[gtowey]

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.

[staplers]

Bitcoin is not a company

[parineum]

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.

[gtowey]

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

[lokar]

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

[BostonFern]

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.

[ajkjk]

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.

[jquery]

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

[logicchains]

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

[gtowey]

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.

[Natfan]

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

[Imustaskforhelp]

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?