I've stopped thinking of regulations as a single dial, where more regulations is bad or less regulations is bad. It entirely depends on what is being regulated and how. Some areas need more regulations, some areas need less. Some areas need altered regulation. Some areas have just the right regulations. Most regulations can be improved, some more than others.

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idrios 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Regulations are like lines of code in a software project. They're good if well written, bad if not, and what matters more is how well they fit into the entire solution

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gessha an hour ago | parent | next [-]

A major difference with regulations is there’s no guaranteed executor of those metaphorical lines of code. If the law gets enforced, then yes, but if nobody enforces it, it loses meaning.

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estimator7292 an hour ago | parent [-]

If the law is code, then law enforcement is a JITter

(joke)

	▲	dijit 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Optimised compiler makes sense though. Unenforceable laws go unenforced, undefined behaviour is undefined and varies based on compiler (law enforcement agency or officer).

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lucketone 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And lines of code is like the mass of an airplane.

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samdoesnothing 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In general you want as few as possible of both.

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econ an hour ago | parent | next [-]

You could also optimize everything for future updates that optimize things even further for even more updates...

Humm.. that was supposed to be a joke but our law making dev team isn't all that productive to put it mildly. Perhaps some of that bloat would be a good thing until we are brave enough to do the full rewrite.

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banana_sandwich 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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AceJohnny2 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

that's right. This is the reason all my code looks like an entry to PerlGolf. /s

The world's complicated. "Every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, and wrong"

Simplicity is a laudable goal, but it's not always the one thing to optimize for.

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lo_zamoyski an hour ago | parent [-]

Ah, but "simplicity" is not necessarily "fewest lines of code".

Code is first and foremost for human consumption. The compiler's job is to worry about appeasing the machine.

(Of course, that's the normative ideal. In practice, the limits of compilers sometimes requires us to appease the architectural peculiarities of the machine, but this should be seen as an unfortunate deviation and should be documented for human readers when it occurs.)

	▲	AceJohnny2 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Code is first and foremost for human consumption. The compiler's job is to worry about appeasing the machine. Tangentially, it continues to frustrate me that C code organization directly impacts performance. Want to factorize that code? Pay the cost of a new stack frame and potentially non-local jump (bye, ICache!). Want it to not do that? Add more keywords ('inline') and hope the compiler applies them. (I kind of understand the reason for this. Code Bloat is a thing, and if everything was inlined the resulting binary would be 100x bigger)

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l5870uoo9y 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I disagree with this otherwise seemingly reasonable position. Draghi's latest report pointed out that overregulation is a major problem in the EU and costs EU companies the equivalent of a 50% tariff (if I remember correctly). Of course, Draghi's report has led to nothing more than a few headlines.

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gessha an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I’m not saying the following regarding Draghi’s report or particular regulation in mind:

If an unethical business gets started due to underregulation and it generates revenue and contributes to GDP, is that a good thing?

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wizzwizz4 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That 50% figure seems extremely dubious. I'd expect either methodological failures, or a definition of "costs" that I disagree with (e.g. fair-competition regulations preventing price-hikes, "costing" EU companies the profit they could obtain from a cartel). However, skimming the report (https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-r...), I can't find the 50% figure.

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l5870uoo9y 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Mario Draghi has argued that the EU's internal barriers, which are equivalent to a high tariff rate, cost more than external tariffs. He has cited IMF estimates that show these internal barriers are equivalent to a \(45\%\) tariff on manufactured goods and a \(110\%\) tariff on services. These internal market restrictions, which include regulatory hurdles and bureaucracy, hinder cross-border competition and have a significant negative impact on the EU's economy.

Source: https://iep.unibocconi.eu/europes-internal-tariffs-why-imfs-...

	▲	palata 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Sure, someone argues something. Who knows if it's right or wrong? It's not a hard science. How do you estimate the cost of regulations on businesses? You ask businesses. Businesses have absolutely zero incentive to say that regulations are not bad. "Just in case", they will say it hurts them. That is, until there is a de facto monopoly and they can't compete anymore, and at that point they start lobbying like crazy for... more regulations. Look at the drone industry: a chinese company, DJI, is light-years ahead of everybody else. What have US drone companies been doing in the last 5+ years? Begging for regulations. All that to say, it is pretty clear that no regulations is bad, and infinitely many regulations is bad. Now what's extremely difficult is to know what amount of regulation is good. And even that is simplistic: it's not about an amount of regulation, it depends on each one. The cookie hell is not a problem of regulations, it's a problem of businesses being arseholes. They know it sucks, they know they don't do anything with those cookies, but they still decide that their website will start with a goddamn cookie popup because... well because the sum of all those good humans working in those businesses results in businesses that are, themselves, big arseholes.
	▲	wizzwizz4 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That article does contain the correct answer, so thank you very much for finding it, although the passage you've quoted is ChatGPT gibberish not in the source given. Per https://iep.unibocconi.eu/europes-internal-tariffs-why-imfs-..., the model treats shopping local as evidence of the existence of a trade barrier, as opposed to a rational preference based on cultural and environmental considerations. This is why the numbers are ridiculously high. (Is there a 120% implicit tariff for textiles? Or do people just prefer warm clothes in the north and breezy clothes in the Mediterranean?)

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pa7ch 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The regulation good/bad dichotomy has been very effective reducing the thinking of the constituents of modern neolibs in the US.

On one end we have regulations as part of regulatory capture. Opposite effect of regulations that would help say a small business compete fairly.

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pembrook 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Unfortunately politics has become the religion of modernity.

Nuance and sober analysis like you've suggested do not mix well with religious dogma. It's much easier for people to react emotionally to symbols.

For many here, 'GDPR' is a variable that equals 'privacy' in their brain computer. So any criticism of it or its implementation realities, no matter how well argued, will not be met with reasoned response, but instead religious zeal.

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vanviegen 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I've never seen anyone here, or elsewhere, displaying a positive opinion on GDPR without readily acknowledging it, or the way it has turned out and is (not) being policed, has many shortcomings.

I have seen people that are fanatical on privacy. Cheers to them!

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wizzwizz4 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Most criticism of GDPR on HN is a criticism of bad-faith attempts to pretend to comply, many of which are expressly forbidden by the GDPR. It's a well-written, plain English regulation, and I encourage everyone to read it before criticising it. (At the very least, point to the bits of the regulation you disagree with: it should only take around 5 minutes to look up.)

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dijit 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

Hear hear.

My company had consultants come in to help with GDPR, I left after months of them being hired: more confused than I went in.

So I went to the source, and I found it surprisingly easy to read and quite clear.

I think theres a lot of bad faith discussion about the GDPR being complex by people who have a financial interest in people disliking it (or, parroting what someone else said).

Heres the full text: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

87 pages and nearly every edge case is carved out. Takes 20 minutes to read.

	▲	vanviegen 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> 87 pages and nearly every edge case is carved out. Takes 20 minutes to read. That's some serious speed reading! :-)