原文标题：What regulators can learn from the aftermath of the Titanic
原文作者：Brian Quintenz
原文来源:a16zcrypto
Compiler: Mars Finance, MK
On the morning of July 24, 1915, the ship capsized in the Chicago River as passengers boarded SS Eastland. Among the passengers, many of them immigrants from Europe, were trapped inside the ship, killing more than 844 people. The root cause of this tragedy is poor regulation.
After the sinking of the Titanic in 1914, policymakers quickly updated maritime safety laws to protect passengers. It is widely known that the Titanic's lifeboat could only accommodate about a third of its passengers, which became a central concern for policymakers. As a result, they signed the Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the Seafarers Act of 1915. These regulations require ships to be equipped with lifeboats and liferafts based on their passenger capacity rather than tonnage. The implementation of the Seafarers Act allows passenger ship operators to increase the passenger capacity of their ships by adding or retrofitting lifeboats.
For SS Eastland's operators, this means they need to add lifeboats, life rafts and davits to comply with the SOLAS Convention. What is their logic? By adding safety facilities, they can increase the ship's passenger capacity, which in turn increases profits. This is contrary to the original intention of the regulators, but it is in line with the incentive structure they have created. Without these additional safety features and the resulting increase in passenger capacity, the ship probably wouldn't have sunk. Ironically, efforts to avert another Titanic tragedy ended up sparking a new one.
The tragedy of SS Eastland is an unintended consequence of prescriptive regulation and its corresponding incentive structure. What started as a good intention to protect passengers has turned into a means of increasing passenger occupancy.
Policymakers have other options. For example, they could ask the IMO to take "all reasonable precautions" to ensure passenger safety, and then let the operator decide how best to implement this principle, which, of course, would have to be combined with oversight by regulators. This principle-based approach will align the incentive structure with outcomes rather than focusing solely on inputs. This requires the industry's flexibility to both benefit from passenger protection and be creative in implementing this goal. At the same time, regulators need to understand the unique ways in which businesses operate and their products, review customized and calibrated approaches, and consider new solutions that may otherwise be overlooked.
In this way, passenger safety will be ensured, innovative solutions will be generated and shared by the industry, and operators will be given clear, outcome-based guidelines to guide their behavior.
More than a hundred years later, regulators are still repeating this mistake, trying to prescriptively "address" potential or imagined negative outcomes through rules. This prescriptive approach is neither practical nor efficient unless it is unavoidable in rare cases. Similar today as it was in 1915, a more effective approach is to take a principles-based approach.
A principles-based approach is particularly critical for emerging technologies, which evolve at such a rapid pace and often as complex that regulators struggle to chart a path to success. Instead, a principles-based approach best helps regulators achieve their goals in a rapidly changing, dynamic environment.
A typical case study is the U.S. approach to cryptocurrency regulation. In the absence of clear regulatory guidance, some organizations still insist on using legacy rules for traditional centralized participants and applying them to Web3, ignoring their effects. Innovative web3 companies are now faced with the dilemma of "follow or die" or "die by follow", which is known as "intimidating regulation". I've never seen a more aggressive instance of intimidating regulation of crypto holdings than the SEC's current approach to cryptocurrency holdings, an attitude that puts innovation in the U.S. at great risk.
The principles-based model is not just a rhetorical model. In my more than four years as a commissioner at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), I have seen firsthand the advantages of a principles-based regulatory framework. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) requires many of its major rules to be principled rather than prescriptive in its enabling statute, the Commodity Exchange Act. This framework emphasizes results-based regulation and encourages CFTC-regulated entities to meet the Core Principles in a way that is tailored to their specific operations. The result is a highly flexible regulatory approach, with the company actively exploring and working with regulators under close monitoring to ensure they fully understand the changing market structure, business scope, operations, risks and regulatory outcomes. This can be seen as "conversational regulation".
When thinking about the regulatory model for cryptocurrencies, other regulators and governments can take inspiration from this approach. The principles-based conversational governance model brings significant benefits to responsible innovation by establishing a transparent and productive dialogue between web3 entrepreneurs and regulators. The goal is to determine how best to realize the benefits of the technology, understand how it addresses existing risks, and find innovative solutions to address new ones. This dialogue enables principles-based regulatory frameworks to more effectively achieve policy objectives, such as consumer protection, without leading to negative unintended outcomes or false incentives, while providing clear guidance for this emerging but vital innovation.
Similar to SS Eastland, the potential of web3 could be stifled under overly regulated rules that attempt to address the risks of traditional centralization, create perverse incentives, and undermine the core interests of the technology. Instead, the technology needs principles-based policy support, rather than open-source protocols or models. The consequences of avoiding an effective dialogue with the industry could undermine the revolutionary potential of cryptocurrencies.
If regulators continue to insist on fiat domination, the industry will struggle to thrive in the U.S. and may move to other, more appropriate jurisdictions. Ultimately, their miscalculations will affect the public, undermine American leadership, threaten national security, slow growth, and erode individual freedoms.