I love that video clip! Great contribution!
You may missed the rest of that post. Or, maybe the start of this thread.
halftimes basic point starts out as a loyal Hoosier complaining about Indiana being considered backward. And dose of rather heavy handed assertion that it is a liberal canard.
While I didn't actually say that Indiana is backward, somebody else did mention that as a possibility, and I do think we look that way, and that Ohio did not seem as backward to others, and also that Indiana had shot itself in the foot with the RFRA.
All of which brought halftime to his defense of absolute free choice and into a state of denial about that law.
While halftime was just plainly wrong that the RFRA would not weaken protection for LGBT rights and potentially override many other statutes, he got focused on individual choice instead of the appearance of being backwards. In that we have gone off topic. And, I don't think America sees Indiana as taking heroic libertarian view on principle. More like a repressive backward discrimination against a minority group.
Only late in the thread with his child molester argument and vigorous defense, protecting macho biker culture from a gentleman like him entering a biker bar, has halftime veered a little bit toward homophobia. Which would definitely be backward.
Perhaps I was unfair to pay too much attention to that. Your point is well taken, Jackson.
Still. I think we are just a little off topic here, and I'm one who believes in supporting the rules and traditions of our forum. Without laws our culture will fail. We are likely just to become savages and we need to keep the high standards of civility, decorum, and rational debate without personal comments that this forum stands for.
I'll take some responsibility for that off topic thing, and will welcome discussion back on topic about whether Indiana appears backward or not, and whether it has anything to do with the NBA.
Darn.
Sadly, I think you have been taken in by halftimes silver tongued deviltry.
Social interactions generally are lightly regulated and have been since law was invented. Commercial interaction has been more heavily regulated. Seems very logical to me that there is legal liability and public standards are set.
Take food and beverages. You go over to the neighbors for dinner. You know them, little reason for regulation and mostly unregulated, although if they poison you the law will step in. But when you go to out to a bar or restaurant, that's different. A little regulation seems in order. The public is at much greater risk, there is a state interest, and from early days communities regulated food providers and created legal liability. Must be some reason.
Perhaps it is as simple as that commercial transactions are far more likely to be between strangers and often there is asymmetry of information. A business by it's nature deals with many people and puts them at risk.
I am reasonably pleased when I travel on business or for pleasure that planes are regulated, restaurants, bars, other public businesses. Awfully expensive and inconvenient for me to get to know the pilot or cook or commercial seller of a product or evaluate the interaction in advance. Awfully risky if I have no legal recourse if harmed. We have a legal system evolved to provide public safety, maybe?
None of that is very similar to social interactions.
Every legal system in the world makes the distinction. Why do you find the two situations the same? Don't you think there is a reason?
Of course I didn't say anything like that. I am shocked you would use a straw man argument...
I know of no regulation like that in the past, and doubt legislators are going to see the gain from reducing risk great enough to offset the cost of the regulation. More to the point, of course, is that blind dates do include a trusted intermediary and are not generally in the "public" realm where there are many people at risk on a blind date.
Now, a commercial blind dating activity would be much different, wouldn't it?
A better question would be whether something like internet dating services, even social media which can be easily used to facilitate criminal or terrorist activity, even child abuse and sex traffic, should be regulated, and to what degree. Carefully crafted exceptions to liability law is and should be made in the case of many anonymous internet forums and their activity to protect free speech.
That's a major factor, I think. But not the only one distinguishing the two categories of interaction. I mentioned scale of the activity being different above. Restaurants affecting many more people, for example. As well as it and being very inconvenient and expensive for individuals to know enough to trust the enterprise, that surely makes creation of a legal norm more sensible. Greater risk to more people surely justifies more regulatory cost.
To me that is a key. There should always be attention to a cost benefit analysis in any government activity or regulation. Private activity can have, and commercial activity some what more likely can have externalities that impose costs on others (not involved in the interaction). Completely private interaction (perhaps commercial) will balance the rights of those in the interaction, but NOT protect those who are involved in the interaction.
For example, burning trash on your own property is perhaps all plus to you, nobody else voluntarily involved. Prevailing wind carries smoke away, but it is a cost to your neighbors downwind. So regulation and liability law maybe should apply. You and your neighbor voluntarily take the risk of doing some target shooting in your back yard, on your own property. That could harm others not involved in the activity.
A commercial operation in either case, which would be larger scale and done on a regular basis, would certainly up the stakes and more likely justify regulation than isolated cases of leaf burning in the Autumn.
There is other justification to have government intrusion in "private" or public interaction too. For example, there are a variety of child welfare laws.
My point is that legal structures have evolved over time to create a society in which we have accepted a baseline of regulation. That generally speaking reflects accepted social norms. Whether it is civil liability which puts a price tag on our activity when we harm others, or criminal liability, or other regulatory burdens, these legal norms have developed, been adopted and accepted in our community. We all make assumptions on the basis of the laws, and in many cases put our trust in the law to inexpensively and practically protect us, so we don't have to spend a lot of time negotiating private contracts in commercial settings.
In a public setting, it is similar to when we see a green light driving. We drive through an intersection with much less care than if there is a red light.
In the case of commercial activity there is much more regulation accepted and I would suggest that reflects a variety of reasons, and reflect clear differences between private activity and public commercial activity.
No.
There is no exclusive list of reasons that explain all regulations.
Information asymmetry can justify regulation to make commercial transactions cheaper and efficient, relative to the cost of acquiring information.
In most cases it makes sense that the law reflects community standards and expectations of the members of the community.
We should pay attention to cost benefit analysis when we choose to regulate.
We should not ignore externalities which may justify a lot of regulation.
Yes.
The fact communities have adopted regulations is a factor that justifies them, since it can reflect acceptance and approval, and reflect a social contract.
Regulation of private activity and commercial activity may be justified.
No.
You misstated the factors I did suggest, and I did not at any time say they were the sole factors.
Each particular regulation is likely to have factors unique to the situation which motivate it's creation, whether private or commercial.
Perhaps I don't understand your question. I thought I gave several factors that generally might make commercial activity different, more appropriately subject to regulation. Do you think the two types of interactions are the same and can't be distinguished?
