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> “Environmental regulations are, in my view, largely terrible,” he said at an event with the libertarian Cato Institute last year. “You have to get permission
by maxeda 11mo ago
> “Environmental regulations are, in my view, largely terrible,” he said at an event with the libertarian Cato Institute last year. “You have to get permission in advance, as opposed to, say, paying a penalty if you do something wrong, which I think would be much more effective.”
This quote is particularly telling of a billionaire's mindset when the fines are too small to matter.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> particularly telling of a billionaire's mindset when the fines are too small to matter It’s telling that billionaires are human? Fines being too small to matter are a phenomenon across the income spectrum. From delivery drivers dancing with New York meter maids to American tourists ignoring overseas traffic rules, the notion that inadequate fines stop deterring and become merely a nuisance is well know.
- idle_zealot 11mo agoSure, but the deterrence these people are actively opposing exists to stop them from rendering the area unlivable for everyone. They know this and don't care, and are working to be allowed to ruin the world. That's what's telling.
- fl0id 11mo agoit's telling that he only sees effectiveness in what he wants. these rules are there for environmental protection, and in a worst case scenario, a fine is not gonna bring back the clean soil, or whatever was done.
- terminalshort 11mo agoThe clean soil in downtown Las Vegas?
- fragmede 11mo agoIt's not like there's a canyon or river or lake nearby that is of any size or goes anywhere.
- lucianbr 11mo agoYeah, imho lots of people need reminding that billionaires are just regular joes with a very large bank account. With all the regular joe's faults. Would be useful to remember that if Musk or Bezos say something, it may have the same chance of being right as what a delivery driver would say.
- Ekaros 11mo agoOr on average less empathetic and moral than regular joes... It is pretty hard to get to be billionaire without at least something average people would consider immoral.
- majormajor 11mo agoFines are usually going to be too small to matter in a world with limited-personal-liability for corporations. IMO his statement is disingenuous at that higher level. It's telling that billionaires propose things that wouldn't personally cut into their liquid assets, but instead would come out of a company that shields them from personal responsibility.
- eddieroger 11mo agoFines that are too small to matter are just called permits after the fact. Hardly the penalty a fine should be, and this is hardly the first time that kind of thing has happened.
- jvanderbot 11mo agoI mean, this is right out of two books: Abundance, and Why Nothing Works. Both spend maybe 1/3 of their pages detailing the excesses and legalistic nature of env reviews. They are weaponized for political reasons and cause an insane amount of delays. They are put in place for the right reasons, but are too effective at slowing projects down.
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoThis might work if they have to pay for the full cost of cleanup. Unfortunately as we've seen, limited liability means the company declares bankruptcy and the taxpayers are stuck with the bill.
- 3D30497420 11mo agoAnd a company would rather spend multiples more fighting fines and liability than they'd actually pay in fines. Not to mention a fine won't do much for people who get sick and die.
- dpc_01234 11mo agoHe is right, but also the fines need to be higher, especially for repeated violations. Ever worked in a company where you need approval from 7 separate teams to land a simple change? Just can't get anything done, no matter how useful. This is a huge problem. People generally do not understand what serialized blocking does to performance. On the other hand the fines cited in the article seem laughably low. I don't know how much ground water was discharged, and how big of a deal it is, but at certain pricetag even billionaires will say: well, it's cheaper to get a cistern and take that water to a water treatment facility or something.
- awesome_dude 11mo agoHim being right, or wrong, is a bold call to make. But all he's saying is he wants to run his company the way tech entrepreneurs have been for a while - "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" which they like because it's favored toward them, and, by the time a regulator has caught up, they have made a pile of money, or lost it all and gone.
- ETH_start 11mo agoFor a different perspective, it's the difference between the kind of (pro-innovation) restrictions imposed on automobile companies versus those (anti-innovation) ones imposed on aircraft companies: https://fee.org/articles/how-the-faa-is-keeping-flying-cars-in-science-fiction/ https://fee.org/articles/how-the-faa-is-keeping-flying-cars-...
- awesome_dude 11mo agoThere's a couple of problems with that. 1. For some reason it only talks in terms of the USA, there's a whole world of manufacturers that could have stepped up to create flying cars if the market was interested. 2. There was, for a very long time, a thing called a "microlight" which allowed people to own their own snap private air craft (although not generally VTOL)
- Avshalom 11mo ago
- freedomben 11mo agoThe truth is somewhere in the middle. Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation, and effectively restrict certain things to only the already-massively-rich entrepreneurs. However, (IMHO) there are a lot of regulations that are important and absolutely should be enforced up front. Finding the right balance is kind of impossible, and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but even well-intended regulations often just create roadblocks and cement incumbents in a particular space.
- 3D30497420 11mo agoIn some cases you are correct, however the happy middle in this case probably does not include many (most?) of their violations. One particular example: > Workers have complained of chemical burns from the waste material generated by the tunneling process, and firefighters must decontaminate their equipment after conducting rescues from the project sites. The company was fined more than $112,000 by Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late 2023 after workers complained of “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and burns. In another part, the company is accused of dumping this water directly into streets (presumably without decontamination).
- freedomben 11mo agoYes to be clear, my statement was meant very generally, not about any of these violations (which do sound pretty bad)
- micromacrofoot 11mo agothen maybe this isn't the right place to make it?
- Seattle3503 11mo agoI agree, this case lools like cause for concern
- skopje 11mo ago>> >Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation What is an example of a regulation that was a "huge" hinderance to innovation? Looking at the past 40 years of the US technological progress and the only thing I seen hindering innovation are the tech companies themselves through monopoly, monopsony, patents, and regulatory capture. (Unless the last one is what you meant, but that's a regulation put in place by a monopoly to maintain its monopoloy and not to protect the air we breathe). EDIT: I am referring to "innovation" not "execution".
- terminalshort 11mo agoHe's completely correct about that.
- tejohnso 11mo agoYeah, of course you'd rather pay a fine when your net worth is thousands of times more than most people's, and the fines aren't scaled according to net worth. You see this from time to time with headlines like "$CORP fined fifty MILLION dollars for ..." And then when you look into the details the fine turns out to be about one week of revenue and the offense resulted in early death for thousands of people over the past five years.