It wouldn’t be the first time that major players lobby for regulation to raise the barrier-to-entry. Requiring ai to be “psychologically safe” would be an effective way of doing this.
> It wouldn’t be the first time that major players lobby for regulation to raise the barrier-to-entry.
FWIW, a take I often see on HN is that any regulation is effectively a barrier to entry, as larger companies find it easier to deal with them than the smaller ones. But if so, then this only means that "barriers to entry" is not a valid argument against regulations, not unless specific barriers are mentioned.
I had to read your sentence a few times to unpack it in my brain.
But there is something implicit in what you're saying that I don't agree with and I think a fair few others won't as well.
That is: "We don't mind barriers to entry" or "they're not a problem to avoid".
On it's own it's fine, e.g. we have good barriers like the medical profession arguably. But barriers to entry also has a negative value because we all want "competition", we like small businesses, and we also don't like monopolies due to their ability to abuse their market share. So it's not as straight forward, "barriers to entry" is not something we can dismiss as a valid argument.
Sorry for being unclear. What I was trying to communicate is:
1) Over the years, I've seen a lot of HN comments expressing the belief that "all barriers to entry are bad; regulation always creates barriers to entry, therefore specific regulation under discussion is bad";
2) The reasoning behind "regulation always creates barriers to entry" is that larger companies have it easier to adjust to regulatory changes, by virtue of having more financial buffer, a lot of lawyers on retainer, and perhaps even some influence on the shape of the law changes in question;
3) I agree with 2), but I disagree this is always, or even usually, a problem. I also disagree with "all barriers to entry are bad", and therefore I disagree with 1) in general. The reasoning behind my dismissal is that it's trivial to think of examples of laws and explicit barriers to entry that are net beneficial for the market, for the customers, and for the society.
4) Once you realize 1) is obviously false as an absolute statement ("all barriers to entry are bad"), you should realize that mentioning barriers to entry as implied negative is a rhetorical trick. Onus is on the person bringing it up to show that specific barrier to entry under discussion is a net negative, as there is no reason to actually assume it.
