Government Regulation

Regulation, oh regulation.  How do you feel about government regulations?  There is at least one person that likes each regulation.  Right?  If there isn't, how did it become a regulation?

I'm not going to argue for "this" regulation or against "that" regulation; they may or may not have merit, but I would like to point out two things.  One, when someone considers the merit of a regulation, they often don't consider the "unseen".  Two, the more the regulations and the bigger the organization, the easier it is for regulations to become bureaucratically idiotic.

We may be better off in one dimension, but there are costs associated with every regulation, some of which are unseen.  Consider, the government requires a company to use a specific technology to reduce pollution.  True, in one dimension we're better off, we have less pollution, but what is unseen is how that regulation affected the companies behavior or choices toward other parties involved.  What might the company have bought if they wouldn't have had to buy this new technology?  How has the new regulation affected their business strategy?  Likely the cost is passed on to the customers, what might have they done with their money if their costs hadn't increased?  The consequences are hard to observe, let alone measure, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

As the regulations multiply in large organizations, it is easy for them to become more and more idiotic.  Consider this story and the examples of regulation stupidity.  The stupidity is bad enough (time waster), but that time wasting starts to cost us.  The regulation has to be dreamt up.  It has to be documented.  The regulation has to be enforced.  These are all costs associated with the regulation and when its not even possible for one part of an organization to know what another part is doing, you get inter-regulation inefficiencies.  Sometimes even working at cross purposes.

The upshot?  Try to consider the unseen when measuring a regulation's merit and even with merit there is a point where enough is enough.  I wrote a funny poem once where Congress finished they're work.  They came up with all the laws we needed and then were able to go home and close Congress.  That would never happen, but it's something to think about.  Do we come up the regulations because we feel compelled to come up with regulations, to try to fix the world through legislation?  Can you imagine a point where all the laws you wanted passed, were passed?

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

—C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (1970)