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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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The reason 'tech' has gotten so far without being regulated is simply because Gov't doesn't understand it

I hear this a lot, but is it actually true?

Relatively few people in government have actual professional-level expertise when it comes to finance, manufacturing, workplace safety, international trade, or nuclear energy, but the government seems to regulate those things just fine. (Arguably what we call "tech" is easier to understand than those things, at least the parts of it that are salient for regulation.)

y, but the government seems to regulate those things just fine.

If by 'just fine' you mean shut down and prevent their use from delivering benefits, sure.

Reminder that if we had a halfway sane authoritarian government anywhere in the west, nobody in that country would be burning hydrocarbons for heating or cooking unless they were out camping.

I don't understand this example. Are you implying that a sane authoritarian government would exert their power to ban the burning of hydrocarbons for heating or cooking?

How is that in any way sane, especially if they don't have the power to stop other countries from doing it? Unless you are advocating for this sane authoritarian government invading all the others and maintaining this ban through force of arms, in which case it makes more sense, but still a fair ways away from 'sane'. Doing so would require the development and manufacture of weapons at scale, which unfortunately requires large amounts of hydrocarbons.

No, I'm implying that a western country that nuclearised very heavily would have cheap power and wouldn't require even having gas lines going anywhere but into chemical plants.

Reminder that if we had a halfway sane authoritarian government anywhere in the west, nobody in that country would be burning hydrocarbons for heating or cooking unless they were out camping.

But if they had real winters, everyone would all be out camping because it would be warmer than sitting in their cold homes "heated" by inadequate electric heat pumps erratically supplied by an overloaded grid.

That's likely a contributing factor to why tech is seeing far more innovation, far faster, than finance, manufacturing, international trade and nuclear energy. Everything before it is already stuck under a pile of stupid regulation.

You know, for clarity's sake, I'll specify that those endowed with legislative authority in Gov't don't really understand it.

Plenty of agencies snap up tech-savvy employees, especially in the intelligence branches, and they presumably get regular briefings on new tech developments.

Finance is a funny bird because of the revolving-door between the regulatory agencies and the financial institutions. Gov't "understands" finance because the industries are heavily tied together, which is not (currently) the case with the tech industry.

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