Probably because the threat is relatively new. It took hundreds of thousands of deaths and decades to get us to the current mandated safety standards for cars. It’s going to take a while for tech to catch up.
The perceived impact is much less noticeable than deaths. When the bodies pile up you invest in seatbelt regulations, and may even create jobs making them. What if there's no bodies to count?
> AFAIK only one US 2020 presidential candidate atm is even talking about data rights.
Are you talking Yang [0]? I think he's taking it most seriously but even as a Yang Ganger I do see other politicians talking about it, but I would say that they aren't taking it seriously [1]. I can't find anything about data privacy rights on Warren's, Sanders's, or Biden's issue pages. I did find mentions on Buttigieg's[2], Klobuchar's[3], and Gabbard's[4] (which is more anti-NSA than anything else). But yeah, I would say that Yang is the only one that I'm aware of that is making a very clear statement on this issue (since he ties it to his UBI issue).
The FDA was formed just years after the Jim the horse incident[0]. The issues from poor data practices has existed for a decade or more. It has more to do with the poor functioning of the political system these days.
Because some of us want our government not to protect our Food and Cars as well. Data is one area where humanity has made the fastest progress compared to Cars and Food.
> Technology in cars can be rapid but seems to ignore those externalities
Many regulated risks in automobiles are not external, which is I think where they're out of bounds. I think a certain amount of regulation to ensure consumers are informed of the internal risks of an automobile is reasonable; but the government really oughtn't tell you how safe your car must be for you. Externalities, as you say, are the appropriate domain of regulation.
For some people, it may be preferable to have better fuel economy at a lower price (i.e. Honda can make the Honda Insight again) even if the operator risk is higher; but they should not be allowed to drive a vehicle without adequate stopping, acceleration, and speed, or one which poses excessive risk to fire and rescue workers, other motorists, or pedestrians, or has excessive emissions in their use case.
Right now, emissions regulations on automobiles focus on manufacturer fleet emissions (which is an unabashed pro-incumbent regulation), and emissions on a fixed test cycle; but this means you can pay for the privilege of being in the upper section of a fleet's emissions. Similar with the regulations on stopping speed, acceleration, and pedestrian safety: it seems to often depend on the class of vehicle, and so you can pay for the privilege of worse safety externalities.
I think the issue is one of pragmatism. CAFE standards are meant to be an average to allow some vehicles to be designed to meet very different end use needs. Same with the test beds. There's definitely room for improvement.
My point was that automotive manufacturers are not particularly incentivized to improve on areas that don't align with their bottom line. Are you advocating for more regulation in terms of performance parameters?
> Are you advocating for more regulation in terms of performance parameters?
I'm saying I'd prefer consistent (between vehicle classes) regulation of performance parameters which have externalities; and the abolition of non-normalized fleet-based targets (since they privilege the largest manufacturers). If the goal is to reduce external risk, the threshold of acceptable risk should be the same for all motorists as a matter of fairness.
A possible alternative to CAFE is a specialized cap and trade market. I get that they did think a bit about this stuff when they implemented it, but I feel like it has weird effects in practice, especially when gaming it enters medium-long term corporate strategy.
I think it would be spectacular if inefficiency was purchased on a per-vehicle or per-lot basis from manufacturers who exceed the target, and efficiency was sold in turn to those. Not sure how these transactions would be cleared, but I'm sure something reasonable could be worked out. This would do away with adjustments/exemptions based on vehicle footprint (CAFE targets currently differ based on mean vehicle footprint).
I think I agree in an idealized sense, but also think if this approach was taken it would decimate the ability to create certain vehicles, especially those used in heavy-duty applications. I don't know the history of CAFE standards but it may very well have been a practical choice...either get some form of progress or dig our heels in on an idealized version that never gets adopted.
If you are any good you can afford food taster who work for you and die if the food was not good. If you are not good enough and are forced to work as a food taster, bad for you, but that's just survival of the fittest and will eventually make the human race stronger.
Lulzy parody. Here's an actual take: I would like to accept the risk of eating a pufferfish if I want to. If somebody wants to sell me a prepared pufferfish, and they haven't been authorized to do so by the government, I would like to make my own decision about whether I trust that person to prepare a pufferfish correctly. If I die from eating that pufferfish, I'm okay with that; I accepted the risk. I want the right to commit suicide on purpose, and I want the right to take risks which might result in my unindented but reasonably likely death. I don't see why a bureaucrat should have anything to do with me making potentially dumb decisions and accepting the consequences for myself.
A parody for sure, but apparently not as "lulzy" as you're making it out to be.
It's all well and good that you believe you have the faculty to distinguish improperly prepared fish from properly prepared fish, but many people do not, and improperly prepared fish will be sold cheaper than the prepared variety, which means that people who want fish but can't afford to pay much for it will be the ones buying the improperly prepared stuff. You can already see this at some level today when poorer people tend to buy a lot of junk food that's cheaper (speaking in terms of opportunity cost here too) than healthier alternatives, and a variety of other unhealthy things (cigarettes, alcohol).
I'm not saying unhealthy things should be banned, I'm saying that deadly things absolutely should be. If you want to take the risk of killing yourself (it's absolutely absurd that you mention this) then there are probably more fun ways to do it than arguing the government should allow people to sell potentially deadly food.
Even then, you've selected a weird subset of dangerous food - everyone knows pufferfish is dangerous, far fewer people know which specific compounds that may be in food sold in an unregulated food market can lead to cancers and other diseases in the long term. You need to ask what the advantage of an unregulated food market is outside of a very specific conception of freedom which entails "I should be able to do anything I want to and you can't stop me.", which is (1) not the only conception of freedom around (2) is unworkable in a society with rich and poor, educated and uneducated, critical and uncritical, disabled and able bodied, etc.
> It's all well and good that you believe you have the faculty to distinguish improperly prepared fish from properly prepared fish, but many people do not,
No, I don't believe that I neccessarily have that faculty. I just want to be able to bet on it anyway.
> and improperly prepared fish will be sold cheaper than the prepared variety, which means that people who want fish but can't afford to pay much for it will be the ones buying the improperly prepared stuff.
Yup. I remember my mom and dad arguing about whether it was okay to serve us rotten broccoli (she'd cut most of the rotten parts off, he only noticed because she missed some). I think that was something she'd done out of ignorance, and if she understood how bad it is to serve rotten broccoli she wouldn't have bought it even at a discount. I wish she had been better educated, but I don't wish that the government had enough power to uniformly enforce the food laws they already had in place. They were right in this case, but sometimes they're wrong. I've bought homemade food from some individuals that I trusted more than I trust the vast majority of government-licensed restaurants.
> You can already see this at some level today when poorer people tend to buy a lot of junk food that's cheaper (speaking in terms of opportunity cost here too) than healthier alternatives, and a variety of other unhealthy things (cigarettes, alcohol).
Uhh, yeah. Being poor sucks. People do drugs about it. You want to deny those who are denied everything else the solace of escapism?
> If you want to take the risk of killing yourself (it's absolutely absurd that you mention this) then there are probably more fun ways to do it than arguing the government should allow people to sell potentially deadly food.
This is both literally and figuratively a matter of taste. Why should your views of absurdity and fun affect my ability to enjoy a cullinary experience?
> Even then, you've selected a weird subset of dangerous food - everyone knows pufferfish is dangerous, far fewer people know which specific compounds that may be in food sold in an unregulated food market can lead to cancers and other diseases in the long term.
Yup, I selected an example that would clearly demonstrate my point. You caught me.
> You need to ask what the advantage of an unregulated food market is outside of a very specific conception of freedom which entails "I should be able to do anything I want to and you can't stop me.", which is (1) not the only conception of freedom around
I said I should be able to do anything I want to myself. I understand freedom-ofs and freedom-froms, you're welcome to share the word freedom with me. Just don't take my freedom of self destruction. It's an important one to me, whether or not you feel the same.
> (2) is unworkable in a society with rich and poor, educated and uneducated, critical and uncritical, disabled and able bodied, etc.
I'm just trying to eat a hypothetical pufferfish, maaaan. Yes, society has problems. No, that isn't a good reason to arrest me for buying or selling a fish. The most ridiculous laws you people make are the ones that make parts of nature illegal, like fish and flowers and fungi. Such oppression, much wow.
>Just don't take my freedom of self destruction. It's an important one to me, whether or not you feel the same.
You have that freedom regardless of whether the government allows deadly food to be sold or not. A famous libertarian economist once said that we can't only consider the ideal in isolation from the actual policies that are enacted toward that ideal - his main consideration was the capitalist idea of freedom, but mine is the idea of public health and harm due to negligence.
>I'm just trying to eat a hypothetical pufferfish, maaaan.
No you're not, you're arguing for society to be structured in such a way that companies are allowed to use dangerous products in what they sell to people. You can eat the pufferfish (and I must say that I urge you to) but that doesn't mean others should have to bear the cost of fearing if their next meal will kill them.
>No, that isn't a good reason to arrest me for buying or selling a fish.
This is about as reductionist as the claim that knife murder is simply the actuation of muscles and the thrusting of a metal object. How can you illegalise moving metal objects?
>The most ridiculous laws you people make are the ones that make parts of nature illegal
Plenty of things part of nature are illegal, including (but not limited to) rubbing the back of a frog that produces deadly toxins onto all the objects in your home.
> You can eat the pufferfish (and I must say that I urge you to)
Ahaha, just like a statist to wish death upon their enemies. You really took the high road there, buddy.
> Plenty of things part of nature are illegal, including (but not limited to) rubbing the back of a frog that produces deadly toxins onto all the objects in your home.
See, this is what I'm talking about; you guys wanna take all of the coolest frogs away!
I don’t follow? It could be that your counterexamples include the necessary condition, but don’t have the sufficient conditions.
In the abstract, if conditions A, B, and C are stated as required to achieve a desired outcome, the fact there happen to be examples of undesirable outcomes with condition A (but implicitly lacking conditions B and/or C) is not enough to prove that condition A is NOT a necessary condition for a desired outcome.
Because our food and our cars are something made by someone else that we will buy in the future, at which point the government’s involvement ceases. “Our” data is something that is generated by us, about us, and is ongoing. The last thing some of us want is the government even having access to it much less charged with “protecting” it.
This "directionality" is the first thing I thought of too. Unlike these other things, data originates with the consumer. Also, the transfer between consumer and platform usually does not include a financial component so it's not "commerce" in the usual sense. The issues involved are just as important despite these differences, the need (however great or small) for regulation doesn't change either, but such differences definitely affect what kinds of regulation might be appropriate or how they might be applied.
Uhm, no. I'm anti-government; the GOP likes having the government erect monuments to their favored religion, spy on every US citizen, invade other governments to prop up the petrodollar, make it difficult for people to get abortions, etc.
The American left and right both support government invading different facets our private lives to varying degrees. Neither are anarchists, or anything close to it.
Other than Trey Gowdy being a member of the GOP, not sure what you're criticizing here. His line of questioning was not partisan, and got to the heart of the matter - their lack of competence and ability to follow regulations and/or written contracts.
The OPM had a serious data breach, and demonstrated a marked lack of ability to do their job. To date, they have not been held accountable, unless you count the stern questioning.
What remedy would you prescribe to fix OPM? How would you hold them accountable?
The NSA ostensibly provides "cybersecurity" support and services -- they should be partners in securing government infrastructure. Maybe they were with OMB (but clearly not enough).
Accountability is good and should happen. Thus far we've seen very little accountability for data breaches in the private sector, so they're not alone.
I don't know the answer as to how to make accountability really work in general -- because it becomes game theory of how to create that space without becoming paralyzed by fear to act.
In practice, aren't FAANG giving same protections to Americans? I know they didn't have to, but I thought they would since it would be easier to maintain in long run
I know that HN’s libertarian views often conflict with the top down EU bureaucracy. But when I heard about GDPR here in europe I thought to myself - that looks very close to what all those people have been wishing for - and its actually here now.
It remains to be seen if it holds up in practice what it offers in spirit. But the idea that companies are forced to think about my personal data as if it was payment credentials, with similar rigor, and penalties, just sounds so awesome to me as a customer.
In the EU personal data _is_ protected as if its cars, food, trains or planes. And honestly its great :)
That is a confusion if shared words being assumes in the same meaning. Data protection is fundamentally nothing like car or food safety. The other two can literally directly kill you. Data also acts "at a distance". If I smash a cooy of your car or poison a copy of your lunch it won't harm you in any way. Not so if sensitive information leaks.
Not to mention the abuse potential is fundamentally massively different. It isn't apples to oranges but apples to formica countertops
Maybe because of population growth. Food and car failure is directly linked to mass deaths and diseases, potentially decreasing the population, free data flow is linked to better business decisions, and therefore wealth for starting families, potentially increasing the population.
So if population growth is your priority as nation, it could make sense to allow free data flow if you ignore potential long term side effects that could counter this.
The downsides of free data flow and the permanence of personal data are mostly affecting the mental health of people which could result in more deaths from drug abuse and other self destructive behaviors, or even civil wars long term.
This of course could contradict free data flow as a viable strategy for long term population growth.
A battle between short and long term politics, with long term politics being clearly at a disadvantage because they're less obvious and harder to predict/measure, and harder to sell in political campaigns.
Largley because of a paralyzed legislative branch, heavily indebted to corporate donors, compounded by a polarized public that is largely too distracted to focus on this fundamental problem.
If the US government protected your food, people would not be sold so much crap full of carcinogenic additives or cooked up in chemical vats.
As for cars - the government protects car _manufacturers_, if at all. And that's also in the form of "anti-protection" of public transport...
Finally - how would the US government protect your data if it's intent on getting its hands on a copy of as much of it as it can, then mining it and searching it for various purposes? (Snowden revelations)
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadEspecially after the data is laundered with machine learning and other opaque algorithms.
AFAIK only one US 2020 presidential candidate atm is even talking about data rights.
(Not that there aren't other good reasons to prefer a variety of politicians getting elected over a single one)
Are you talking Yang [0]? I think he's taking it most seriously but even as a Yang Ganger I do see other politicians talking about it, but I would say that they aren't taking it seriously [1]. I can't find anything about data privacy rights on Warren's, Sanders's, or Biden's issue pages. I did find mentions on Buttigieg's[2], Klobuchar's[3], and Gabbard's[4] (which is more anti-NSA than anything else). But yeah, I would say that Yang is the only one that I'm aware of that is making a very clear statement on this issue (since he ties it to his UBI issue).
[0] https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/
[1] https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/2020-democratic-candidates-i...
[2] https://peteforamerica.com/issues/#ConsumerProtections
[3] https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/consumer-p...
[4] https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-gabbard-on-civil-libertie...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_%28horse%29
There are many other examples.
Politicians are perfectly capable of understanding the social impact of technology... when they need to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/opinion/data-privacy-trac...
I was pretty proud of them then
Technology in cars can be rapid but seems to ignore those externalities
Many regulated risks in automobiles are not external, which is I think where they're out of bounds. I think a certain amount of regulation to ensure consumers are informed of the internal risks of an automobile is reasonable; but the government really oughtn't tell you how safe your car must be for you. Externalities, as you say, are the appropriate domain of regulation.
For some people, it may be preferable to have better fuel economy at a lower price (i.e. Honda can make the Honda Insight again) even if the operator risk is higher; but they should not be allowed to drive a vehicle without adequate stopping, acceleration, and speed, or one which poses excessive risk to fire and rescue workers, other motorists, or pedestrians, or has excessive emissions in their use case.
Right now, emissions regulations on automobiles focus on manufacturer fleet emissions (which is an unabashed pro-incumbent regulation), and emissions on a fixed test cycle; but this means you can pay for the privilege of being in the upper section of a fleet's emissions. Similar with the regulations on stopping speed, acceleration, and pedestrian safety: it seems to often depend on the class of vehicle, and so you can pay for the privilege of worse safety externalities.
My point was that automotive manufacturers are not particularly incentivized to improve on areas that don't align with their bottom line. Are you advocating for more regulation in terms of performance parameters?
I'm saying I'd prefer consistent (between vehicle classes) regulation of performance parameters which have externalities; and the abolition of non-normalized fleet-based targets (since they privilege the largest manufacturers). If the goal is to reduce external risk, the threshold of acceptable risk should be the same for all motorists as a matter of fairness.
A possible alternative to CAFE is a specialized cap and trade market. I get that they did think a bit about this stuff when they implemented it, but I feel like it has weird effects in practice, especially when gaming it enters medium-long term corporate strategy.
I think it would be spectacular if inefficiency was purchased on a per-vehicle or per-lot basis from manufacturers who exceed the target, and efficiency was sold in turn to those. Not sure how these transactions would be cleared, but I'm sure something reasonable could be worked out. This would do away with adjustments/exemptions based on vehicle footprint (CAFE targets currently differ based on mean vehicle footprint).
What system would you prefer to protect your food?
It's all well and good that you believe you have the faculty to distinguish improperly prepared fish from properly prepared fish, but many people do not, and improperly prepared fish will be sold cheaper than the prepared variety, which means that people who want fish but can't afford to pay much for it will be the ones buying the improperly prepared stuff. You can already see this at some level today when poorer people tend to buy a lot of junk food that's cheaper (speaking in terms of opportunity cost here too) than healthier alternatives, and a variety of other unhealthy things (cigarettes, alcohol).
I'm not saying unhealthy things should be banned, I'm saying that deadly things absolutely should be. If you want to take the risk of killing yourself (it's absolutely absurd that you mention this) then there are probably more fun ways to do it than arguing the government should allow people to sell potentially deadly food.
Even then, you've selected a weird subset of dangerous food - everyone knows pufferfish is dangerous, far fewer people know which specific compounds that may be in food sold in an unregulated food market can lead to cancers and other diseases in the long term. You need to ask what the advantage of an unregulated food market is outside of a very specific conception of freedom which entails "I should be able to do anything I want to and you can't stop me.", which is (1) not the only conception of freedom around (2) is unworkable in a society with rich and poor, educated and uneducated, critical and uncritical, disabled and able bodied, etc.
No, I don't believe that I neccessarily have that faculty. I just want to be able to bet on it anyway.
> and improperly prepared fish will be sold cheaper than the prepared variety, which means that people who want fish but can't afford to pay much for it will be the ones buying the improperly prepared stuff.
Yup. I remember my mom and dad arguing about whether it was okay to serve us rotten broccoli (she'd cut most of the rotten parts off, he only noticed because she missed some). I think that was something she'd done out of ignorance, and if she understood how bad it is to serve rotten broccoli she wouldn't have bought it even at a discount. I wish she had been better educated, but I don't wish that the government had enough power to uniformly enforce the food laws they already had in place. They were right in this case, but sometimes they're wrong. I've bought homemade food from some individuals that I trusted more than I trust the vast majority of government-licensed restaurants.
> You can already see this at some level today when poorer people tend to buy a lot of junk food that's cheaper (speaking in terms of opportunity cost here too) than healthier alternatives, and a variety of other unhealthy things (cigarettes, alcohol).
Uhh, yeah. Being poor sucks. People do drugs about it. You want to deny those who are denied everything else the solace of escapism?
> If you want to take the risk of killing yourself (it's absolutely absurd that you mention this) then there are probably more fun ways to do it than arguing the government should allow people to sell potentially deadly food.
This is both literally and figuratively a matter of taste. Why should your views of absurdity and fun affect my ability to enjoy a cullinary experience?
> Even then, you've selected a weird subset of dangerous food - everyone knows pufferfish is dangerous, far fewer people know which specific compounds that may be in food sold in an unregulated food market can lead to cancers and other diseases in the long term.
Yup, I selected an example that would clearly demonstrate my point. You caught me.
> You need to ask what the advantage of an unregulated food market is outside of a very specific conception of freedom which entails "I should be able to do anything I want to and you can't stop me.", which is (1) not the only conception of freedom around
I said I should be able to do anything I want to myself. I understand freedom-ofs and freedom-froms, you're welcome to share the word freedom with me. Just don't take my freedom of self destruction. It's an important one to me, whether or not you feel the same.
> (2) is unworkable in a society with rich and poor, educated and uneducated, critical and uncritical, disabled and able bodied, etc.
I'm just trying to eat a hypothetical pufferfish, maaaan. Yes, society has problems. No, that isn't a good reason to arrest me for buying or selling a fish. The most ridiculous laws you people make are the ones that make parts of nature illegal, like fish and flowers and fungi. Such oppression, much wow.
You have that freedom regardless of whether the government allows deadly food to be sold or not. A famous libertarian economist once said that we can't only consider the ideal in isolation from the actual policies that are enacted toward that ideal - his main consideration was the capitalist idea of freedom, but mine is the idea of public health and harm due to negligence.
>I'm just trying to eat a hypothetical pufferfish, maaaan.
No you're not, you're arguing for society to be structured in such a way that companies are allowed to use dangerous products in what they sell to people. You can eat the pufferfish (and I must say that I urge you to) but that doesn't mean others should have to bear the cost of fearing if their next meal will kill them.
>No, that isn't a good reason to arrest me for buying or selling a fish.
This is about as reductionist as the claim that knife murder is simply the actuation of muscles and the thrusting of a metal object. How can you illegalise moving metal objects?
>The most ridiculous laws you people make are the ones that make parts of nature illegal
Plenty of things part of nature are illegal, including (but not limited to) rubbing the back of a frog that produces deadly toxins onto all the objects in your home.
Ahaha, just like a statist to wish death upon their enemies. You really took the high road there, buddy.
> Plenty of things part of nature are illegal, including (but not limited to) rubbing the back of a frog that produces deadly toxins onto all the objects in your home.
See, this is what I'm talking about; you guys wanna take all of the coolest frogs away!
In the abstract, if conditions A, B, and C are stated as required to achieve a desired outcome, the fact there happen to be examples of undesirable outcomes with condition A (but implicitly lacking conditions B and/or C) is not enough to prove that condition A is NOT a necessary condition for a desired outcome.
History shows regulation speeds technical progress.
This. Sure I would like some protection for our food but i hate the too much protection that currently US government has right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...
Trey Gowdy's questioning of the people in charge of the OPM is a classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK-zEGjxuAA
That doesn't forgive the failure, but instead of saying "let's fix it then", the answer is always: private enterprise!
The American left and right both support government invading different facets our private lives to varying degrees. Neither are anarchists, or anything close to it.
The OPM had a serious data breach, and demonstrated a marked lack of ability to do their job. To date, they have not been held accountable, unless you count the stern questioning.
What remedy would you prescribe to fix OPM? How would you hold them accountable?
Accountability is good and should happen. Thus far we've seen very little accountability for data breaches in the private sector, so they're not alone.
I don't know the answer as to how to make accountability really work in general -- because it becomes game theory of how to create that space without becoming paralyzed by fear to act.
Also, the govt is demonstrably worse at protecting information than any FAANG, and they are all abiding by GDPR which is the right regulation IMO
It remains to be seen if it holds up in practice what it offers in spirit. But the idea that companies are forced to think about my personal data as if it was payment credentials, with similar rigor, and penalties, just sounds so awesome to me as a customer.
In the EU personal data _is_ protected as if its cars, food, trains or planes. And honestly its great :)
Not to mention the abuse potential is fundamentally massively different. It isn't apples to oranges but apples to formica countertops
So if population growth is your priority as nation, it could make sense to allow free data flow if you ignore potential long term side effects that could counter this.
The downsides of free data flow and the permanence of personal data are mostly affecting the mental health of people which could result in more deaths from drug abuse and other self destructive behaviors, or even civil wars long term.
This of course could contradict free data flow as a viable strategy for long term population growth.
A battle between short and long term politics, with long term politics being clearly at a disadvantage because they're less obvious and harder to predict/measure, and harder to sell in political campaigns.
Incidentally, countries as a concept may greatly distract the so-fragmented public from many a no less fundamental problem...
I am pro this idea. I am not sure it can be done via technical means alone.
But, govt is super dysfunctional too.
We, as people, have work to do in the US.
As for cars - the government protects car _manufacturers_, if at all. And that's also in the form of "anti-protection" of public transport...
Finally - how would the US government protect your data if it's intent on getting its hands on a copy of as much of it as it can, then mining it and searching it for various purposes? (Snowden revelations)
PS - The firewall blocks me :-(
I wish they would stop protecting cars and start protecting people. 40,000 die every single year due to cars, and over 4 million injured or disabled.
Disclaimer: cannot read the article