There's a reason for most regulations - most of them are written in blood.
Now sure, you may be the one "good corporation" out there, who will do things the right way and (edit: not) sell a cheap product or mislead anyone. But if the regulations aren't super stringent, others will undercut you by skimping on safety/emissions and selling a similar product for way less.
It becomes too tempting to cheat otherwise - see Dieselgate / VW, for example. Make it possible to easily profit by cheating (via relaxed regulations) and people will. Again, not you specifically (maybe), but people in general.
Since we can't tell what kind of person you are, REALLY - SBF also told people to trust him, for example - onerous regulations are required.
Plus, I love how on the main page advertising to companies, Revoy advertises 3x-to-5x better fuel efficiency - I'm guessing this one is the one they'll need to back up and officially achieve or companies will dump them / sue.
In the blog post, he claims 94% less fuel and 7 mpg to 120 mpg. I don't see how 7 mpg to 120 mpg is "only" 3x-5x better fuel efficiency - it seems like it's more 17x. Sounds to me like he's exaggerating the effect in the blog to try to get sympathy.
No they are not and we'd probably just have less blood if we spilt the blood of everyone who knee jerk allege this.
The pretext is the blood. Something happens to create public approval for regulation. Then all the interested parties sink their teeth into it and get every pound of flesh they can, typically creating a compliance industry and government work out of thin air.
You don't get Dieselgsate without convoluted regulation and compliance industries. You can't game a complex text without a complex test to be gamed.
Have you ever actually done anything regulated that's bigger than a cookie cutter home improvement project? If anything the author is being too mild.
>There's a reason for most regulations - most of them are written in blood.
Excellent thought terminating cliche. There might be a reason (cause) but there's rarely an available justification.
Regulations dont exist on a spectrum between Hard (good) and Easy (COMPANIES ARE CHEATING NOW). Regulations compel specific actions and block specific actions. Its impossible to fit every regulation into your head to form an opinion on all of them. Taking a stand at "All regulations are good" or "all regulations are bad" is just signalling that you have never dealt with them.
Having worked with multiple companies in multiple legal jurisdictions I can tell you that I have a vast VAST preference for Canada. They talk a big game, but in my honest opinion they have a lower regulatory overhead in certain areas (the ones that affect me) than Australia or the USA.
Heres an excerpt from a canadian government website regarding building a telco tower.
"The Government of Canada is not involved in the specifics of tower installations, but we do set the law; it's called the Radiocommunication Act. Providing technical requirements are met, we only get involved when there is an impasse between the municipality and the company. In these rare cases, we look at the facts and provide a decision."
A Tower build that costs 5 - 10k in rural canada, can cost 100k+ in Australia.
So rural canadian internet providers build more, and service more people. Cause : Effect.
The last time I looked at a tower build for a customer in Australia, we lost interest trying to get a quote for the environmental impact statement required by the state it was to be built in.
Towers, are not 10x more destructive or dangerous in australia than canada. Actually with snow season knocking so many down, the reverse is true. But providers and local governments have the flexibility to make arrangements to service customers.
You need to drop this weird, reflexive defense of regulations, and consider that regulations prevent services, and regulations really do require justification. The Regulator owes you a justification. You are probably poorer for some regulations and those regulations may not be justified.
Another semi relevant example. Gold Coast cops have unlimited search and seizure powers. The "Cause" they display on posters everywhere. A child got stabbed, the parents pushed to change the law to invade everyones privacy on their deceased childs behalf. They tell you the blood cause of the law, but there's no justification for the invasion of privacy or ongoing justification in lives supposedly saved. Just police getting the ability to ruin more peoples lives.
> As one example, one state agency has asked Revoy to do certified engine testing to prove that the Revoy doesn’t increase emissions of semi trucks. And that Revoy must do this certification across every single truck engine family. It costs $100,000 per certification and there are more than 270 engine families for the 9 engines that our initial partners use. That’s $27,000,000 for this one regulatory item. And keep in mind that this is to certify that a device—whose sole reason for existence is to cut pollution by >90%, and which has demonstrably done so across nearly 100,000 miles of testing and operations—is not increasing the emissions of the truck. It’s a complete waste of money for everyone.
The problem isn’t that regulations exist. The problem is that they are defined in a way that reasonable work arounds or alternative pathways do not exist for situations like this. 270 engine families for 9 engine suggests that the designs may be small variations that would not significantly change the emissions between them. The bureaucrats should waive off some requirements here.
The other alternative that I can think of is that experimental engines get an exception to be not certified for X miles of operation. Once the candidates are chosen for mass production, mandatory certifications can be introduced. Even if your new design doubles the emissions for some reason, over 100000 miles, that’s barely a drop in the bucket. For reference, double the emissions for 100000 miles is roughly equivalent to having an extra semi on the road for a year, which is nothing.
We need more information. How does this work for internal combustion truck engines?
Is the regulation well intentioned poorly designed? Is it anti-competitive gatekeeping drafted by lobbyists? Is the author misrepresenting something? All of the above? Hard to say.
You cannot separate the idea of regulation from their harm because they are inherent to the concept. A system so complex and dynamical as human civilization is beyond our ability to correctly ascertain the outcome of interventions, especially those imposed from the top down. In other words, we're likely to do more harm than good by imposing interventions because we cannot accurately predict their outcomes. Which is why they often have paradoxical effects. Rent control is a fantastic if trivial example of such.
We know central planning doesn't work, yet we are inclined to do it anyway under the false notion that it's better to do something rather than nothing.
>Rent control is a fantastic if trivial example of such.
No it isn't. Rent control is made to provide short term relief. Regulations tend to be long term requriements. Of course making a short term temporary solution long term does not work.
>we're likely to do more harm than good by imposing interventions because we cannot accurately predict their outcomes
For policy, I think it is important to be risk averse. Regulations are extremely risk averse. Slowing down reckless actions so that people don't die should be considered a good thing. Of course, that can be anathema to businesses who rush to be first to market.
I don't see regulations being a problem here, but the cost of the regulations. Instead of focusing on de-regulations we look into what that 100k certification is going to? Hopefully not yet another for-profit middleman with incentives to bog the process down.
Why's that? Because a guy who's apparently friends with the owner of the company that produces these things told you that it saves emissions? Doesn't it seem reasonable to verify these claims?
No that doesn't seem reasonable at all if it's been proven to work _really well_ in several configurations and there's no particular reason to expect that the results would be drastically different in other very similar configurations.
That's what regulatory exemption procedures exist for, and it would be the logical next step if you had convincing hard data.
Every single regulatory process has them, so the fact that this very ranty article omits any mention of an attempt to use them is highly suspect.
I've worked with plenty of systems where for all sorts of reasons exemptions are granted for the express purpose of promoting innovation or recognizing a special circumstance.
Yeah why does the certification process cost so much is one question I have. Would this be a conversation if the cost of the test were more reasonable?
Having dealt with regulatory bodies before - they probably did lose their job, maybe multiple times, before becoming an engineer that doesn't have to engineer anything, just come up with rules.
This is China's secret weapon, and why we may still have supremacy over Software, with the Internet...and perhaps, if we are lucky and we don't regulate it to death... with AI
Seems somewhat reasonable. I don’t know why the company is supporting all 270 engine families.
This company wants to put a bunch of stuff on the road going 70mph that could crash into you and kill you and is complaining about a measly $27 million of regulatory cost.
They are making up a bunch of scary numbers about the cost of the status quo and the tone of the article is basically holding us all hostage. Speed out special snowflake startup company through the regulatory process (written in blood) or else you’ll lose bajillions of dollars in suffering and pain from the “status quo.”
$27 million is basically a rounding error for automotive companies. Maybe do better at raising funds next time, bro.
I assume that out of 270 entire families that some are more popular than others? Why not pick the 20-30 most popular ones?
The tone of this article is that OP’s company has a savior complex. If they aren’t given expedient special treatment regulatory approval, the status quo is causing a bunch of fake make up dollar values of damage. It’s kind of a gross tone.
Presumably they have so many families to serve their customers well. If they were to consolidate their engine families in such a way to avoid paying as much money to regulatory processes, that seems like a bit of a perverse incentive and outcome.
In my view though the goal of the regulation isn't bad, but the cost of the process is prohibitive. Why is it so expensive to measure engine emissions?
>As one example, one state agency has asked Revoy to do certified engine testing to prove that the Revoy doesn’t increase emissions of semi trucks.
Where in this sentence is asbestos mentioned? As for the families, if they know their product works in 270 engine families why would they chose to only sell to 20-30?
This company's business is regulatory arbitrage. Of course they have to deal with regulators. Capturing CO2 and pumping it into the ground is not a commercial enterprise. It's something done to get some sort of regulatory credit.
Edison Motors, a manufacturer of hybrid and electric semi and other trucks in Canada, is currently battling regulation. They have a series of videos on their Youtube channel going over what's been taking place.
That was pretty surprising when I saw it unfold. Especially because they utilised state grants specifically to achieve the goal they are now being blocked by regulation on.
>I’ve been shocked to find that the single biggest barrier—by far—is over-regulation from the massive depth of bureaucracy.
Every regulation loving person who is exposed to a tiny fragment of how actually terrible most regulatory frameworks are immediately have this thought.
Everyone should read or at least be familiar with Joseph Tainter and his research on societal collapse.
> “It is suggested that the increased costs of sociopolitical evolution frequently reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. This is to say that the benefit/investment ratio of sociopolitical complexity follows the marginal product curve… After a certain point, increased investments in complexity fail to yield proportionately increasing returns. Marginal returns decline and marginal costs rise. Complexity as a strategy becomes increasingly costly, and yields decreasing marginal benefits.”
Government regulation and intervention are one such contributor to complexity, and as Michael Huemer demonstrates in his paper In Praise of Passivity we are akin to medieval doctors administering medical procedures on society that are more likely to cause harm than create benefits.
It's fairly clear to me that our civilization is in decline, and it pains me to no end to see people push for more regulation and government intervention. "The patient is getting sicker, we need to let more blood! Fetch me more leaches!"
The good news is that collapse, as Tainter puts it, isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a return to less complexity, and it often brings great benefits to large swathes of people. For example, the collapse of the Roman Empire was beneficial to serfs who would actually welcome raiding parties into their villages.
Good lord the tone of this article is insufferable. "We're saving the world! It's so unreasonable anyone ask us to verify these claims because we're saving the world!"
So true — this thing is designed to go on our streets; I expect an attitude of maximum compliance. This shit can literally kill you if something goes wrong?
The testing is solely about emissions, it's an electric powertrain dolly and they want it to be proven it doesn't increase emissions rather than decrease them. It has nothing to do with safety as far as on road safety is concerned.
I was just reading an NYT article about lead battery recyclers in Africa and how their operations are basically unregulated and are poisoning entire towns.
Things going a little slow or costing a little more is very often preferable to the alternative where you begin operations recklessly and negatively impact neighbors, sometimes irreparably.
The US can't do much about other countries. We can definitely control how and who we outsource to, but the past 30 years of US government doesn't make me confident that we'll do that anytime soon.
But that's a tiny bit tangential from regulations.
“All outsourced, vendor, and subcontractor companies down the entire production/waste chain to the raw material must meet US environmental regulations.”
When someone says being overweight is bad, do you think they are saying they shouldn't exist at all?
Of course not, they want to be a normal weight. That's the discussion reasonable people hope to have about regulation. Your strawman isn't welcome here -- I've never seen anyone seriously argue that ALL regulations should be removed.
> I've never seen anyone seriously argue that ALL regulations should be removed.
I've been seeing it in real time this entire year in my country.
And yes, on certain topics I see it here quite a bit. Maybe not "ALL" regulation, but some members of the community have an extremely libertarian take on conducting business.
Meanwhile the established players with connections can break all the laws they want, and pay zero taxes to boot.
I think the problem isn't regulation (which the current admin is aggressively destroying, e.g. with the EPA) so much as corruption - which manifests partly as critical government functions being deliberately starved of resources. Regulatory bodies should get more funding to study and approve new technologies, and there should be more subsidies available for smaller innovators to offset the R&D investments and application waiting periods. That wouldn't be in the interest of big polluters and their captive politicians though.
He described “the missed acceleration in sales” of pumping Liquid Smoke down old oil wells as “a direct hard cost” of the regulatory regime. That tells me all I need to know about our narrator’s intellectual honesty.
I’m open to being convinced that there are better ways of doing things, but despite what half a century of propaganda has been saying, regulations generally aren’t enacted for funsies. They’re there for a reason, specially the reason that in the absence of those regulations, commercial actors were privatizing profit at the expense of society as a whole, and democratic society made a decision to make rules to stop that from happening.
“Regulation obviously has a critical role in protecting people and the environment”
and then quantifies “a mindblowing $40m/year in healthcare costs” and a total of “about $400M” in societal cost from one delay, mostly borne by the public.
In that context, the line you are reacting to is just one item in a long list:
“We’ve also spent untold millions on regulatory affairs at all levels of government, not to mention the missed acceleration in sales”
He even says,
“What pains me most is the 5 years of lost carbon removal and pollutant reduction”
So the piece is not “regulations bad, profits good.” It is: regulations are essential, but the current process is generating huge public harms by slowing down tech whose whole purpose is to reduce pollution.
Maybe he’s wrong on any given point, but he’s clearly trying to describe the utilitarian trade-offs in good faith
> regulations are essential, but the current process is generating huge public harms by slowing down tech whose whole purpose is to reduce pollution.
I hear this with a call to action of "we need to deregulate to help reduce pollution". And not the real call to action in that "these regulations need an overhaul". The title of "over-regulations" and the general tone seems to place the issue as an obstacle to be eliminated, not a system to be corrected.
There's a reason for most regulations - most of them are written in blood.
Now sure, you may be the one "good corporation" out there, who will do things the right way and (edit: not) sell a cheap product or mislead anyone. But if the regulations aren't super stringent, others will undercut you by skimping on safety/emissions and selling a similar product for way less.
It becomes too tempting to cheat otherwise - see Dieselgate / VW, for example. Make it possible to easily profit by cheating (via relaxed regulations) and people will. Again, not you specifically (maybe), but people in general.
Since we can't tell what kind of person you are, REALLY - SBF also told people to trust him, for example - onerous regulations are required.
Plus, I love how on the main page advertising to companies, Revoy advertises 3x-to-5x better fuel efficiency - I'm guessing this one is the one they'll need to back up and officially achieve or companies will dump them / sue.
In the blog post, he claims 94% less fuel and 7 mpg to 120 mpg. I don't see how 7 mpg to 120 mpg is "only" 3x-5x better fuel efficiency - it seems like it's more 17x. Sounds to me like he's exaggerating the effect in the blog to try to get sympathy.
No they are not and we'd probably just have less blood if we spilt the blood of everyone who knee jerk allege this.
The pretext is the blood. Something happens to create public approval for regulation. Then all the interested parties sink their teeth into it and get every pound of flesh they can, typically creating a compliance industry and government work out of thin air.
You don't get Dieselgsate without convoluted regulation and compliance industries. You can't game a complex text without a complex test to be gamed.
Have you ever actually done anything regulated that's bigger than a cookie cutter home improvement project? If anything the author is being too mild.
>There's a reason for most regulations - most of them are written in blood.
Excellent thought terminating cliche. There might be a reason (cause) but there's rarely an available justification.
Regulations dont exist on a spectrum between Hard (good) and Easy (COMPANIES ARE CHEATING NOW). Regulations compel specific actions and block specific actions. Its impossible to fit every regulation into your head to form an opinion on all of them. Taking a stand at "All regulations are good" or "all regulations are bad" is just signalling that you have never dealt with them.
Having worked with multiple companies in multiple legal jurisdictions I can tell you that I have a vast VAST preference for Canada. They talk a big game, but in my honest opinion they have a lower regulatory overhead in certain areas (the ones that affect me) than Australia or the USA.
Heres an excerpt from a canadian government website regarding building a telco tower.
"The Government of Canada is not involved in the specifics of tower installations, but we do set the law; it's called the Radiocommunication Act. Providing technical requirements are met, we only get involved when there is an impasse between the municipality and the company. In these rare cases, we look at the facts and provide a decision."
A Tower build that costs 5 - 10k in rural canada, can cost 100k+ in Australia.
So rural canadian internet providers build more, and service more people. Cause : Effect.
The last time I looked at a tower build for a customer in Australia, we lost interest trying to get a quote for the environmental impact statement required by the state it was to be built in.
Towers, are not 10x more destructive or dangerous in australia than canada. Actually with snow season knocking so many down, the reverse is true. But providers and local governments have the flexibility to make arrangements to service customers.
You need to drop this weird, reflexive defense of regulations, and consider that regulations prevent services, and regulations really do require justification. The Regulator owes you a justification. You are probably poorer for some regulations and those regulations may not be justified.
Another semi relevant example. Gold Coast cops have unlimited search and seizure powers. The "Cause" they display on posters everywhere. A child got stabbed, the parents pushed to change the law to invade everyones privacy on their deceased childs behalf. They tell you the blood cause of the law, but there's no justification for the invasion of privacy or ongoing justification in lives supposedly saved. Just police getting the ability to ruin more peoples lives.
> But if the regulations aren't super stringent, others will undercut you by skimping on safety/emissions and selling a similar product for way less.
Yup. For example: this is why the US automakers have shoved all the Brodozers down everybody's throats; it let them duck efficiency requirements.
> As one example, one state agency has asked Revoy to do certified engine testing to prove that the Revoy doesn’t increase emissions of semi trucks. And that Revoy must do this certification across every single truck engine family. It costs $100,000 per certification and there are more than 270 engine families for the 9 engines that our initial partners use. That’s $27,000,000 for this one regulatory item. And keep in mind that this is to certify that a device—whose sole reason for existence is to cut pollution by >90%, and which has demonstrably done so across nearly 100,000 miles of testing and operations—is not increasing the emissions of the truck. It’s a complete waste of money for everyone.
Wild - whoever did this should lose their job.
The problem isn’t that regulations exist. The problem is that they are defined in a way that reasonable work arounds or alternative pathways do not exist for situations like this. 270 engine families for 9 engine suggests that the designs may be small variations that would not significantly change the emissions between them. The bureaucrats should waive off some requirements here.
The other alternative that I can think of is that experimental engines get an exception to be not certified for X miles of operation. Once the candidates are chosen for mass production, mandatory certifications can be introduced. Even if your new design doubles the emissions for some reason, over 100000 miles, that’s barely a drop in the bucket. For reference, double the emissions for 100000 miles is roughly equivalent to having an extra semi on the road for a year, which is nothing.
We need more information. How does this work for internal combustion truck engines?
Is the regulation well intentioned poorly designed? Is it anti-competitive gatekeeping drafted by lobbyists? Is the author misrepresenting something? All of the above? Hard to say.
You cannot separate the idea of regulation from their harm because they are inherent to the concept. A system so complex and dynamical as human civilization is beyond our ability to correctly ascertain the outcome of interventions, especially those imposed from the top down. In other words, we're likely to do more harm than good by imposing interventions because we cannot accurately predict their outcomes. Which is why they often have paradoxical effects. Rent control is a fantastic if trivial example of such.
We know central planning doesn't work, yet we are inclined to do it anyway under the false notion that it's better to do something rather than nothing.
>Rent control is a fantastic if trivial example of such.
No it isn't. Rent control is made to provide short term relief. Regulations tend to be long term requriements. Of course making a short term temporary solution long term does not work.
>we're likely to do more harm than good by imposing interventions because we cannot accurately predict their outcomes
For policy, I think it is important to be risk averse. Regulations are extremely risk averse. Slowing down reckless actions so that people don't die should be considered a good thing. Of course, that can be anathema to businesses who rush to be first to market.
I don't see regulations being a problem here, but the cost of the regulations. Instead of focusing on de-regulations we look into what that 100k certification is going to? Hopefully not yet another for-profit middleman with incentives to bog the process down.
The "we" that knows central planning doesn't work and the "we" inclined toward central planning are the same?
If so, I've not met this group of people, but I'd like to share your first point with them because I tend to agree.
>Wild - whoever did this should lose their job.
Why's that? Because a guy who's apparently friends with the owner of the company that produces these things told you that it saves emissions? Doesn't it seem reasonable to verify these claims?
Of course we should verify such claims.
Just as we should also verify claims that every regulation that has ever been written into law is by definition Good (tm) and can never be questioned.
It's possible for the friend of the company owner to astroturf an online form to get a good regulation eliminated, just because it didn't benefit him.
It's also possible for the such wealthy individuals to astrotruf in favour of bad regulations, just because it would benefit him.
The null hypothesis is that interventions are just as if not more likely to cause harm than do good.
Aren't regulations a form of intervention?
No that doesn't seem reasonable at all if it's been proven to work _really well_ in several configurations and there's no particular reason to expect that the results would be drastically different in other very similar configurations.
Who proved it works really well in several configurations?
And how do you codify the threshold for what "very similar" configurations don't need to be tested and those that do?
That's what regulatory exemption procedures exist for, and it would be the logical next step if you had convincing hard data.
Every single regulatory process has them, so the fact that this very ranty article omits any mention of an attempt to use them is highly suspect.
I've worked with plenty of systems where for all sorts of reasons exemptions are granted for the express purpose of promoting innovation or recognizing a special circumstance.
Some kind of testing should be required but 27mil seems egregious
Yeah why does the certification process cost so much is one question I have. Would this be a conversation if the cost of the test were more reasonable?
Having dealt with regulatory bodies before - they probably did lose their job, maybe multiple times, before becoming an engineer that doesn't have to engineer anything, just come up with rules.
Its not usually one person, but many well meaning committees.
This is China's secret weapon, and why we may still have supremacy over Software, with the Internet...and perhaps, if we are lucky and we don't regulate it to death... with AI
Seems somewhat reasonable. I don’t know why the company is supporting all 270 engine families.
This company wants to put a bunch of stuff on the road going 70mph that could crash into you and kill you and is complaining about a measly $27 million of regulatory cost.
They are making up a bunch of scary numbers about the cost of the status quo and the tone of the article is basically holding us all hostage. Speed out special snowflake startup company through the regulatory process (written in blood) or else you’ll lose bajillions of dollars in suffering and pain from the “status quo.”
$27 million is basically a rounding error for automotive companies. Maybe do better at raising funds next time, bro.
Why wouldn't they try to support a large number of engines, the testing was about emissions not safety, and they're not a huge automotive company.
Emissions = safety.
I assume that out of 270 entire families that some are more popular than others? Why not pick the 20-30 most popular ones?
The tone of this article is that OP’s company has a savior complex. If they aren’t given expedient special treatment regulatory approval, the status quo is causing a bunch of fake make up dollar values of damage. It’s kind of a gross tone.
Presumably they have so many families to serve their customers well. If they were to consolidate their engine families in such a way to avoid paying as much money to regulatory processes, that seems like a bit of a perverse incentive and outcome.
In my view though the goal of the regulation isn't bad, but the cost of the process is prohibitive. Why is it so expensive to measure engine emissions?
>As one example, one state agency has asked Revoy to do certified engine testing to prove that the Revoy doesn’t increase emissions of semi trucks.
Where in this sentence is asbestos mentioned? As for the families, if they know their product works in 270 engine families why would they chose to only sell to 20-30?
Because they can't afford the required testing for all of them?
The testing that is clearly theater and a waste of money for all involved?
Spoken like someone who has no idea how hard it is to actually get anything done in real life vs your armchair.
This company's business is regulatory arbitrage. Of course they have to deal with regulators. Capturing CO2 and pumping it into the ground is not a commercial enterprise. It's something done to get some sort of regulatory credit.
Edison Motors, a manufacturer of hybrid and electric semi and other trucks in Canada, is currently battling regulation. They have a series of videos on their Youtube channel going over what's been taking place.
That was pretty surprising when I saw it unfold. Especially because they utilised state grants specifically to achieve the goal they are now being blocked by regulation on.
>I’ve been shocked to find that the single biggest barrier—by far—is over-regulation from the massive depth of bureaucracy.
Every regulation loving person who is exposed to a tiny fragment of how actually terrible most regulatory frameworks are immediately have this thought.
Everyone should read or at least be familiar with Joseph Tainter and his research on societal collapse.
> “It is suggested that the increased costs of sociopolitical evolution frequently reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. This is to say that the benefit/investment ratio of sociopolitical complexity follows the marginal product curve… After a certain point, increased investments in complexity fail to yield proportionately increasing returns. Marginal returns decline and marginal costs rise. Complexity as a strategy becomes increasingly costly, and yields decreasing marginal benefits.”
Government regulation and intervention are one such contributor to complexity, and as Michael Huemer demonstrates in his paper In Praise of Passivity we are akin to medieval doctors administering medical procedures on society that are more likely to cause harm than create benefits.
It's fairly clear to me that our civilization is in decline, and it pains me to no end to see people push for more regulation and government intervention. "The patient is getting sicker, we need to let more blood! Fetch me more leaches!"
The good news is that collapse, as Tainter puts it, isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a return to less complexity, and it often brings great benefits to large swathes of people. For example, the collapse of the Roman Empire was beneficial to serfs who would actually welcome raiding parties into their villages.
Good lord the tone of this article is insufferable. "We're saving the world! It's so unreasonable anyone ask us to verify these claims because we're saving the world!"
So true — this thing is designed to go on our streets; I expect an attitude of maximum compliance. This shit can literally kill you if something goes wrong?
The testing is solely about emissions, it's an electric powertrain dolly and they want it to be proven it doesn't increase emissions rather than decrease them. It has nothing to do with safety as far as on road safety is concerned.
I was just reading an NYT article about lead battery recyclers in Africa and how their operations are basically unregulated and are poisoning entire towns.
Things going a little slow or costing a little more is very often preferable to the alternative where you begin operations recklessly and negatively impact neighbors, sometimes irreparably.
I think part of the story here is that as we regulate things at home we also out source activity that wouldn't fly here to those African regions?
That may keep it out of sight but if it's still happening it might have been better to do it in a managed way at home.
Its exactly this. And the majority of persons in powerful regulatory roles completely don’t get or comprehend this effect.
When regulatory efforts depart from reality,and fail to find the correct middle ground, this happens:
The reality still exists, and will always find its expression in one of the following:
- people circumvent rules and go criminal
- undesired behaviours move elsewhere where the regulation doesn’t exist
- sections of an economy die
- issues remain unaddressed with the over regulated issues becoming too taboo to even discuss in a sane way.
The US can't do much about other countries. We can definitely control how and who we outsource to, but the past 30 years of US government doesn't make me confident that we'll do that anytime soon.
But that's a tiny bit tangential from regulations.
“All outsourced, vendor, and subcontractor companies down the entire production/waste chain to the raw material must meet US environmental regulations.”
Done, fixed the loophole.
Oh of course, just identify your entire supply chain in both directions and make sure they're compliant. What an obviously easy thing to do.
If the chain is all onshore then it must all be compliant ... right?
The world is so simple when you can just assert that your intervention will have positive effects eh.
When someone says being overweight is bad, do you think they are saying they shouldn't exist at all?
Of course not, they want to be a normal weight. That's the discussion reasonable people hope to have about regulation. Your strawman isn't welcome here -- I've never seen anyone seriously argue that ALL regulations should be removed.
> I've never seen anyone seriously argue that ALL regulations should be removed.
I've been seeing it in real time this entire year in my country.
And yes, on certain topics I see it here quite a bit. Maybe not "ALL" regulation, but some members of the community have an extremely libertarian take on conducting business.
Meanwhile the established players with connections can break all the laws they want, and pay zero taxes to boot.
I think the problem isn't regulation (which the current admin is aggressively destroying, e.g. with the EPA) so much as corruption - which manifests partly as critical government functions being deliberately starved of resources. Regulatory bodies should get more funding to study and approve new technologies, and there should be more subsidies available for smaller innovators to offset the R&D investments and application waiting periods. That wouldn't be in the interest of big polluters and their captive politicians though.
No they can't. Dieselgate cost VW over $33 billion.
That was 10 years ago, when we still had a mostly functioning government. The EPA has since had its teeth removed by the Trump administration.
Sounds like regulations work, then. We just need to get a functioning government back to enforce it.
He described “the missed acceleration in sales” of pumping Liquid Smoke down old oil wells as “a direct hard cost” of the regulatory regime. That tells me all I need to know about our narrator’s intellectual honesty.
I’m open to being convinced that there are better ways of doing things, but despite what half a century of propaganda has been saying, regulations generally aren’t enacted for funsies. They’re there for a reason, specially the reason that in the absence of those regulations, commercial actors were privatizing profit at the expense of society as a whole, and democratic society made a decision to make rules to stop that from happening.
He literally writes:
“Regulation obviously has a critical role in protecting people and the environment”
and then quantifies “a mindblowing $40m/year in healthcare costs” and a total of “about $400M” in societal cost from one delay, mostly borne by the public.
In that context, the line you are reacting to is just one item in a long list:
“We’ve also spent untold millions on regulatory affairs at all levels of government, not to mention the missed acceleration in sales”
He even says,
“What pains me most is the 5 years of lost carbon removal and pollutant reduction”
So the piece is not “regulations bad, profits good.” It is: regulations are essential, but the current process is generating huge public harms by slowing down tech whose whole purpose is to reduce pollution.
Maybe he’s wrong on any given point, but he’s clearly trying to describe the utilitarian trade-offs in good faith
> regulations are essential, but the current process is generating huge public harms by slowing down tech whose whole purpose is to reduce pollution.
I hear this with a call to action of "we need to deregulate to help reduce pollution". And not the real call to action in that "these regulations need an overhaul". The title of "over-regulations" and the general tone seems to place the issue as an obstacle to be eliminated, not a system to be corrected.
That's my big problem with the article.