[maxeda]

> “Environmental regulations are, in my view, largely terrible,” he said at an event with the libertarian Cato Institute last year. “You have to get permission in advance, as opposed to, say, paying a penalty if you do something wrong, which I think would be much more effective.”

This quote is particularly telling of a billionaire's mindset when the fines are too small to matter.

[freedomben]

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation, and effectively restrict certain things to only the already-massively-rich entrepreneurs. However, (IMHO) there are a lot of regulations that are important and absolutely should be enforced up front. Finding the right balance is kind of impossible, and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but even well-intended regulations often just create roadblocks and cement incumbents in a particular space.

[skopje]

>> >Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation

What is an example of a regulation that was a "huge" hinderance to innovation?

Looking at the past 40 years of the US technological progress and the only thing I seen hindering innovation are the tech companies themselves through monopoly, monopsony, patents, and regulatory capture. (Unless the last one is what you meant, but that's a regulation put in place by a monopoly to maintain its monopoloy and not to protect the air we breathe).

EDIT: I am referring to "innovation" not "execution".

[3D30497420]

In some cases you are correct, however the happy middle in this case probably does not include many (most?) of their violations. One particular example:

> Workers have complained of chemical burns from the waste material generated by the tunneling process, and firefighters must decontaminate their equipment after conducting rescues from the project sites. The company was fined more than $112,000 by Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late 2023 after workers complained of “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and burns.

In another part, the company is accused of dumping this water directly into streets (presumably without decontamination).

[joering2]

This is actually what we would love to have as Gov Department - DORO: Department Of Regulations Overview - a body that would asses each regulation and cut of all these that are unnecessary and were clearly created by politicians/lobbyist/lawmakers bribed by big corp. to "lawfully" eliminate competition.

[capriciotrary]

When I moved to a developing country with very few rules and regulations, sometimes I could feel the libertarianism leaving my body. There is definitely a happy regulatory medium which doesn't involve having to check the shower with a multimeter when moving in.

[miltonlost]

> Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation

Because "Innovation" isn't the be-all-end-all of a regulation or shouldn't be one of its aims or concerns. As a hyperbole, I don't care about "innovation" if you need to throw 4000 people into an industrial shredder in order to do it.

[spankibalt]

> "The truth is somewhere in the middle."

Another day, another invocation of the golden mean fallacy.

[amanaplanacanal]

This might work if they have to pay for the full cost of cleanup. Unfortunately as we've seen, limited liability means the company declares bankruptcy and the taxpayers are stuck with the bill.

[3D30497420]

And a company would rather spend multiples more fighting fines and liability than they'd actually pay in fines.

Not to mention a fine won't do much for people who get sick and die.

[eddieroger]

Fines that are too small to matter are just called permits after the fact. Hardly the penalty a fine should be, and this is hardly the first time that kind of thing has happened.

[tejohnso]

Yeah, of course you'd rather pay a fine when your net worth is thousands of times more than most people's, and the fines aren't scaled according to net worth.

You see this from time to time with headlines like "$CORP fined fifty MILLION dollars for ..." And then when you look into the details the fine turns out to be about one week of revenue and the offense resulted in early death for thousands of people over the past five years.

[dpc_01234]

He is right, but also the fines need to be higher, especially for repeated violations.

Ever worked in a company where you need approval from 7 separate teams to land a simple change? Just can't get anything done, no matter how useful. This is a huge problem. People generally do not understand what serialized blocking does to performance.

On the other hand the fines cited in the article seem laughably low. I don't know how much ground water was discharged, and how big of a deal it is, but at certain pricetag even billionaires will say: well, it's cheaper to get a cistern and take that water to a water treatment facility or something.

[Avshalom]

No, he's not, if you poison the population "paying a fine" isn't going to unpoison them.

[awesome_dude]

Him being right, or wrong, is a bold call to make.

But all he's saying is he wants to run his company the way tech entrepreneurs have been for a while - "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" which they like because it's favored toward them, and, by the time a regulator has caught up, they have made a pile of money, or lost it all and gone.

[JumpCrisscross]

> particularly telling of a billionaire's mindset when the fines are too small to matter

It’s telling that billionaires are human?

Fines being too small to matter are a phenomenon across the income spectrum. From delivery drivers dancing with New York meter maids to American tourists ignoring overseas traffic rules, the notion that inadequate fines stop deterring and become merely a nuisance is well know.

[idle_zealot]

Sure, but the deterrence these people are actively opposing exists to stop them from rendering the area unlivable for everyone. They know this and don't care, and are working to be allowed to ruin the world. That's what's telling.

[fl0id]

it's telling that he only sees effectiveness in what he wants. these rules are there for environmental protection, and in a worst case scenario, a fine is not gonna bring back the clean soil, or whatever was done.

[lucianbr]

Yeah, imho lots of people need reminding that billionaires are just regular joes with a very large bank account. With all the regular joe's faults.

Would be useful to remember that if Musk or Bezos say something, it may have the same chance of being right as what a delivery driver would say.

[majormajor]

Fines are usually going to be too small to matter in a world with limited-personal-liability for corporations.

IMO his statement is disingenuous at that higher level. It's telling that billionaires propose things that wouldn't personally cut into their liquid assets, but instead would come out of a company that shields them from personal responsibility.

[terminalshort]

He's completely correct about that.

[jvanderbot]

I mean, this is right out of two books: Abundance, and Why Nothing Works. Both spend maybe 1/3 of their pages detailing the excesses and legalistic nature of env reviews. They are weaponized for political reasons and cause an insane amount of delays. They are put in place for the right reasons, but are too effective at slowing projects down.