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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   24759 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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Now Space X

Careful. You might be using it as an example of the disasters lack of regulation will bring, before you know it.

I think that would be a clear case of malicious regulation, which is an entirely different class of problem. That is to say, if we were discussing something like laws about business records fraud or campaign finance, we'd talk generally about how it generates friction in business processes or has some potential to chill some amount of speech around the edges, and that would be a totally valid discussion with real tradeoffs. But I think it would be an entirely different conversation than talking specifically about Trump being maliciously prosecuted in NY; that has about jack-all to do with real tradeoffs in the space of business records fraud law or campaign finance law; it it purely about malicious actors reaching for literally any tool they can find to hit someone over the head with.

I think that would be a clear case of malicious regulation

I might end up having to do a walk of shame around here, and self-flaggelate about how I mistreated Elon, but I think that SpaceX is going to be seen as an example of "move fast and break things" being applied where it doesn't belong.

I guess "lack of regulation" isn't the right term, because there's been some bizarre political decisions in the process.

Another way to engage with it might be, "if SpaceX fails in the future, where do we expect 'overregulation' to rank on the scale of expected causes?"

I would rank it pretty high.

I don't know if I agree.

I might end up eating my words, but there's a decent chance that after a series of underwhelming Starship launches, New Glenn ends up going straight to Mars on first attempt. They both operate in the same regulatory environment, so if that happens I'd say it's down to how each company is run.

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