Regulations are generally the after-the-fact reaction to irresponsible, negligent, or ignorant behavior.
The problem is, the folks who think that more regulation is the answer seem to think that the government regulators are benevolent gods who themselves never make mistakes, are not subject to greed, corruption, political influence, negligence, incompetence, etc.
I think it's less about outside regulators than organizations/individuals optimizing to cover their own asses. I assure you, I'm not in the "gov'ment regulators ruin everything" camp.
> scheming, wicked villains, or power hungry idiots
to explain any of their recent misbehavior - perfectly banal explanations suffice. At the end of the day, our regulators will let people die invisibly if it means avoiding bad press because that's what they are incentivized to do.
It seems to me that regulators who are power motivated have more to gain by not saying what can and cannot be done and instead implying that you're breaking the law and using that as leverage over you.
Thankfully many of us here live in countries where the pen is mightier than the sword. If regulators' opinions don't match up with those of the people, then maybe we need some new regulators.
Not trying to imply there's any sort of consensus here, of course. Just that "regulators disagree" certainly isn't the end of the discussion in any country with a functioning democracy.
Regulators work for us, and should be answerable to the people through their democratically elected representatives. Their job shouldn't be to protect and expand the control the state wields. It should be exclusively to further the public interest, whether that is through expanding state power, or relinquishing it to make way for new non-governmental mechanisms of socio-economic coordination.
I understand your point from a practical perspective, but I think it's important to point out how far the situation of needing to worry about how regulators will react to decentralization technology is from the ideals of democracy.
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