[temphn]

Cool man. Thanks for being civil as I was probably too heated in my response. I'd say that many regulations, like many political policies, sound good in the abstract. But the devil is in the details. It's the execution, not the idea! :) And I think the execution is where city government is lacking, perhaps in part due to poor incentives (i.e. not getting paid in proportion to the extent that the ideal is actually achieved).

[larsonf]

I think it comes down to who we think the battle is against.

One narrative says that it's murky industrial cooperatives lobbying to stay incumbent that keeps these new startups down. And the resulting laws are/were formed from not-so-good-intentions and are needlessly complicated or antiquated because of that.

But it's worse than that. Some laws are purposely complicated because of special interest pressure, sure, but the big ones--the Goliath ones--are well-intentioned laws passed by regulators concerned mainly how to protect the people. And not only are these on the books, but they've become embedded in common sense. I mean, look at my earlier response, I said it was "obvious" that these laws do in fact protect. The battle is convincing the public that, no, this stuff is antiquated, and that we really do have methods that make this and that regulation obsolete.

But focusing the attention on bad-intentioned industrial groups is the wrong approach and will never win against the regulatory momentum of the democratic state.