[wpietri]

> Such a waste of time trying intently to regulate and control communication.

It's not an overall waste of time, because the goal is to reduce the enormous wastes caused by fraud, crime, and other malfeasance.

I know somebody who worked at a bank. The bank had a mandatory vacation policy: you had to be 100% gone for at least two solid weeks every year. When outsiders heard about this, they were often indignant. Who is the company to tell me how I spend my vacation? I know best when I need to rest. Why are they trying to regulate and control so much?

But the policy was about preventing crime. There are kinds of fraud where one person can keep it going a long time if they're around to fiddle things manually. But a couple of weeks of absence, plus the cross-training that goes with it, can keep those kinds of frauds from ever happening. And when they do happen, they stay much smaller.

As an example of why fighting fraud is vital to a bank, you could look at the failure of Barings Bank. One guy was able to fiddle the accounts to hide his losses, gaining a reputation as a trading genius. He started with a little deception, and it spiraled out of control over the years, eventually destroying a bank that had survived more than two centuries.

When compared with the destruction of the bank, making sure that supervisors can see what an employee is getting up to is a pretty small waste in comparison.

[ativzzz]

Is this one of those cases where it ends up causing death by regulation?

Take the pharmaceutical industry in the US. One reason it's so expensive for them to operate is the massive amount of rules and regulations that surround their work and cause them to hire tons more highly skilled personnel in order to meet those regulations just to get work done.

Now all those rules exist because someone did something bad and the rules prevent those bad things from happening again, which is a good thing. However, it increases the cost of doing business, and over time, as these rules and regulations pile up, everything gets more and more expensive and complex.

It's unfortunate that we as a society now have to pay for the actions of a bad actor in perpetuity. I don't know of a good alternative, because again these rules exist for a reason. Fraud is obviously bad, and people will constantly take advantage of the system until we regulate it more and more, but then normal rule followers pay the price.

[wpietri]

Is your contention that the pharmaceutical industry is dying? Or that it has insufficient lobbying power to push back against regulations that don't improve safety in proportion to their costs?

But to answer your direct question, I think the answer is a pretty clear no. Financial companies invest a ton in communications. If there's a buck to be made from improving their tools so that their employees can communicate faster, they'll get around to it eventually. They'll just do it with tools that provide the sort of proper records that they've been obliged to keep since forever.

[ativzzz]

Not that it's dying at all - it just makes it more expensive for them to do literally anything. That cost ultimately trickles down to the consumer. The entire US healthcare industry contributes to this. It's extremely regulated, usually for good reason, but the consequences are that there are tons of middle men, bureaucracy, and inefficiency that makes the end product more expensive

And the safety is probably correct. It's a problem that I'm not sure how to address

[wpietri]

So one, if it's not pharma who's dying, who are you asserting is dying from regulation?

Two, you're ignoring the externalities here. Most regulations exist to account for negative externalities. If I sell big cookies on the street for $5 each and 1 person in 10 dies from eating my cookies, then my $50 in revenue has to be compared against the cost of the death. Food safety regulations have costs to be sure, but we have to measure them against the harm averted.

If a product is more expensive because its makers have to be more careful, then that's not inefficient. It's people having to pay the true costs of the product, which is more efficient overall.

It's also true that regulation can be inefficient, of course. But the solution for that is primarily for producers to be responsible members of society, and secondarily for them to work closely with regulators to find effective regulation at minimal cost.

But if effective regulation that properly places costs kills a company or an industry, I'd argue that industry should not exist in the first place. Something we're seeing rediscovered in real time with people like Sam Bankman-Fried.

[developer93]

I'm always cynical when I hear arguments like this, I feel like it's the profit motive which is more to blame. They need to justify those prices somehow, and reducing payouts to shareholders or C-levels would be unthinkable.

[ativzzz]

I don't disagree with you - I'm just pointing out that when profit margins decrease, prices increase and the customer ends up paying for it

in "free market" conditions, there should be players who can compete by not increasing prices, but due to the increasing number of regulations, it becomes impossible for smaller players to enter the market or exist in the market, so nobody can come in and take advantage of lowering prices, so prices just go up and up

Again these regulations usually exist for good reason, it just makes the market less efficient and drives prices up over time

[polygamous_bat]

> in "free market" conditions, there should be players who can compete by not increasing prices

In a free market without regulation, the "rational" thing to do is to flood the market with fake "life saving drugs" and reap the (almost) infinite ROI.

In a less hyperbolic sense, the nature of "market" dictates we cut corners wherever possible. When it's a matter of life and death, the public chose to legislate which corners cannot be cut.

[b2337c8ad7bd]

> When compared with the destruction of the bank, making sure that supervisors can see what an employee is getting up to is a pretty small waste in comparison.

But they can't see this according to the comment to which you're responding; that's the problem.

[wpietri]

They will do it a lot less when it turns out that it's illegal or will get them fired. Which is what the article we're discussing is about.

[JohnFen]

> When outsiders heard about this, they were often indignant. Who is the company to tell me how I spend my vacation?

They're the employer and get to set reasonable conditions for employment, that's who they are.