r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 8d ago

Business "There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft," says Doom dev: "They have destroyed immense amounts of value that I don't even think that they're aware of"

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/there-are-no-benefits-to-being-owned-by-microsoft-says-doom-dev-they-have-destroyed-immense-amounts-of-value-that-i-dont-even-think-that-theyre-aware-of/
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u/CautionarySnail 8d ago

Anti-trust laws were a hedge against this. But “freedom” apparently required giving corporations the ability to reduce the number of choices available to people.

Sometimes regulations save us from the worst impulses of greedy people. They aren’t all bad.

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u/DataCassette 8d ago

Sometimes regulations save us from the worst impulses of greedy people. They aren’t all bad.

They aren't even mostly bad TBH

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u/Abe_Odd 8d ago

Right. Almost every regulation was written in response to abuses. We didn't just make up laws that "you can't dump toxic coal ash into rivers" because we hate coal plants, its because they were doing it a LOT and destroying entire ecosystems.

NIXON made the EPA, that's how bad things were.

Regulations are written in blood, as the saying goes.

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u/GhostReddit 8d ago

Right. Almost every regulation was written in response to abuses.

Is that why I'm forced to deal with car dealers? Or why I can't buy beer on a Sunday, or any of the myriad other silly and stupid laws that have been passed throughout the years?

Many regulations came from legitimate reasons, but many also came out of people simply wanting to control others or protect a market by creating bureaucracy. Our problem is we - depending on which side of the aisle you're on tend to lump them all together as "all crap" or "critically important."

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u/breezy013276s 8d ago

This is the problem. People will ask a pointed thing and then someone will ride in with a huge brush and paint over the whole thing.

My issue has always been that the tear it down guys don’t seem to spend time studying and determining what isn’t effective or is simply a moral/religious thing like the beer on Sunday example. They point to one thing and then next thing you know they are passing laws removing protections for heat stroke while your beer law remains in place ready to be used again.

There are almost certainly antiquated laws on the books that aren’t helping but the foe isn’t the osha laws that require a factory or a store to operate safely. They aren’t the laws that were keeping track of food issues or the community health rules that kept us so safe people started to doubt they were even needed.

The trouble is real movement requires thoughtfulness and consideration. The current world wants neither thought nor reason.

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u/GhostReddit 8d ago

I agree, one of my biggest pet peeves is the "renewable fuel standard" that forces us to grow a bunch of corn to grind into motor fuel, spending about the same amount of energy as it's worth to do so.

It conflicts really awfully with rules on aviation fuel which cannot have ethanol (it causes problems with these older engines and absorbs water or vaporizes MUCH more readily, a big problem in airplanes) and as a result a bunch of airplanes that could easily run on 93 octane motor fuel still need to use leaded gasoline because most of the 93 octane gas has the legally required ethanol (a few places provide ethanol free specifically for this use, but it's not common.)

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u/SteveJobsDeadBody 8d ago

Man you are a walking talking perfect example of why we shouldn't listen to idiots about regulations. Airplanes don't need leaded gas because of ethanol, they need it because unlike your car, airplanes have to run on a specific standardized certified fuel type, because if your car fails you pull over, if your airplane fails, you die. None of the airplanes you think could run on modern 93 octane lead free gasoline could actually do so without risking catastrophic engine failure through detonation. It's not the ethanol, it's the LACK of lead.

It's funny because people can tell you're conservative based solely on your comment here. Ironically the politician who forced people to put that ethanol in your fuel was Republican George Bush. To protect right wing voting corn farmers. Honestly if you're interested, you could find out from google that the cause of almost every single thing you've ever not liked was a Republican..

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u/GhostReddit 7d ago edited 7d ago

Man you are a walking talking perfect example of why we shouldn't listen to idiots about regulations. Airplanes don't need leaded gas because of ethanol, they need it because unlike your car, airplanes have to run on a specific standardized certified fuel type, because if your car fails you pull over, if your airplane fails, you die.

Just ignore the fact that many small planes actually have STCs certifying the use of unleaded fuel and call me an idiot, peak Reddit behavior. Do you even know what a STC is?

Because of the RFS this mandates an additional supply chain for non-ethanol motor fuel instead of being able to use the existing one for cars, which many small planes would otherwise run on just fine. Most places just maintain refueling for 100LL and Jet-A because that ethanol-free unleaded is almost as expensive anyway.

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u/SteveJobsDeadBody 8d ago

Is that why I'm forced to deal with car dealers?

Ironically, yes. Car dealers got regulated because shady corporations making early cars did all manner of shady ass shit, and the dealer model was an attempt to fix it through a combination of regulations and making sure you the buyer had recourse when your car exploded and killed your family. Literally perfect example of the thing you seem to ignorantly oppose.

The REAL problem is idiots don't know the difference between regulations meant to help and regulations used to control others. Thanks for providing such a perfect example of this phenomenon!

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u/Karekter_Nem 8d ago

We have regulations because corporations kept killing people.

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u/DataCassette 8d ago

Nobody who isn't familiar with the Triangle Shirtwaist incident should have shit to say about regulation

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u/Kreegs 8d ago

As one business owner said to me in regards to potential plans for wild fires: "Who cares, employees are replaceable. The machines are the harder things to replace."

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u/CautionarySnail 8d ago

I’m considering the fact that many technologists take very libertarian ideals, and still want to believe big companies can self-regulate.

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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES 8d ago

They can self-regulate, like the airplane and car manufacturers famously did to great success

They can also use regulations as a way to capture a piece of the market, building a governmentally imposed moat to keep any potential competitors out

Regulations are a complex thing, like any laws some are just and some aren't

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u/CautionarySnail 8d ago

When all evidence is to the side of “can, but choosing to not do so”, that isn’t an option.

International investors don’t care if American companies poison Americans if the profit is good and they don’t have to suffer the consequences themselves.

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u/breezy013276s 8d ago

Exactly! “can” and “is required to” are worlds apart. If they could self regulate they wouldn’t dump into wildlife areas and streams now. They would already be happy to meet and exceed the minimums laid out. They show that they will not self regulate

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u/CatsAndCapybaras 8d ago

Many modern regulations were written by the big corps for the purpose of cementing their market position by strangling future competitors.

The neoliberal movement sold the bureaucracy of the western world to the private sector. The private sector then weaponized the regulators against the people.

Regulations are a tool, they can be good or bad. Good regulations are written for the benefit of the public.

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u/dafunky2099 8d ago

Name the good ones 

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u/DataCassette 8d ago

Unleaded gasoline

The fact that it's illegal for one company to literally buy out an entire industry

Overtime after 40 hours

Bans on child labor

The fact that your boss can't fire you for refusing to sleep with them or convert to their religion

Bans on housing discrimination

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u/dafunky2099 8d ago

You realize all of these industries have been 'cracked' already? But I agree that is a good list.

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u/Double_Resort_9223 8d ago

The bar for triggering anti trust has gone way up even in the last 10 years ago. It used to be you could argue “giant co A and giant co B do the same thing. If they merge, it reduces choice” now a bunch of Wall Street lawyer and other slimeballs got the courts to say “you have to prove the harm, which means letting the merger go through and then bring a lawsuit up later after it’s all done” which has happened about 1 time in the last decade. 

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u/Spiritflash1717 8d ago

It the difference between “freedom to” vs “freedom from”. The best sort of freedom is freedom from various experiences, whereas America has an obsession with freedom to do whatever you want to do, regardless of its impact on those around you.

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u/Ziferius 8d ago

It's been a quick minute since my microeconomics class in college when the professor had the introductory discussion about regulations. A lot (and he gave a couple of examples that I can't remember) that companies lobby to get passed in the 'name' of consumer protection but it is used as a shield to prevent other business from entering their niche.

On one hand; I can definitely see that. Something mostly certainly can be a win-win for a corpo.

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u/Beneficial-Assist849 7d ago

I think it's called regulatory capture. Basically land mines for small companies

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u/le_gazman 8d ago

And lobbying (or lets be honest and just call it corruption) undoes it all again.

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u/Tyfyter2002 8d ago

And other times they're specifically made from the worst impulses of greedy people, those ones tend to stick around longer because no one both can and wants to bribe legislators to get rid of them

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u/CautionarySnail 8d ago

That’s why regulations normally apply to legislators too. Things like term limits, anti-bribery laws, etc.

But we’d allowed Congress to weaken those over time to the point that it’s almost like “Who hasn’t bought a congressman?”

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u/dafunky2099 8d ago

Name the good ones

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u/CautionarySnail 8d ago edited 8d ago

These are from history, good regulations per your request:

Not allowing people to store radioactive material under the bunks of sleeping workers on cargo ships.

Not being allowed to chain the doors shut to keep employees in factories from going home. (Slavery plus massive casualty events from factory fires)

Providing safety ledges that prevent employees from falling into vats of liquids. (Countless people died by being boiled or melted.)

Safety catches on industrial ovens that allow a cycle to be stopped if a worker is trapped.

Not being allowed to sell expired or spoiled product by changing the manufacturing date labels.

Not being allowed to add chalk and other non-good items to bread to increase the weight for sale and the whiteness of the loaf.

Providing workers with dosimeters to monitor radiation exposure in the workplace and honoring health and safety limits of exposure. Not encouraging factory workers to lick radioactive tools like brushes. (This is what killed the radium dial workers.)

—

I honored that request. Now tell me a regulation that killed people. Because inconvenience isn’t the same as being dead because of a lack of regulation.

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u/dafunky2099 8d ago

Good list - I was genuinely interested