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Which is why government regulations that set the boundaries for what companies can and can't get away with (such as but not limited to labor laws) are so impor
by diputsmonro 1y ago
Which is why government regulations that set the boundaries for what companies can and can't get away with (such as but not limited to labor laws) are so important. In absence of guardrails, companies will do anything to get ahead of the competition. And once one company breaks a norm or does something underhanded, all their competitors must do the same thing or they risk ceding a competitive advantage. It becomes a race to the bottom.
Of course we learned this all before a century ago, it's why we have things like the FDA in the first place. But this new generation of techno-libertarians and DOGE folks who grew up in a "move fast and break things" era, who grew up in the cleanest and safest times the world has ever seen, have no understanding or care of the dangers here and are willing to throw it all away because of imagined inefficiencies. Regulations are written in blood, and those that remove them will have new blood on their hands.
- kortilla 1y agoSome regulations are written in blood, a huge chunk are not. Shower head flow rate regulations were not written in blood. Your post started out talking about labor laws but then switched to the FDA, which is very different. This is one of the reasons that people like the DOGE employees are tearing things apart. There are so many false equivalences on the importance of literally everything the government does that they look at things that are clearly useless and start to pull apart things they think might be useless. The good will has been burned on the “trust me, the government knows best”, so now we’re in an era of cuts that will absolutely go too far and cause damage. Your post mentioning “imagined inefficiencies” is a shining example of the issue of why they are there. Thinking the government doesn’t have inefficiencies is as dumb as thinking it’s pointless. Politicians are about as corrupt of a group as you can get and budget bills are filled with so much excess waste it’s literally called “pork”.
- mint2 1y agoEfficiency related regulation like the energy star is THE reason why companies started caring. Same with low flush toilets. I vaguely remember the initial ones had issues, but tbh less than the older use a ton of water toilets my family had before that were also super clog prone. Nowadays I can’t even remember the last time a low flush toilet clogged. Massive water saving that took regulation. Efficiency regulations may not be directly written in blood, instead they are built on costly mountains of unaddressed waste.
- CelestialMystic 1y agoI literally had a new toilet put in a couple of years ago. It clogs pretty easily. So you just end up flushing it more, so you don't actually save any water. BTW the same thing happened with vacuum cleaners, you need to hover more to get the same amount of dust out because they capped the power in the EU. My old Vacuum Cleaner I managed to find, literally sticks to the carpet when hoovering.
- ninalanyon 1y agoMy Philips Silentio vacuum cleaner is both quiet and powerful and is also within the EU limits on input power. It will stick to the floor if I turn up the power too high. And the Norwegian made and designed low flow toilets in my house flush perfectly every time. Have the flush volumes reduced further in the last fifteen years?
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoNap, parent just bought a crappy toilet.
- CelestialMystic 1y agoWhich is the same as every other toilet.
- CelestialMystic 1y ago> My Philips Silentio vacuum cleaner is both quiet and powerful and is also within the EU limits on input power. It will stick to the floor if I turn up the power too high. I don't believe you and it besides the point because I suspect that it is an expensive vacuum cleaner. I don't want to put any thought into a vacuum cleaner. I just want to buy the most powerful (bonus points if it is really loud), I don't care about it being quiet or efficient. I want the choice to buy something that makes a dent in my electricity bill if I so choose to. > And the Norwegian made and designed low flow toilets in my house flush perfectly every time. Have the flush volumes reduced further in the last fifteen years? This reads as "I have some fancy bathroom that costs a lot, if you had this fancy bathroom you wouldn't have issues". I don't want to have to care whether my low flush toilet is some fancy Norwegian brand or not. I just want something to flush the shit down the hole. The old toilets never had the problems the newer ones have. I would rather buy the old design, but I can't. I am denied the choice because someone else I have never met thinks they know better than I.
- TFYS 1y agoI don't think regulations are enough. They're just a band-aid on the gaping wound that is a capitalist, market based economy. No matter what regulations you make, some companies and individuals become winners and over time will grow rich enough to influence the government and the regulations. We need a better economic system, one that does not have these problems built in.
- rapsey 1y agoGaping wound that lifted billions out of powerty and produced the greatest standard of living in human history.
- TFYS 1y agoSure, but you can't ignore the negative sides like environmental destruction and wealth and power concentration. Just because we haven't yet invented a system that produces a good standard of living without these negative side effects doesn't mean it can't be done. But we aren't even trying, because the ones benefiting from this system the most, and have the most power, have no incentive to do so.
- rapsey 1y agoThose are all results of political corruption, not capitalism. It is the government's job to set the ground rules for the economy.
- TFYS 1y agoPolitical corruption is a consequence of capitalism. Taking over the political system provides a huge competitive advantage, so any entity rich enough to influence it has an incentive to do so in an competition based economy that incentivizes growth.
- tm-guimaraes 1y agoWhen did Political corruption not exist? In what system in history did the people in power have so few rotten apples that corruption was an anomally? Blaming corruption on capitalism is silly. As long has worldhas resources, people want control of reasources, and bad actors will do bad actors thingies.