> Regulation inherently tends to raise the cost of entry into a regulated market because new entrants have to bear not just the costs of entering the market but also of complying with the regulations. Oftentimes regulations explicitly impose barriers to entry, such as licenses, permits, and certificates of need, without which one may not legally operate in a market or industry. Incumbent firms may even receive legacy consideration by regulators, meaning that only new entrants are subject to certain regulations.
A system with no regulation can be equally bad for consumers, though; there's a fine line between too little and too much regulation. The devil, as always, is in the details.
The UK had a rule that gave small employers a £4,000 discount on national insurance.
Sketchy large employers like G4S responded by setting up tens of thousands of "Mini umbrella companies" [1] with directors in the Philippines, each company employing only a handful of people - allowing G4S to benefit from the £4,000 discount tens of thousands of times.
Sadly, exempting small operations from regulation isn't a simple matter.
If it was something we wanted to punish, it needs claw backs and draconian fines plus piercing the corporate veil when those companies are suspected of it. Usually though, there's little downside to abusing the system, so the risk/reward is badly skewed.
To reinforce your argument, in the linked article GFS claim that they weren't responsible for the tax avoidance. The recruitment companies they subcontracted out came up with this wheeze.
Complex corporate structures enable plausible deniability. The CEO of GFS probably didn't know what was happening, but also probably didn't want to know whilst enjoying the low fees charged from the recruiters.
It can't be "no regulations", but yes, in general every law that requires compliance infrastructure should include a minimum size to ensure it only applies where it is relevant. In this case though, I believe the intent of the UK law is to ban all online communication that is not subject to safety scanning and the like. It's fundamentally a draconian law.
That’s not true. There’s been laws in many jurisdictions, including the US, applying to online forums, since before the internet even existed.
The famed section 230, passed in 1996, is an update to a section of the 1934 Communications Act, which is but one set of laws regulating many aspects of forums. Lawsuits in the early 90s led Congress to modify, but not abolish, the stack of laws regarding all communications technology.
Now that you know but 2 of the many laws affecting online forums, you can dig up plenty more yourself.
Going to need a citation on that millions ... Sure ~57% of Americans disprove of Trump but can't extrapolate "disprove" to "ending of humankind".
Although to be fair to your hypothetical millions, a guy known for repeating getting bankrupt was elected to lead the country. Seems a bit fair to say his track record implies he'd bankrupt the country.
Trump received 49.9% of votes in the last election which means only 50.1% voted against him. But voter turnout was only around 66% so all can really say is that 32.9% of americans disapprove of Trump enough to vote against him.
I joke with my friends (I'm old) about how great the internet is for looking up information. When I was growing up, someone told you the wrong thing and you just knew the wrong thing for years.
Misinformation and disinformation were terms created by censors as an excuse to censor ideas they didn't like, mostly criticism. What we call misinformation and disinformation has been a property of communication since grunting. People are wrong about stuff, even people who we currently think are right. To censor is going back to just knowing the wrong thing for years because someone with censor powers thought they were right.
Tiered requirements scaled by size and/or impact is an obvious middle ground between equal obligation to all entities and a binary on/off status.
As an example of impacts not necessarily correlated with size, a comms platform for, say, the banking or finance communities, or defence and military systems, would likely have stronger concerns than one discussing the finer points of knitting and tea.
This is eminently sensible, should happen everywhere.
It almost always doesn't, because the big guys have lobbyists and the small guys don't.
The big guys would rather not have to comply with these rules, but typically their take is, well, if we're going to have to anyway, let's at least make it an opportunity to drive out some of the scrappy competition and claim the whole pie for ourselves.
It is not, however calls for racist violence are less dangerous when they're posted on a niche forum with 20 daily active users than when they're posted on Twitter.
How much money does that total (the taxes specifically earmarked for funding regulatory bodies)?
If a company suddenly starts doing something that costs society more in externalities, does it suddenly start paying more taxes to deal with the enforcement required to get them to stop?
After all, the whole point of regulation is to get the regulated to stop hurting society and costing it money.
The cost addressed by regulation is the cost on society of the unregulated behavior.
An alternative might be, no regulation, but businesses are responsible for the costs of business to society (pollution, poor mental health, potential that it's a scam). After all, businesses benefit from these things, so they should gladly cover their cost to society.
No they don’t. Every dollar the government spends is a brand new dollar. You can’t save up money in a currency that you issue.
As a fiat currency issuer, you have two options, you can create money for circulation (government spending) or you can destroy money and it’ll never circulate again (taxation).
When intentional, this is Regulatory Capture. Per https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp :
> Regulation inherently tends to raise the cost of entry into a regulated market because new entrants have to bear not just the costs of entering the market but also of complying with the regulations. Oftentimes regulations explicitly impose barriers to entry, such as licenses, permits, and certificates of need, without which one may not legally operate in a market or industry. Incumbent firms may even receive legacy consideration by regulators, meaning that only new entrants are subject to certain regulations.
A system with no regulation can be equally bad for consumers, though; there's a fine line between too little and too much regulation. The devil, as always, is in the details.