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by abdullahkhalids 2459 days ago
If you realize that the null policy is also a policy, then there is no reason to be a priori more critical of active policies compared to the null policy.
1 comments

The null policy always has more empirical validation because society clearly hasn't collapsed under it. This fact might be the essence of conservatism.
Even if the right to repair were a bad policy, it certainly wouldn't cause society to collapse. Nor would it destroy democracy or cause any other irreparable damage.

Implementing it merely risks a minor decrease in economic efficiency for a few years. The potential reward can last for an unlimited time. And there's a guaranteed reward too: Gaining knowledge on what policies work. We should do it even if we expected it to fail (see also VCs).

I know what you're getting at, and there is something there. However this argument is unfalsifiable.

No society ever collapsed due to policy on repairing washing machines. One could survive indefinitely in a sub-optimal policy regime on a topic of limited importance without collapsing.

There's plenty of cases where null policies have failed. I could list them but that list obviously has to trigger Godwin's law...
If Hitler had not done anything, i.e. implemented the so-called null policy, nothing bad would have happened. Feel free to substitute with any other dictator if you want to avoid Godwin's law.
Chamberlain implemented a null policy and Hitler was the result.