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Nah, California has inertia and the funding apparatus there is still stronger than anywhere in the world, which is more meaningful. Not to mention the regulatory framework for innovation in general is looser in the US.
But it's telling that the companies that exist right now that fit the bill are also in Texas and Massachusetts these days, that used to be more rare. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some exodus. But it's probably down to the taxes than line items from small regulation.
You're forgetting automotive and think that energy grid infra is a lot looser than it actually is, but other than that it's broadly correct.
I think we're talking past each other. This regulation in and of itself is a nothingburger. It's the tendency I'm speaking to, which is what was alluded to in the OP.
Regulation is a dynamic process, it never stops at one law and very few of its slopes are not slippery.
In this house we discuss the Bailey, not the Motte.
Ok, cool. Then epsilon regulation doesn't instantly kill 100% of innovation.
Well, then we can probably dig back into the history books to find the first actual regulation that was placed on the tech industry. Whenever it was, it was in the past. The complaint that if we have epsilon regulation, it will definitely be a slippery slope to infinite regulation was valid then, but we're past that threshold now. Now, regulation is a dynamic process; the question is whether this regulation is part of a slippery slope toward infinite regulation, or if it's actually mostly basic shit that everyone has already known they should be doing anyway.
I mean, no? It's literally TheMotte. And this betrays that your reasoning doesn't even follow the Motte/Bailey dynamics. It was:
If anything, you're the one who is making bold, controversial statements (that innovation will grind to a halt, that no innovation happens anymore in any other industry that has any regulation). There's nothing comparable happening in the other direction. What even is the Bailey that you speak of?
EDIT: Your Bailey seems to be "an epsilon regulation grinds innovation down to zero". When someone challenges you on this, you retreat to an obvious, uncontroversial statement, like, "Regulation is dynamic," but try to sneak in some not-fleshed-out argument about a slippery slope implying infinite regulation. When pulled back to reality, and you're challenged to engage with actually-existing regulation, you're actually pretty silent, unlike at least gattsuru, who at least engages with what's actually going on rather than fever dreams. Why isn't the vastly more reasonable view that you're engaging in a Motte/Bailey argument, while not being able to point to any sort of Bailey from the other side?
The fact that it's the wrong way around was remarked on at the time, newfriend.
But let me clarify since you're confused:
The Motte is "epsilon regulation doesn't instantly kill 100% of innovation", a very defensible claim. The Bailey is "I hear about [extensive compliance] from my friends in literally every other industry ever. They still seem capable of operating.", a controversial statement.
My own consistent position is that this regulation is a small advance that is inconsequential by itself but proceeds in a direction that is ultimately incompatible with innovation and that assenting to it is a slippery slope. I therefore oppose it in principle, much like I oppose other regulation that lead in the direction of encroachment of things that I cherish, no matter how reasonable it is.
You may say there are "reasonable" limits we can impose on free speech as well. I still oppose them no matter how reasonable they are.
You may then argue that slippery slope arguments are fallacious, to which I'll retort that they are only so when the slope isn't slippery, and that we have a veritable orgy of historical evidence that smaller regulation almost always lead to larger regulation.
This is a true statement about the world, not an outrageous claim, newfriend. You may be thinking that those words mean something other than what those words mean. What are you thinking they mean?
Great! We can surely then have a reasoned discussion about the nature of slippery slope arguments, trying to understand when they hold, to what extent they hold, and whether the premises required for them to have force are present here. I have never objected to the concept of a slippery slope arguments, but it does need some something behind it, otherwise it leaves us vulnerable to just any crazy extrapolation of anything in any domain. We probably wouldn't respond to, "Gay marriage is a slippery slope to marrying dogs!" with, "H-yup. All slippery slope arguments are perfectly valid and correct in all conclusions."
It's a true statement about your opinion. I disagree with your assessment of what "being capable of operating" entails, as we have gone over already.
it certainly does!
All it needs formally is demonstration that the slope is slippery. Which we can discuss in this case, but I don't really see the argument against given we have dozens of examples in this very specific field, and in other fields of engineering, of the complexity of regulation increasing to smothering levels from previously small demands. Automobiles, airplanes, even dishwashers, you can take your pick of examples.
Will you then disagree that government regulation is a slippery slope? And on what ground will you do so?
We discussed shale fracking. Now Space X, ozempic, Matt Levine gives tons of examples of financial innovation, we're damn close to self-driving cars, but the hol' up is the tech, not the regulation. The list goes on and on. I do not see any more content in your comment that is anywhere near suitable to claim that we can simply declare this "gone over already". If anything, you just dropped it, because your position didn't go anywhere.
Let's make sure we're on the same page here, so that we are at least confident that we're both actually really ready to engage the slippery slope question honestly, without leaving room for a retreat in this direction. Are other industries capable of operating with some amount of regulation? Not, "Is there a general sense of a regulation-innovation tradeoff?" We agree that there is. The straightforward statement that many other industries are capable of operating with some amount of regulation. Are you going to stick with the position that this is an outlandish Bailey? Or is it simply a true fact about the world, and we can shift the discussion toward slippery slopes?
Let's take a look at those survivors then.
Illegal in Europe at large.
Currently being sued for not respecting the contradictions between ITAR and the CRA.
Took three years to change the label of a drug that would never have been approved if they had to label it from scratch.
Most financial innovation is currently happening outside of regulation.
Technically very hard indeed, but I'm willing to bet they'll also become very hard legally once they start inevitably running people over.
On the whole, it seems hard to argue that these innovations are examples of regulation being compatible with or fostering innovation. They rather seem to exist despite it.
I'm willing to have the charity to shake on "there a general sense of a regulation-innovation tradeoff". This is true. The more regulation, the less innovation as a general rule, with some exceptions.
As for the second part of the argument, you haven't produced any reasoning as to why regulation isn't a slippery slope while I can point to the development of essentially any technology since 1940 to affirm it. From the dishwasher to the machine gun.
You seem ready to argue elsewhere in this thread that the very idea of the slope being slippery is ridiculous and unfounded and here you're dodging. I think that is bad faith and that you've done nothing but project objections to your antagonism onto those that criticize it here. That is isn't just unconvincing rhetoric, it's a waste of our time.
So instead let's actually do something productive and establish your position definitively: what is your positive theory of the interaction of regulation and innovation, does it have any limiting principle and how does it maintain the innovation cycle and competition in the face of the interests that inevitably act on it?
I don't actually see how your argument here is supposed to function. Can you spell it out for me?
Nope; literally never did that. Please don't waste our time strawmanning me.
I think there is often a general sense of a regulation-innovation tradeoff. It happens in different ways in different places, and it's often area specific, many times in ways that you might not expect. It's a really tough problem, so I'm generally in favor of fewer regulations, especially when they're not pretty decently well-tied to a specific, serious problem. I think that a lot of the time, you can maintain the innovation cycle and competition by being careful and hopefully as light-touch as possible with regulation. Some examples would be that if (and this is a big if, because I would actually disagree with the ends) you want to reduce carbon emissions from powerplants or noxious emissions from tailpipes, it's better to do things like set output targets and let the innovation cycle and competition figure out how to solve the problem rather than mandate specific technological solutions that must be adopted for the rest of time, no questions asked. Of course, this is an easy example, and many situations can pose more difficult problems; I'm probably not going to have the answer to them all off the top of my head.
This requirement seems mostly focused on some of the most egregious practices, and it appears that they at least try to leave open the possibility that people can come to the table with innovative solutions to accomplish the "aspirational text" (as gattsuru put it), even if it wasn't a solution that they specifically identified. It may be possible that we have some other big breakthroughs in the field of network security that make some of these line items look ridiculous in hindsight, which is why I would also say that a grossly under-resourced effort across regulation regimes is hunting for precisely any items that may have been deprecated, so they can be promptly chopped. I lament that this is not done well enough, and it's likely one of the major contributors to the general sense of a regulation-innovation tradeoff.
I reject the concept that as soon as epsilon regulation of an industry is put into place, it necessarily and logically follows that there is a slippery slope that results in innovation dying. I think you need at least some argument further. It's easy to just 'declare'
bankruptcya slippery slope, but we know that many end up not.Nobody is arguing that "the moment any regulation is in place, it is inevitable that we will slide all the way down the slippery slope of increasing regulation and all innovation in that industry will die". The argument is, instead, that adding a regulation increases the chance that we will slide down that slippery slope. That chance may be worth it, if the step is small and the benefit of the regulation is large, but in the case of the entirety of ETSI EN 303 645 (not just section 5.1 in isolation), I don't think that's the case, and I certainly don't think it's a slam-dunk that it's worth the cost.
Section 5.1, "You are not allowed to use a default password on an network interface as the sole means of authorization for the administrative functions of an IoT device", if well-implemented, is probably such a high-benefit low-risk regulation.
Section 5.4.1, "sensitive security parameters in persistent storage shall be stored securely by the device," seems a bit more likely to be a costly provision, and IMO one that misunderstands how hardware security works (there is no such thing as robust security against an attacker with physical access).
They double down on the idea that manufacturers can make something robust to physical access in section 5.4.2, "where a hard-coded unique per device identity is used in a device for security purposes, it shall be implemented in such a way that it resists tampering by means such as physical, electrical or software."
And then there's perplexing stuff like 5.6.4 "where a debug interface is physically accessible, it shall be disabled in software.". Does this mean if you sell a color-changing light bulb, and the bulb has a usbc port, you're not allowed to expose logs across the network and instead have to expose them only over the usbc port? I would guess not, but I'd also guess that if I was in the UK the legal team at my company would be very unhappy if I just went with my guess without consulting them.
And that's really the crux of the issue, introducing regulation like this means that companies now have to make a choice between exposing themselves to legal risks, making dumb development decisions based on the most conservative possible interpretation of the law, or involve the legal department way more frequently for development decisions.
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