[Exofunctor]

The ADA is an example of a regulation that's entirely well-intentioned, but has tremendous second-order costs to society that very plausibly outweigh any benefit it's ever provided.

Hopefully this serves as a lesson. Next time we hear a "common sense" law proposed, take a few minutes to think about how people are going to abuse it, or what market mechanisms it's going to break, or how much it's actually going to cost society when you multiply the cost it introduces by the number of people it hurts.

Now, thanks to excessively litigious hard of hearing people at Gaulladet University and the ADA, society is objectively worse off. No one has benefitted from this action, except perhaps a few spiteful people with the attitude "If I can't have it, no one can." It truly disgusts me.

[quickben]

To see how horrible your words sound to some of us, replace ADA with 'elderly healthcare'.

It's not always about efficiency, and that slippery slope you are calling for, historically, ended bad.

What should disgust you is the university looking forward to save money with centralized courses that are only for updates and not re-creation; and instead yanking off the project the moment it looked like they'll have to attend more money.

[ghaff]

>What should disgust you is the university looking forward to save money with centralized courses that are only for updates and not re-creation; and instead yanking off the project the moment it looked like they'll have to attend more money.

Why? Money's a finite resource. If, as appears to be the case, a lot of this is older and not frequently viewed content, it's not clear to me why the university should spend a lot of money updating just "because." Especially if it's mostly Creative Commons and will continue to live elsewhere.

[yazan94]

Well UCBerkley is/was providing the educational content free of charge for the public at it's own expense. I would liken it to a free public service. If the service does not work/apply for you, do you sue the entity/entities in charge to make it work for you, or do you just move on? And how is the university's choice to pull its content behind a UCBerkley login a disgusting move? In my opinion, it's well within it's right to do so and also well within it's rights to not make the material publicly available in the first place. I also think that it is totally understandable move considering it would have to incur additional costs to keep the material publicly available.

[cmdrfred]

>It's not always about efficiency, and that slippery slope you are calling for, historically, ended bad.

I disagree. In a world with finite resources the optimum outcome is one that best applies those resources to serve the greatest possible good.

Berkeley is a publicly funded institution, anything that increases their costs either A: increases the tuition they are required to charge, thus lessening the availability of education. or B: Increases the tax burden, lowering the total net income of the populous.

Now many argue that we can raise taxes in order to pay for these types of things. They say that the costs of this individual mandate is minimal, thus it is common sense to implement it. What they miss is that each percentage raise in tax will render a certain number of businesses non-viable. This will in turn increase unemployment, and lower overall tax revenue. At the same time the demand for public assistance grows. Thus necessitating further increases in taxation.

It doesn't stop there. As this common sense regulation is implemented, more follow, and more still. There is an endless stream of things under the heading of "wouldn't be nice if", where do you draw the line?

The impact of these regulations are hard to measure. How many business owners who now find themselves bankrupt will commit suicide this year? How many teenagers will be unable to find summer jobs, and thus be unable to save for college? How many families will fall apart due to constant frustrations regarding money? You can never say, but all of the data I have looked out shows that poverty cuts wide and deep having negative effects on the lives of children exposed to it well into old age.

So lets take your example of elderly healthcare. Is it worth extending the life of someone in their 80's a few years if it means that a non-zero number of young families will be pushed below the poverty line? I never see this aspect considered. When I search for data I am offered an appeal to emotion. I think regulation needs to be more thought out than that.

[prodigal_erik]

Surely the greater good would be dubbing in Mandarin, rather than English subtitles.

[VLM]

Yet to see how accurate his words sound, replace "elderly healthcare" with "banning books".

If I want to ban a book, lets say, "Huckleberry Finn" for having the n-word in it, or it doesn't even really matter why, then all I need to do is not locate a braille or audiobook version, file ADA, and they either have to remove the content completely or provide whatever ridiculous format I request until they cave in and remove it or go bankrupt trying which also removes content. I can harass any institution providing service to the public that incidentally contains content that I dislike for political or religious reasons or any reason of my choice. I can deny service to millions using theoretical lack of service to hypothetical individuals as my weapon.

Why, I could go after HN for presenting your comment itself in textual form instead of braille or audiobook format. They could fix that technologically, but I'm sure it would be easier to delete your comment entirely. The fact that I'm only bringing up deletion of your comment because we disagree politically is mere coincidence, I assure you its solely for ADA compliance that I must ask for HN to delete your comment ... surely you must agree with my reasoning that your comment must be deleted, right?

[dragonwriter]

> If I want to ban a book, lets say, "Huckleberry Finn" for having the n-word in it, or it doesn't even really matter why, then all I need to do is not locate a braille or audiobook version, file ADA, and they either have to remove the content completely or provide whatever ridiculous format I request until they cave in and remove it or go bankrupt trying which also removes content.

Or hire a lawyer that defends ADA cases, since "reasonable accommodation" does not, in fact, mean "whatever anyone demands", successfully defend the case, and move on. And, if the instigator has a pattern of doing meritless ADA cases for extortion or political suppression, possibly tack on some nice counterclaims in the process. While they aren't perfect, the justice system does have tools to deal with the kind of abuse of process you describe.

[ghaff]

You can come up with all sorts of examples where complying with the ADA imposes costs that are out of proportion to any possible benefit. (e.g. handicapped accessible ramps on mountain cabins only accessible by a steep rocky trail) However, the legitimate concern is that, if you start allowing for a lot of exceptions, before you know it, organizations start finding reasons why just about everything should be an exception.

I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the decision in this case but there are sometimes good reasons to have hard and fast rules even if they lead to arguably bad outcomes in specific cases

[Bluestrike2]

The economics of the ADA were known from the beginning. By definition, it addresses a situation where business owners weren't implementing the changes necessary. Practically across the board, it was cheaper and easier to say "oh well" to the disabled than to make accommodations for what was a small percentage of their customers. It was before my time, but the business community was aggressively against the ADA back when it was being drafted.

From a societal perspective, the entire idea behind the ADA is that the right to equal access for the disabled--including the public accommodations necessary for them to actually make use of that access--is something we value beyond the initial cost of implementing it.

[prodigal_erik]

An unfunded mandate is entirely punitive. If we as a society valued it, we'd be paying for it.