> it's very difficult to correctly estimate what it will actually cost to change something once you decided it's required - based on current reality where it is not. Mass production and clever cost reductions resulting from the normal commercial pressures tend to drive down costs
Difficult, but not impossible.
What are calculable and do NOT scale down is cost for compliance documentation and processes. Changing from 1 form of documentation to 4 forms of documentation has measurable cost, that will be imposed forever.
> It's also difficult to anticipate all benefits from a good change without trying it.
That's not a great argument, because it can be counterbalanced by the equally true opposite: it's difficult to anticipate all downsides to a change without trying it.
> Remember when you were allowed to smoke cigarettes on aeroplanes?
Remember when you could walk up to a gate 5 minutes before a flight, buy a ticket, and fly?
The current TSA security theater has had some benefits, but it's also made using airports far worse as a traveler.
I mean, I'm pretty sure there was a long period where you could walk up 5 minutes before, and fly on a plane where you're not allowed to smoke. It's completely unrelated.
The TSA makes no sense as a safety intervention, it's theatre, it's supposed to look like we're trying hard to solve the problem, not be an attempt to solve the problem, and if there was an accident investigation for 9/11 I can't think why, that's not an accident.
As to your specific claim about enforcement, actually we don't even know whether we'd increase paperwork overhead in many cases. Rationalization driven by new regulation can actually reduce this instead.
For a non-regulatory (at least in the sense that there's no government regulators involved) example consider Let's Encrypt's ACME which was discussed here recently. ACME complies with the "Ten Blessed Methods". But prior to Let's Encrypt the most common processes weren't stricter, or more robust, they were much worse and much more labour intensive. Some of them were prohibited more or less immediately when the "Ten Blessed Methods" were required because they're just obviously unacceptable.
The Proof of Control records from ACME are much better than what had been the usual practice prior yet Let's Encrypt is $0 at point of use and even if we count the actual cost (borne by donations rather than subscribers) it's much cheaper than the prior commercial operators had been for much more value delivered.
Difficult, but not impossible.
What are calculable and do NOT scale down is cost for compliance documentation and processes. Changing from 1 form of documentation to 4 forms of documentation has measurable cost, that will be imposed forever.
> It's also difficult to anticipate all benefits from a good change without trying it.
That's not a great argument, because it can be counterbalanced by the equally true opposite: it's difficult to anticipate all downsides to a change without trying it.
> Remember when you were allowed to smoke cigarettes on aeroplanes?
Remember when you could walk up to a gate 5 minutes before a flight, buy a ticket, and fly?
The current TSA security theater has had some benefits, but it's also made using airports far worse as a traveler.