Live data from Hacker News

Permissionless innovation

learnliberty.org

11–20 of 115 posts

Re: Permissionless innovation

#11
post #8

Is this actually saying anything other than that government should get out of the way?

It's more specific. It's saying regulation should be largely post-hoc or with clearly defined before-hand rules. Instead, many people need permits (&c) for things where they're already following the rules. That creates a procedural barrier to change of any kind, and therefore is a massive handout to incumbents and crushes the most valuable part of a competitive market.

Re: Permissionless innovation

#12

Pro-capitalist propaganda disguised as "freedom".

How dare anyone promote the most successful anti-poverty economic tool ever invented - letting people freely exchange labor and goods in a system of laws and contracts. Don't believe me? Look at when China implemented free market reforms then look at when their economy began decades of massive growth. China used to have 500 million people who had never owned a toothbrush. Now all the toothbrushes in the world are mad…

I don't think the availability of toothbrushes offers a real defense of capitalism.

Do I get to freely exchange my labor? Isn't it more like I'm required to exchange it in order to stay alive. And, in most cases arn't I required to exchange a whole lot of my available labor in order to make ends meet?

I would expect the most powerful anti-poverty economic tool to have clear and demonstrable gains against poverty, obvious implementation and very few detractors. But that doesn't appear to be the case...

Re: Permissionless innovation

#13
post #11
post #8

Is this actually saying anything other than that government should get out of the way?

It's more specific. It's saying regulation should be largely post-hoc or with clearly defined before-hand rules. Instead, many people need permits (&c) for things where they're already following the rules. That creates a procedural barrier to change of any kind, and therefore is a massive handout to incumbents and crushes the most valuable part of a competitive market.

Then he should have expressed it that way. To me it sounded like the usual "government is bad" rant.

Re: Permissionless innovation

#14
post #2

The author has a great interview on econtalk about this which I found very interesting.

As a long time econtalk listener I am kind of disappointed with this week's episode. I don't feel like they really elaborated beyond "we should have permissionless innovation"

My thoughts as well. They were basically saying that too much regulation/central planning is bad and a central authority cannot decide whether something is a good business idea, then talk for a long time about this fuzzy metaphor about dancing.

Re: Permissionless innovation

#15
This is a very important point the author is making. There are so many areas that are by default, non-innovation tolerant: for instance housing and transportation. If you dictate the size and placement of every last nut and bolt, it leaves little/no room for innovation, making it impossible to make progress.

Re: Permissionless innovation

#17
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more specific. It's saying regulation should be largely post-hoc or with clearly defined before-hand rules. Instead, many people need permits (&c) for things where they're already following the rules. That creates a procedural barrier to change of any kind, and therefore is a massive handout to incumbents and crushes the most valuable part of a competitive market.

Then he should have expressed it that way. To me it sounded like the usual "government is bad" rant.

That doesn't sound very open-minded. How many great arguments are you ignoring because they don't support larger, more intrusive governments? The point is, you don't know.

Re: Permissionless innovation

#18
I think this applies not only at large (government) scale, but on a smaller scale, as well: from single companies to whole industrial sectors. I personally witnessed various (non tech) companies that self-organized their tech arm in a way that was for every practical purpose impossible to innovate: "You can certainly go on with your proposal, provided that you get the authorization from depts A, B and C, and that your changes have absolutely no impact on how they operate".

Re: Permissionless innovation

#19
For those who care about this sort of thing (NOT trying to bring up any political debates):

Learn Liberty is project of the Institute for Humane Studies, a libertarian-focused nonprofit with Charles Koch and other conservative businessmen and politicians on its Board of Directors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Humane_Studies

Re: Permissionless innovation

#20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then he should have expressed it that way. To me it sounded like the usual "government is bad" rant.

That doesn't sound very open-minded. How many great arguments are you ignoring because they don't support larger, more intrusive governments? The point is, you don't know.

I don't support larger, more intrusive governments. But I think his Twitter example is bad. Twitter has no externalities so it shouldn't need government approval which it actually didn't need. So there was no problem. The only permission needed was from investors who had to cough up the money.

Instead of railing against solar power maybe he should also rail against the massive subsidies the oil industry gets through decades long military intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere. He also doesn't touch more complex areas such as nuclear energy for example. Is it OK for everybody to do "Permissionless Innovation" on reactor designs and from time to time one of them blows up? I hope the author will move close to one of these innovation paradises.

Post reply on HN