[stickfigure]

We tried this with general aviation. Private plane manufacturers all went bankrupt, and now the minimum price for a new airplane is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Apply strict liability to software, and you'll see the same results. Every piece of software will have to be constructed with the care of a medical device. Expect most forms of technological progress to come to a halt. Some part of the HN crowd will post "I want that" from their iphone (which wouldn't exist under such a regulatory scheme).

[SamuelAdams]

I’m reading a book called “An American Sickness” and it discusses medical devices. Turns out a lot of them are pretty poor and often have less testing and verification than most people think.

There’s one story about a hip implant that went bad. Turns out the doctor recommending and performing the surgery was also the patent holder and had a vested interest in getting this particular implant in as many patients as possible. Turns out the patient was actually patient #8 who received this particular implant. Also the implant wasn’t fully approved yet and the FDA simply trusted the doctor to monitor the device for problems.

Also this isn’t isolated. The chapter has several examples of medical devices going into patients and patients experience negative health outcomes. Turns out laws are only as good as the agencies that enforce them.

[aeternum]

Even with perfect enforcement, how do you tell if/when the laws stifle innovation?

If a company makes a bad implant, it's very visible, but all the potentially improved hip implants that never get built because of the barrier these laws create are invisible.

[mehlmao]

Private plane manufacturers went bankrupt, but more importantly, plane crashes have become incredibly rare.

[ARandomerDude]

True but that's the trivial case. You'll never get food poisoning if we outlaw food, never get into a car accident if we outlaw cars, ...

The point is there should be a better way that just pull the plug on anything potentially unsafe.

[pjmlp]

Generally I get food poisoning when the restaurant, supermarket or producer fails to follow the health standards it is obliged by law.

And then I can sue them to death or make a report to health authorities that will act accordingly.

[michaelnik]

In parallel the GA planes used got old. Imagine the same happening for the software!!!

In 2000, the average age of the nation's 150,000 single-engine fleet was more than 30 years. By 2020, the average age could approach 50 years

https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/small...

[michaelnik]

I don't know about "rare", since 1999 the broadest "accident" statistic fluctuates around 6 per 100,000h

Notice that "accident" definition conveniently excludes tons of partial failures! (see the legalese of 49 CFR § 830.2 - Definitions.)

To make parallel with broader discussion, the security failing of software could be considered "partial failures"...