Over-Regulation is Doubling the Cost - Peter Reinhardt \ stacker news ~Politics_And

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Over-Regulation is Doubling the Cost - Peter Reinhardt rein.pk/over-regulation-is-doubling-the-cost

577 sats \ 17 comments \ @Scoresby 10h Politics_And_Law

This article is very nice, cogent explanation of how broken the regulatory environment in the US actually is.

People worry about AI killing their jobs...but you never hear them wondering why we are willing to sacrifice so many jobs and businesses to pointless regulations that don't do any good.

We’ve become a society that blocks all things, and we need to be a society that builds great things every day. The rest of this article gets very specific about the astronomical costs regulations are imposing on us as a society, and the massive positive impact that could be unleashed by cutting back regulation that is working against new, cost-saving, creative technology.

Charm will spend low hundreds of millions to get to breakeven, and Revoy will spend tens of millions. In both cases, more than half of the total cost of building each company has gone to counterproductive regulatory burden. I’m hellbent on pushing through these barriers, but the unspoken reality is that our regulatory morass is the deathbed of thousands of hardtech companies that could be drastically improving our lives.

A regulator faces little cost to moving incredibly cautiously, but a major cost if they approve something that triggers activist pushback.

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123 sats \ 16 replies \ @Undisciplined 9h

The example that most blew my mind was an estimate of the cost of street side parking requirements (in NYC, I think).

The opportunity cost of not using that space for its most productive use was similar to the expense of the entire welfare system in that city.

42 sats \ 15 replies \ @Scoresby OP 9h

maybe it's a perfect example: the visceral anger of not being able to find parking is something that most people in the US have probably experienced, so when some joker comes along and says a skyscraper is a better use of that space, you just want to slap them.

Nonetheless, a car sitting empty on land that is otherwise worth millions of dollars is such a bad use of land. Make all parking private!

144 sats \ 5 replies \ @Murch 9h

I’m wondering how much parking problems in NYC would decrease, if the parking minimums were reduced or removed, and they started charging for street parking everywhere. Having lived in NYC for over four years, having a car there sounds like a nightmare. A bit of financial pressure would get some people to rid themselves of cars they don’t use, generate revenue for the city, and make parking easier for the people that want to keep their cars.

63 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby OP 8h

If streets are owned by the city, on-street parking is a subsidy by the city to car users. Speaking as someone who grew up in US cities, we've very much been trained to be blind to this subsidy. So, really, it's not financial pressure, so much as removing a subsidy.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 7h

This extends well beyond cities. The whole transport system would look very different without the enormous subsidies to roads.

63 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 7h

Perhaps relevant:

source

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 9h

One of my favorite Futurama jokes was Fry explaining that nobody drove in NYC because there was too much traffic.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @Murch 9h

I mean, it’s ironic but not wrong. Congestion pricing significantly reduced honking, accidents, and sped up traffic in large parts of Manhattan.

102 sats \ 8 replies \ @Undisciplined 9h

Try this on for size: most major metros probably shouldn’t have any roads at all.

Just think how viscerally annoying that would be!

42 sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby OP 8h

While I love the idea, roads seem like a pretty early invention in human history. Maybe we only invented them because we didn't know how to build big enough buildings, but I'd wager that even if we made buildings the size of cities, they'd have roadwats inside them. Bodies need blood vessels.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 7h

From what I understand, it’s not that there would be no car access at all, but that there would be much more limited throughways and much larger vehicle free spaces.

Basically, vehicle access to get you close but not to directly access everywhere.

144 sats \ 1 reply \ @Murch 3h

Like the mega blocks in Barcelona:

Image from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00855-2

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 2h

Yeah, there are things like that in lots of places. I'm sure they're still a creation of the state, but I suspect that's a closer approximation to what a true free market would yield.

42 sats \ 3 replies \ @Murch 9h

Or at the very least more streetcars and protected bike lanes.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 9h

Or big ass conveyer belts!

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @Murch 9h

I imagine that conveyor belts outside would be hard to maintain and get dirty rapidly. I do like Factorio as well, but walking seems mostly fine.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 9h

They’d probably be covered.

I think downtown areas would be highly connected, almost like one giant building.