[fumar]

Is regulation unregulated in the US? As in it’s missing consistency and transparency. Beyond Anthropic, the US signals to the world that depending and using American solutions is high risk. Is that what the US government desires? The digital battleground across regions is on the rise. I don’t see us as the US on the right path.

[tomjakubowski]

In the US regulation is, in theory, regulated by Congress, which passes laws granting regulation powers to the federal agencies. Congress and the laws it passes are, in theory, regulated by the Constitution, and interpretation thereof by the Supreme Court.

[quantified]

Regulation is always by motivation. Charges can be delayed, cops can decide not to arrest, prosecutors can decide not to prosecute, etc.

Government was supposed to be high-trust, but Nixon weakened the trust, Reagan explicitly took aim at it and lots of people went along. Now the reactionaries run things. Cancer in the brain.

[sp4cec0wb0y]

And the supreme court is unregulated (except for appointment and impeachment).

[ckozlowski]

Well, that and, by passing additional legislation.

There's two parts to this. The first is that in most cases, the issues stem from lack of clarity in existing legislation, or contradictions thereof. At anytime, if Congress does not like the way the Supreme Court ruled, they can pass different legislation.

The second stems in part from the first. If what Congress passed is interpreted as being unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the States can amend the constitution.

There is no case where the Supreme Court can (in principle) simply make their own rules*

The debate and controversy comes where the Supreme Court is seen as making their own rules (or arguably asked to) because the legislative process is deemed too cumbersome or disadvantageous to a party. In my opinion, this is where a lot of the difficulties lie, in that the Supreme Court is asked to rule on matters that really should be more clearly legislated. But the issues are seen as easier/quicker to address by convincing 9 justices rather than two legislative bodies and a chief executive. Naturally, this brings it's own consequences.

[ceejayoz]

> Well, that and, by passing additional legislation.

The Voting Rights Act might disagree on that.

> There is no case where the Supreme Court can (in principle) simply make their own rules.

With at least one significant exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

[advisedwang]

While true, it doesn't have to be.

US Constitution Article III Section 2 Clause 2 which says the supreme court's appellate jurisdiction is subject to "Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." So Congress could, for example, require the supreme court to hear every case appealed to them instead of letting the justices pick their cases. Or it could require judges to recuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest*. Or it could forbid the court hearing cases where an en banc appeals court was unanimous.

* which could have more teeth than the self-imposed ethics rules for conflict of interest that the court has now.

[matheusmoreira]

> Is that what the US government desires?

The US desires to show its own citizens and the world how painful it is not to submit to the US government. They're leveraging everything they've got.

The only rational response when faced with this sort of behavior is to reduce dependence on and exposure to the US as much as possible. Develop national technology. Dedollarize the economy. Invest in and use open weight models.

[jstummbillig]

> Is regulation unregulated in the US? As in it’s missing consistency and transparency.

Institutions are not built around zero trust. Because when we assume attackers are identifiable, and there is some level of integrity, that makes things a lot simpler and cheaper.

I will not expect my pediatrician to want to kill my child and they certainly could, but it would be completely bonkers to try to guard against that.

The level of damage that a single really motivated, disgruntled person with a lot of power can do in most settings is intense. The cost inflicted if we tried to build guardrails against all of it is insane, and it probably would never work.

[vitally3643]

Actually, the traditional guardrails we've always had are plenty. If a doctor starts trying to kill patients they are removed from society (they go to jail for a long time).

Traditionally this was applied to people in power with the power of a good old fashioned lynch mob. If you obtain great power and use it to start hurting large numbers of people, the citizenry at large would drag that person out into the street and behead or beat them to death.

It worked pretty well for all societies throughout history, including the West. If a person becomes a danger to society, they should be removed from society with proportional prejudice. That's the guardrail society has always had.

Problem is now that those in power have managed to convince large fractions of the population that it's wrong to say mean things about sociopathic mass murderers and child rapists or the guy who is actively trying to kill you personally.

[ryandrake]

> If a doctor starts trying to kill patients they are removed from society (they go to jail for a long time).

Unfortunately we don't seem to have the ability to do the same for corporations. If a person starts killing or robbing people, they get arrested and are removed from society. If a corporation starts killing or robbing people, they maybe get a strongly worded letter, maybe have their CEO say a few words in front of Congress, and maybe get a token fine amounting to 0.001% of their revenue (which they will appeal for ten years). But for whatever reason, we don't seem to have the guts to remove a badly behaving corporation from society--no matter what heinous things they are doing, no matter what laws they are breaking.

[cadamsdotcom]

> Problem is now that those in power have managed to convince large fractions of the population that it's wrong to say mean things about sociopathic mass murderers and child rapists or the guy who is actively trying to kill you personally.

Actually, civil societies granted a monopoly on violence to the government which vests that in police and military. It’s a far better system than random justice because it’s predictable and you know upfront what’ll trigger it.

That system had its flaws, but despite that it was working pretty well until those flaws were found and exploited allowing it to be captured.

[ajju]

The current administration's actions are for sure signaling a distinct lack of predictability or stability.

The U.S. is either harming itself erratically, or systematically enforcing control on US based businesses in a way that is historically more synonymous with, say, China.

A lot of us worry it is the former. I wonder if it's better or worse if it is the latter. The US, having seen that Europe and the world seem to tolerate interference by CPC based on opinions expressed by Alibaba or Chinese car companies, may have decided that it's fair game.

[digitaltrees]

Actually they’re predictable: loyalty and submission to trump personally. Every thing flow from that. It’s not the rule of law.

[davidw]

They don't care about the long term - it's a smash and grab to get as much as they can while they can.

[zaptheimpaler]

So far the other countries are doing a lot of talking and big government initiatives but nothing has really changed. All the best talent still moves to the US, all the VCs are still unimaginative losers who want 5 meetings to give you $50K, the industry titans are still sclerotic and unable to distinguish their head from their ass, the culture doesn't support risk-taking or innovation. The biggest boom of the next 10 years is AI and it is firmly HQ'ed and centred in the US, as usual. The EU had a predecessor to the Chips Act in 2013 [1] that went nowhere, then a Chips Act that went nowhere, and now a Chips Act 2.0! It would be great to have more options but it doesn't seem like other regions outside China are capable of doing anything at all.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoX9OIR-DI

[baggachipz]

> I don’t see us as the US on the right path.

I think this can be said in many contexts these days.

[zombot]

> I don’t see us as the US on the right path.

Is anyone still assuming the administration's actions have anything to do with US national interests?

[advisedwang]

> Is regulation unregulated in the US?

For the most part no. The Administrative Procedures Act outlines a fairly robust process for rulemaking (ie regulations must go through a notice period, must be justified etc) and adjudication (ie per-person decisions must have notice, ability to have counsel, be appealable etc).

However there's also lots of authority given to the president (and executive office of the president) to which the APA doesn't apply. This includes powers the constitution gives to the president directly and (mostly emergency) powers congress gives to the president. Sadly political processes and supreme court cases have hugely increases what can be done with this*.

Moreover, it's been a frequent pattern (over many decades, but especially under Trump) for the president to simply nakedly overstep their authority. Sometimes there's no push back (see: 9/11); sometimes the damage is done even if it's eventually overruled. Never is there any consequences though, so the pattern repeats.

* E.g. The president's control of the military is supposed to be checked by congress deciding when to declare war. However the war powers act has in practice played out to allow the president to unilaterally start wars, especially as the supreme court has stepped in to make the war powers act less effective.

[andai]

Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake. –Sun Tzu

[ryandrake]

Unfortunately, in the USA, we are stuck with two parties. Measured along axes of competence and capability of taking action: The (D) party is competent+incapable, and the (R) party is incompetent+capable. So every four years we get to choose between governance that knows what it is doing but too paralyzed to act, and governance that doesn't know what it is doing but acts with impunity.

[guelo]

I don't think that's true about Ds being incapable. For example Biden's Inflation Reduction Act has been very successful at boosting clean energy industry, creating jobs, lowering emissions. Including huge benefits to red states. The problem is a lot of times Democratic solutions, like Obamacare, are too technocratic, or the benefit is too diffuse for people to notice. There's also the issue of the huge growth of the right wing's propaganda power successfully hiding any D achievements from voters.

[quantified]

D's absolutely suck at messaging, and they are not that good about cohesion. Of course, being overly cohesive leads to problems as we see in today's world.