I have come to the opinion that every successful tech company is basically just an arbitrage scheme to avoid regulations and extract value based on that advantage.

Airbnb for unlicensed hotels. Uber for unlicensed taxis. Amazon for whitewashing fraudulent products. Bitcoin for unlicensed securities and laundering money.

The pattern is upsetting.

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staplers 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Bitcoin is not a company

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parineum 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's what happens when the majority of people don't actually support the regulations.

If people thought it was wrong to be an unlicensed airbnb or uber, they wouldn't use them. In reality, those regulations are mostly protection rackets and most people don't care about violating them.

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gtowey 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I disagree. When you give people strong economic incentives to ignore morality, some people will. Not all, but enough to make a hash of things. In any population there will be some people who will do things they know are wrong just to get ahead.

For Airbnb landlords I'm sure the thought process goes like " I'm just one person so I can't be having enough of an impact to be a problem. And besides, I need the money." But then enough people pile on and in aggregate they ruin the local housing market. But nobody thinks that they themselves are culpable

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twoodfin 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m struggling to understand the moral character of taxi service regulatory capture and monopolization.

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tstenner 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Your taxi crashes because the driver skipped brake maintenance and his insurance doesn't reimburse you for your hospital costs because commercial transportation isn't covered. Sure would be nice to have some minimum requirements for taxis.

	▲	twoodfin an hour ago \| parent [-]
		If maintenance schedules and insurance regulations are “moral” issues, what isn’t?

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lokar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People were (and mostly still are) very opposed to Airbnb rentals in their neighborhood.

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aleph_minus_one 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

... but the customers of these Airbnb rentals are not. :-)

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ajkjk 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

that's the point of the regulations...

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jquery 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People support anti-pollution measures yet corporations still choose to pollute. Curious.

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iso1631 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

People whose houses are robbed are against robbery, people who rob houses are very much for it.

	▲	vlovich123 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s a false analogy. You have two parties who want to enter into a contract and a third party unrelated to the contract that doesn’t for whatever reason. Just based on contract law and common sense the unrelated party shouldn’t have standing. Now if there’s externalities to the contract that impact that unrelated party sure, but only insofar as to get those externalities addressed. This is not the same as a robbery which involves no contract or a willing counterparty to the robbery.

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parineum 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's none of their business.

There are already laws in place against the kinds of behavior that neighbors are afraid will happen.

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BostonFern 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's interpreting a failure to fight to preserve ethics as an internal rejection when it could be explained by a lack of fighting spirit, either because the fight seems impossible or the given hill not worth dying on. Another interpretation would be a comfort-oriented, avoidant, and possibly cynical culture facing a power imbalance.

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ajkjk 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

that can't be right. If 90% of people are anti-airbnb and the other 10% are pro-airbnb then the 10% just open all the airbnbs.

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jquery 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is certainly the most uncharitable way to think about it.

I see a prisoner’s dilemma where people often support regulations even if on an individual basis they would personally violate them, because they prefer living in a the less chaotic society. For example anti-dumping regulations… the expected value for any given individual is +EV, but when everyone is dumping, it’s a big -EV

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jacquesm 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The perfect example is speed limits: everybody thinks they're good and yet they all seem to classify all other drivers into two categories: slowpokes and maniacs.

Nobody seems to be able to agree on what a responsible set of rules is around the speed of vehicles.

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yuliyp 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's because they are slowpokes and maniacs: In a decently flowing road, the majority of distinct cars you see are either moving significantly faster or slower than you (and the more extreme the difference the more likely you are to see them). Of cars that go at a similar speed to you, they approach you / you approach them more slowly so you'll see fewer of them.

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ajkjk 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is entirely made up? Most people are totally fine with speed limits being what they are and don't say anything about it.

	▲	JasonADrury 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In the sense that they don't care what the sign says when it comes to their own driving? Sure.
	▲	jacquesm 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Oh, that explains the massive difference in speed limits from one country to another then, especially if they're next door neighbors.

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logicchains 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

From an economic perspective the majority of those regulations destroy economic value and those companies are unlocking value by finding clever ways around them.

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gtowey 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, they just shift the economic downsides to someone else so they can collect the difference. That's what I mean by arbitrage. Someone always pays the price, and now it's you and I.

	▲	holmesworcester 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's not always true. Regulations increase the cost of transacting and make ranges of transactions non-viable, just like a tax. So there is "dead weight loss", where transactions that would have been mutually beneficially and socially productive are eliminated by the regulation, and restored when somebody finds a loophole, restoring the individual and social benefit. The world is not zero sum!
	▲	Imustaskforhelp 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I agree, once they have bypassed regulations, they use that to essentially rent-seek from their monopoly/their unique position where the rent is paid by us public. Their behaviour is very rent-seeking imo and at moments like these, its best to remind us that even the father of Capitalism, Adam Smith didn't like landlords Had to search up some quotes from adam smith right now but here's a relevant one (imo) to this discussion: "[the landlord leaves the worker] with the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more." - Adam smith

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Natfan 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i can find clever ways around d crippling debt, its called robbing a bank at gunpoint

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Imustaskforhelp 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I can't say this for the companies listed above but atleast within the realm of social media, they also want to bypass regulations and well, we all know how's it going.

On a long term, I do feel like there will be a drop in producitivity, thus destruction of economic value because of lack of enforcement of policies/such companies having reckless attitude about them.

Many of the products listed above actually seem to be very rent-seeking in my opinion (IIRC Someone on HN once said that from their personal experience talking to drivers, uber takes an approximate at the very least 40% cut or more)

(This might be a little off-topic?_ but one thing I think about tech regulations is that Facebook used to see if a young girl/minor girl took a selfie and then if they don't upload it, detect that she was insecure and then try to show them face beauty recommendations.

These girls can be our sisters/daughters fwiw. Facebook profits from insecurity/rage-bait and I would say that many social medias are the same as well, its just that the facebook example to me feels so eggregious and should be a uniting front for many to agree that there's a problem indeed.

You will be right when you say economical value is generated from profiting from insecurity/bypassing regulations but at what cost?