alt Hacker NewsIt takes a minimum of 600 hours of training to get licensed to cut hair in California.
Pex plumbing is banned in Chicago as a union protectionist regulation.
The "chicken tax" regulation scheme has screwed up the US truck market for decades.
Electrical code requirements for the wiring of kitchen islands have changed drastically with very small justification within a short span of time.
To this day it is illegal to trade onion futures in Chicago due to an attempt to corner the market on onions decades ago(probably over a century can't be bothered to check).
Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
The affordable care act is written in such a way that the only way for insurers to increase their profit margin on health plans is to increase the cost they pay out to providers ("gold plating")
CAFE fuel economy standards have lead to the arms race of increased vehicle sizes for unnecessary reasons.
Replies
These are excellent examples. Regulations are not inherently good or bad, and one of the issues we seem to have in the US is a lack of honest accounting, sometimes purposefully and sometimes due to a lack of state capacity, what the costs and benefits of different regulations are.
> decades ago(probably over a century can't be bothered to check).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act passed in 1958, just FYI.
I’ll take your word on the other points but this one:
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
Needs some debunking. In fact, I think you may have been fed lies because the UK government felt the need to specifically call this out:
https://mhclgmedia.blog.gov.uk/2026/06/25/air-conditioning-r...
In short: AC in the home is legal in the UK subject to following regulations, both national and local. Councils are generally happy to tell you how to comply, in my experience with building control.
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
There are very few laws which can say what you are allowed to do with your owned house. One of them is when it is of historical value. Then you aren’t allowed to change pretty much anything.
The rest are just landlords who want to fuck you over.
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
I keep seeing people say this but they don’t have any evidence, seen it tons online the last few weeks even on HN. What’s the deal? One person the other day went so far as to say that multiple EU nations have banned AC, which is completely false. You can absolutely have air-conditioning in Europe. Some places have stricter rules about permanent installation, such as HVACs in older areas, but there are plenty of air-conditioning units people can just pick up and use the same day in those cases. You can get AC units in European nations. You don’t have to just roast for no reason because of the government.
[dead]
Are you agreeing with the parent and giving examples of regulations that have been debated? Or are you trying to give examples of some of the "strawmen" regulations?
A lot of these examples are pretty subjective or missing context...
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer
Cite your sources.
There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership.
And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts of northern Europe with weird hangups about air conditioning.
But as best I can tell this claim is false; the biggest reason why air conditioning is not so widespread in Northern Europe as in the United States is that the climate simply hasn’t, until recently, required it.