[philwelch]

It's rather disingenuous to say "there are always exceptions". First off, if you're just going to talk generally, there are countries with less onerous business regulations than the United States. France isn't one of them, but Norway and Denmark are. More importantly, we are talking about regulating a specific technology, namely AI. The US has already demonstrated the ability to regulate a specific technology--namely nuclear energy--to a point where it is almost completely marginalized. So the notion that the US isn't capable of regulating an entire technology into near-oblivion is demonstrably false.

[HervalFreire]

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[philwelch]

Okay, fine, I'll go through your "notes" (which still sound a lot like ChatGPT garbage):

> Enron: In the early 2000s, the energy company Enron engaged in a series of fraudulent accounting practices to make it appear as if the company was more profitable than it actually was.

And in 2002, the US passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which dramatically increased the regulatory burdens of running a publicly traded company.

> Volkswagen: In 2015, it was revealed that Volkswagen had installed software in its diesel cars that cheated emissions tests, leading to higher levels of pollution than were reported.

This doesn't make the point you think it makes. Even though Volkswagen is a German company that were selling these cars all around the world, and even though 8.5 million of the 11 million Volkswagens that were eventually recalled were in the European Union, it was the US EPA, not European regulators, who caught Volkswagen.

> Tobacco Industry

Almost all European countries have higher smoking rates than the United States. France has twice as many smokers as the US.

> The 2008 financial crisis was largely caused by the reckless behavior of major Wall Street banks and financial institutions. Many critics argue that the government failed to adequately regulate these institutions, allowing them to engage in risky practices that ultimately led to the collapse of the housing market and the wider economy.

"Many critics argue"--there are those weasel words again. Similarly with Enron, this led to the Dodd-Frank Act, which increased financial regulations again.

An interesting counterpoint to this is the Libor scandal, which came to light a few years afterwards. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal) Similarly to Volkswagen, the Libor scandal was happening in Europe (specifically the UK) under European regulatory jurisdiction, and yet it was American regulators who caught the perpetrators.

> Boeing 737 Max

This is a case of US regulators being behind other countries, but it is an exception. Also note that none of the actual 737 Max crashes happened in the US, but rather in countries with weaker regulatory regimes when it comes to airline operations.

> Big Pharma

Not US specific. Lots of these firms, like Bayer and GSK, are European, and drugs usually get approved by European regulators more quickly than they get approved by the FDA.

> Meatpacking Industry: The meatpacking industry has been criticized for unsafe working conditions, low wages, and lax regulatory oversight.

Meaningless weasel words.

> Tech Industry: Tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have faced criticism for a variety of reasons, including antitrust violations, privacy violations, and the spread of misinformation. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate these companies, which have become some of the most powerful corporations in the world.

Weasel words. If you want to count this as US specific because most of these companies are American, then you don't get to blame the US for the actions of Volkswagen and British Petroleum.

> Fast Food Industry: The fast food industry has been criticized for...

More weasel words. Also not US specific.

> Industrial Agriculture

Not US specific.

> Gun Industry

Unrelated political controversy.

> Pharmaceutical Industry

You already listed Big Pharma.

> Big Oil

Not specific to the US. Canada and Norway also produce oil, and relative to their GDP, they are more dependent on oil production than the US is. In yet another example of US regulations being more stringent than other countries, it was the US, not Canada, that shut down the Keystone XL oil pipeline between Canada and the United States.

> Private Prisons

Also not US specific. Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have more of their prisoners in private prisons than the US does.

> Airlines, Plastic Industry, Financial Services Industry

Still not US specific and still full of "critics argue" weasel words instead of actual facts.

> Gig Economy: The gig economy, which includes companies like Uber and Lyft

I'mma stop you right there because Uber and Lyft were created to circumvent onerous taxi regulations that led to poor customer service, poor availability, and high prices.

[philwelch]

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[HervalFreire]

[flagged]

[philwelch]

> I got it from my notes for an unrelated project. You can't find it because I wrote the notes. But this shouldn't matter. As long as the points are correct, you getting schooled by an AI is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

The points don't specifically pertain to the US and have enough garbage weasel words that they don't even rise to the level of "correct". I'll make another comment that goes through them though.

> General truths exist. You must dismiss exceptions to get at the general truth. Otherwise we'll be mired in details constantly.

You can't just handwave away complexity. It's entirely possible for the US to have too little regulation in some fields and too much regulation in other fields.

Your claim is that it's impossible for the US to erect regulatory barriers for AI. Whether or not the US, in general, has more or less regulations than other countries isn't sufficient to make that case.

> The heritage foundation is a conservative think tank with a biased agenda.

I never claimed otherwise. But why would a conservative think tank, which favors less business regulations, not even put the US on the top ten list of most "economically free" countries if the US is so underregulated? Why would they prefer the regulatory environment in Denmark and Sweden over the regulatory environment in the United States?

> Check out which countries rank the highest for food regulations

So when I bring up examples they're "exceptions", but while you bring up examples, they're examples of the rule. When I cite sources that do an overall survey of a country's regulatory environment, that's "biased", but when you cite a source that makes their money by helping companies comply with food regulations, that's just fine.

> Not to mention labor regulations, mandatory five week vacations? Paternity leave? Unheard of in the US.

Yeah, there are some places where the US has more regulations and some places where the US has less regulations.

If we're talking about regulating AI, I think nuclear energy regulations are a much more analogous case than vacation and paternity leave.

> It's an exception. I mean I literally gave you tons of examples how the US fails to regulate things. The ratio of failures to successes is what matters here. And the failures outnumber the successes by a huge amount. I only copied a fraction of my notes. Would you like more?

I can run ChatGPT myself, thanks. Why don't you try thinking for yourself and considering the possibility that your presuppositions are wrong?

[HervalFreire]

>You can't just handwave away complexity. It's entirely possible for the US to have too little regulation in some fields and too much regulation in other fields.

I didn't handwave anything. My answer is sufficiently complex with multitudes of counter examples to your point.

The whole thing with the massive list of examples is to illustrate a general point on the lack of business regulation overall in the US.

I literally stated it's the ratio of failures to successes that matters here. If I can produce 30 examples of the US failing to regulate and you produce one, that speaks to an overall generality that eclipses your example.

The arena of scientific validation is hard to establish here. Neither of us can paint a picture of the entire domain of every single failure and success of regulatory laws in existence for the US. So given the nature of this debate just list as many general examples as possible.

You have nuclear power as one, that's it.

>I never claimed otherwise. But why would a conservative think tank, which favors less business regulations, not even put the US on the top ten list of most "economically free" countries if the US is so underregulated? Why would they prefer the regulatory environment in Denmark and Sweden over the regulatory environment in the United States?

Don't know. The motivations of such groups are complex and multifaceted. Following some breadcrumb trail to get at the root of it is too much effort. I only know that this group is biased and not a neutral party. There's no point in vetting a known compromised source. Pick a valid one.

>So when I bring up examples they're "exceptions", but while you bring up examples, they're examples of the rule. When I cite sources that do an overall survey of a country's regulatory environment, that's "biased", but when you cite a source that makes their money by helping companies comply with food regulations, that's just fine.

Yeah you cited one bogus example from the heritage foundation. All my examples are real. Unlike yours.

>I can run ChatGPT myself, thanks. Why don't you try thinking for yourself and considering the possibility that your presuppositions are wrong?

Highly disagree. Your answers are inferior to anything chatGPT can come up with so obviously you likely can't run it yourself.

[philwelch]

> The whole thing with the massive list of examples is to illustrate a general point on the lack of business regulation overall in the US. I literally stated it's the ratio of failures to successes that matters here. If I can produce 30 examples of the US failing to regulate and you produce one, that speaks to an overall generality that eclipses your example.

Your list produces nothing of the kind, as I tediously went out of my way to demonstrate.

> I only know that this group is biased and not a neutral party. There's no point in vetting a known compromised source. Pick a valid one.

You haven't provided any valid sources yourself.

> Highly disagree. Your answers are inferior to anything chatGPT can come up with so obviously you likely can't run it yourself.

Well, that's just your opinion, and it's an opinion that reflects more on your poor judgment than on me.