government. Even if bad CEOs get golden parachutes, they don't remain in power and they seldom get hired again. How many government bureaucrats lose their jobs over malfeasance, ineptitude, or corruption?

That's all I'm arguing. You and others may want to label me a soul destroying libertarian or conservative or republican, but that only shows how limited your imagination is and how blind you are to the world you are accustomed to. Corporate accountability may not be as much as you like, but government accountability is as rare as unicorn farts, and expecting them to regulate honestly is about as jokey as Springtime for Hitler.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 22:52 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

> Car ads at least back to the 1950s bragged about safety improvements.
Not really. While there was some showmanship, the cars were mass-produced without obvious safety measures like deformable steering wheel or even seatbelts.

> Have you kept track of how many times the US nutritional guidelines have changed at the whim of crony industries?
Like, mandating nitrites in sausages that almost totally eliminated botulism?

> History is full of such examples.
It really isn't. History is full of anecdotes that can be twisted by citing them randomly in a short post without any context.

For example, do you know that hard currency and deflation have caused Hitler? True story, btw.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 4, 2018 0:02 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (4 responses)

So you discount the car ads that did exist by saying not all ads bragged on safety, and they didn't advertise the safety features you think they should have? I suppose that's one way to admit they did brag on safety sometimes.

You point out one good nutritional guideline as if to hide all the flip flopping they did.

You Godwin things to pretend that historical examples of government malfeasance and incompetence don't exist.

I guess I must be doing better than I expected.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 4, 2018 7:42 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

I prefer to get my facts from actual Congressional inquiries, not from anecdotes of random TV ads. The "Unsafe at Any Speed" inquiry found that automakers made a campaign to systematically hide the unsafety of their cars.

And it was fixed by mandating certain safety standards. Only then car makers started to compete on safety, instead of stupid bling.

The same applies for catalytic convertors. They would have never happened without regulation.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 4, 2018 14:30 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (1 responses)

Your honesty in trusting the House Unamerican Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy is refreshing.

Oh wait, you mean only the Congressional hearings you like?

Wow. Never would have thought there'd be bad government actors.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 4, 2018 20:35 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Your argument is that because McCarthy existed, government can never ever be trusted?

Safety and CARB regulations in the 70s and 80s have produced completely quantifiable benefits. There have been grievous missteps like MTBE but, on the whole, their progress has been impressive.

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 4, 2018 15:29 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

I've noticed a couple of general themes that seem to interact to result in American distrust of "regulation" as compared to other countries:

Regulation that mandates outcomes, but leaves the route to the desired outcomes unspecified, tends to be better at coping with attempts to ignore regulations than regulations that mandate process but not outcomes. E.g. regulation that says that you must notify all vehicle owners of a failure to meet certain safety levels within 30 days of discovering that you did not meet those standards tends to do better than regulation that says that you must go through a mandated process of notifying an agency and performing a recall when you don't meet standards.
The USA prefers regulations where the mechanism to comply is obvious from the regulation, which tends to result in regulations that mandate process, but that don't mandate outcomes. This is argued as limiting the "red-tape" burden on business, by ensuring that if you've followed the letter of the regulations, a judge can't penalise you for not getting the desired outcome (the "spirit" of the regulations).

I speculate that the reason for (1) is that companies work out how to game a prescribed process - if you have to report something in a fixed form, they'll find ways to "accidentally" get it wrong and have it sent back, adding delay, and they'll find ways to report exactly what the process asks for, even if the next step involves asking them to clarify before you get useful outcomes. In contrast, outcome based regulations leave a lot of room for arguing on the degree of blame when the outcome doesn't happen, but they tend to force desired outcomes (because you're only arguing about degrees of liability if you don't meet the outcome, not about whether you're at fault at all); the result is that the risk-averse bits of the company tend to dump on anyone trying to avoid meeting the outcome required by law, because the argument will be about whether $1 or $100,000,000 is the correct penalty for breach, not about whether you broke the rules at all.

Put that together with the preference for regulations that mandate process, and you see that most regulation is broken - the outcomes are bad, even though the regulation is followed. It's not hard to combine that with genuinely bad regulations (and bad laws) to conclude that government is unfixable.

And I personally appreciate the irony of people saying that courts will enforce contract regulations against a company while simultaneously arguing that regulation is bad :D

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 11, 2018 15:32 UTC (Thu) by sombragris (guest, #65430) [Link]

> And usually side with government, or have you never been to traffic court or anything which relies on police testimony? Meanwhile, markets respond much faster.

Not really. In my country, courts may side with you if you have a good case. The problem is seeking payment. Good luck having your compensation claim included in next year's budget...

Welcome to 2018

Posted Jan 3, 2018 17:53 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> business and are susceptible to lawsuits

But what is a lawsuit except for the government stepping in to regulate, after the harm is done. Lawsuits and the courts are a form of government regulation.