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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Apple computers are higher quality? ROFL!!!

Otherwise, spot-on article. Laws are very "swipple"-- "stuff white people like".

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

The problem with this article is that it thinks of regulations as intended to control behavior. Outside of the penal system, they're not. They're intended to prevent exploitative, non constructive situations.

Something like a landlord being able to give you a same day notice of raising your rent 100x and making it due at noon and taking possession of your property at 12:01PM if you haven't paid, then selling your stuff and re renting the place the next day at the original rent isn't just behavior on the part of the landlord that the government thinks is ethically wrong. It would be bad for society because it would effectively allow a situation where a perfectly steady productive member of society is turned into an impoverished, needy person.

It's a bad trade of short term exploitation over long term potential; the trade is only a positive to the exploiter, it's a disproportionate and obvious negative to the exploited and to society. That's the real societal motivation.

Broken or dangerous products and unsafe buildings are inefficient. They can easily cause problems much more costly than it would be to avoid the situation in the first place; and society benefits from avoiding them because it becomes more stable, safe, and trusted. The individuals who avoided those situations get to spend their money on something they want instead of fixing a stupid, avoidable problem that came about because of some selfish, short sighted other individual.

It's about the behavior of systems, not individuals.

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