[thatcat]

Political will shouldn't be required to enforce existing law. If i started a 1 man illegal taxi service it would be shut down even though it has little effect on the community, but saudi vc funded startup wasn't shut down even though it violated laws in every major city. That is a weird asymmetry as a us citizen.

[AnthonyMouse]

What's really happening here is that the laws are supposed to reflect the political will, i.e. the will of the people, but in many cases they don't, because the lawmakers have been captured by incumbents.

Then if a little guy comes in and tries to challenge them, they don't have the resources to resist the incumbents' pocket government officials and get destroyed. But if a big fish does it, people actually notice if the government tries to enforce stupid laws against them, and then government officials are afraid to do it because the public would not only not like it but actually notice the unreasonableness of the law.

But the problem here isn't that the law isn't being enforced against a well-heeled challenger, it's that those laws exist to be enforced against the little guy, when they should instead be repealed.

[thatcat]

i will simply disagree that the dominant social dynamic leading to this favoring of foriegn capital over us law is not systemic corruption.

[AnthonyMouse]

So there are two different categories of things here. One is, they ban cannabis and put individuals in prison for it, but then if you pay thousands a year for overpriced health insurance and the insurance pays thousands of dollars for a doctor to ask you some cursory questions and a pharma company to manufacture the drug, you can get a prescription for opioids, which are way more dangerous. But that isn't the big guys violating the law, it's them following a law that they bought and paid for. That's bad in a different way.

The relevant thing here would be that they pass excessive copyright laws, but then Meta violates them and maybe gets away with it because they're doing it in a sympathetic way and the government doesn't want to hamstring emerging industries in their country, whereas if an individual would be sued into oblivion even if the thing they were doing was equally sympathetic.

Because it's not just about the public noticing it, it's about the public noticing it in time to do something about it. If an individual gets sued or arrested, they're immediately screwed and will be under pressure to settle or plea bargain before they're bankrupted by legal fees. But once they do, the case is over. Whereas large companies can fight, or pay lawyers to stall while they wage a media campaign to counter the usual imperious press releases from the prosecution, or use their money to lobby the government while public opinion is in their favor.

[thatcat]

I mean there are examples in the same category as well: how many years was it illegally exported from dispensaties between states? New state legalizes? day one the corporate dispensary is stocked which is curious since it takes several months to grow. Also, lots of foriegn capital involved in the industry.

Not just meta, Open AI, spotify, youtube...its become a routine exception and can now be relied upon.

I agree that the legal fees could be a big factor, but it seems cases aren't even filed.