Government Regulations: Too Much, or Not Enough

Yes, yes, and yes. And they should enforce it, when they know more, than the rest of us. Other than that, your question is fully correct.

Good luck waiting for that to happen.

Until people are no longer greedy, (feel free to laugh hysterically at that prospect) regulation will be the only way to prevent the power of money from trumping the power of democracy.

Let's see...if we have one inspector, fully knowledgeable in the details of the process and cognizant of all possible risks (including the unanticipated, such as earth quakes, volcanic eruptions, and other such phenomena), properly fitted out with his statistical tables, for each and every productive worker, we will have gone a long way to insuring absolute risk-free work environment.

But, wait. That only covers a little under 1/4 of the worker's time. So we will have to add a second shift of inspectors to cover the off-duty waking hours, plus a weekend crew- we can not ask our inspectors to work more than 40 hours per week. So, we need 2.71 inspectors to cover the waking hours of every worker.

We could probably come up with a scheme where our sleep inspectors could actually monitor multiple sleepers, so let us say we need 3 inspectors per worker.

But, this does not account for the non-working population, so now we need to double this- except, since risks faced by most children are considerably less than those face by working adults, so a single inspector could likely safeguard more than one child at a time (this, of course, would need to be justified statistically). So let us say we need 4.5 inspectors per productive worker, to be conservative.

Not only would we be able to create a nearly risk-free environment for our population, this would go a long way towards reducing unemployment...

Yes, government regulation is a "good" thing, and the more we have, the better off we all will be. Unless, that is, you really, really want a private life...

..don't forget the "Inspector-Inspector"...and their management...and their Inspectors -

The people in the federal government have forgotten, don't know, or simply don't care what they are supposed to be doing in their positional leadership. In their quest for unlimited power and perks they have inserted themselves into almost every area of our existence, to the detriment of our economic system. Free enterprise doesn't mean without any oversight at all, but it does mean that the governments involvement should be as minimal as possible; guided by the Constitution.

Small businesses are the power houses of our economy and they can't operate with mindless beauracrats constantly interfering in how to run a business. We have put people in office who have never been responsible for running a business and keeping a payroll and then expect them to think like a business owner. This highly depressed economy we are now in is a reflection of having an administration that has no concept of what makes business work or how to help the environment in which business can thrive.

Some oversight is necessary because there are unscrupulous people who operated only for their own gain. That is where prosecution comes in. Don't simply make more laws which restrict everyone else. Just enforce the laws that are already there and apply them to the situation at hand.

Obviously removing the excessive government involvement and deregulation (at the whining of the banks and stock markets) in the 1990s business seems to have had quite a beneficial effect in the banking and financial sectors in the recent years.

It always seems like one industry is claiming the other guys were bad but they themselves are over-regulated and would do better. Love Canal and Times Beach not withstanding. (Times beach being a great example of free-enterpise at work and after disaster response by the government).

If the coal industry could hire 8 year old children to work for pennies, and then force them to only buy from their company owned stores at highly over-inflated company profits, do you think they would have ever stopped such practices with out governemtn interventions (or in some cases lack of intervention against unions).

If the industries actually weren't solely drivien by quartely profit reports and executive bonuses above all other consdierations, except maybe executive prison terms, then they might be responsible enough to actually operate with minimal pre-emptive oversight. Bear in mind the people who actually run the businesses frequently know less than the common man about the technical aspects of their own business operations (they just understand marketing and where the money is in the business), this is why the hire people to tell them what they want to hear.

It turns out that many businesses would rather pay lower taxes and face less regulation. DUH! So now big business is sitting on a couple of trillion dollars. Surprise, surprise - they say that if we would just cut their taxes and regulations they'd invest all that cash and we'd all be back to work. I'm sure that's exactly what they'd do...

"So now big business is sitting on a couple of trillion dollars."

What would you do if you a businessman and were trying to operate in an environment where you didn't know how or when this friggin administration was going to try to screw you over. You wouldn't spend money either until you knew more of what was going to happen with obamacare, income redistribution through tax rates or stupid regulations, environmental requirements (cap and tax, etc.), czars who don't answer to the taxpayers, extremely incompetent financial and energy advisors appointed by this bxxb we have for a president, etc.

Waiting for an administration and a Congress that understands how business operates and sitting on the money is the only smart thing to do financially. If you invest a few hundred million dollars to expand business (like Boeing trying to start up a plant in South Carolina, [I think] and then the government coming in after a great deal of money is spent, and telling them they can't operate there), you expect a ROI. That is not too much to ask or expect.

You and I operating a business can spend money much more effectively and efficiently than any beauracrat ever thought about doing. It's our money, not a third party purchase like it is when the government spends our money. They aren't concerned with cost or value, because they don't have vested interest with the monies.

Exactly. Given the opportunity businesses will invest in the US. Just look at all that bail out money we gave to the banks to get them to continue giving loans and mortgages to common folk after the crash. If the government had not removed those liqudity issues from the banks they may have tightened up substantially and stop giving out home mortgages, and just given themselves increased annual bonuses. Oh, Wait, that is what they did even after the government propped them up. hmmm, this kind of makes me wonder if we can trust businessmen to do what they say after they get soem help from the governemtn.

You simply reinforce my last statement that deals with "unscrupulous people". That being said, it isn't wise to make needless, cumbersome laws that govern everyone because of a small number of bad/worst case scenarios. You deal with the those unscrupulous, greedy cases on an individual basis and prosecute them to the full extent of the law. You make an example out of them to make the next person think twice before they take advantage of individuals, organizations or property/environment. The threat of pain (prison or financial cost) is a great deterrent to wrong doing.

"The government that governs best is the government that governs least." Those are the words of one of our Founding Fathers (I think Thomas Jefferson). They were very insightful men and knew very well what the proclivity of man/woman is; and that is to act without character. Man hasn't changed in nature since that was said 235 years ago. Even so, they still wanted a small government with as little interference as possible in the daily work of men/women and business.

There will always be abuses by those in power. Abe Lincoln said, "if you want to test a mans character, give him power." That's why it is so important to not only hear what a man says, but more importantly, see what he does and how he acts, before we vote him/her into positions of authority. That also deals with our business transactions. We can influence businesses with our pocket books.

There isn't any entity the government operates well (postal service, Amtrak, Congress, Social {In}Security, welfare programs, you name it). The less they are involved in daily life the better off we are. I'll take my chances with the entrepreneur who is starting/operating a business over a government run outfit any day. I will always get a better product at a higher value. There were statistics released yesterday that the jobs "created" with obama's stimulus plan cost you and I, the taxpayers, $278,000 per job. How is that for efficiency of government involvement in the economy?

I'm really glad that there are regulations that keep my next door neighbor from operating a uranium re-processing facility in his back yard. I think it is silly that there are regulations to keep the teenage children of family farmers from operating the family tractor. I'm disturbed that with so many people unemployed my city has very stringent and largely prohibitive regulations on setting up and operating a food cart. I'm dismayed that with so many mining regulations and regulators that 29 miners died in a preventable garden variety disaster at Massey's UBB operation. I'm grateful that there are regulations that prevent selling antacid powder in a bottle labeled "Cures all known forms of cancer".

The devil is in the details.

"Do regulations stifle business?"

Of course.. that is obvious, but they also are supposed to stifle criminal and/or monopolistic behaviours.

Reality is that the people with the most money spend it on greedy politicians to create regulations that create uneven markets, favouring the people with the most money, and creating too-high walls for the small businesses.

Wisdom would seem to suggest that if regulation is going to rule the market place in a democratic society, that the costs of compliance should not inhibit the growth of small business, nor unfairly benefit the large business.

Chris

I think you have identified the root of the problem with regulations: what starts out as a reasonable regulation gets 'improved' by the legislative amendment process so that large businesses (who have 'access' to the legislators) can continue to avoid changing their behavior by paying what are to them modest fines, so the burden falls most heavily on small businesses. This is not an accident. It is a successful strategy to keep small businesses from realizing that their interests are significantly different from the huge multinational corporations. One modest solution to this problem is to concentrate your energy on new fields and niche markets where regulations are embryonic. Another is to offer products and services to help honest businesses comply with the regulations.

no doubt that the bureaucracy of regulation isn't very efficient

instead of repairing the inefficiency another layer is added to the process

Under the best of circumstances, with scrupulously honest and appropriately educated people regulation could be efficient. Unfortunately there a folks among us with lower standards of honesty and education. Some of these folks work for government, some in private industry. The only way I can see to improve the quality of regulation is to incrementally improve the quality of people. My sense is that we are moving in the other direction, but maybe that's because I'm getting older.

We could get rid of most regulations to increase efficiency, and this would not make much difference to honest business people who consider it a moral obligation to provide high quality products without making a big mess for the rest of us to clean up. But we'd still be at the mercy of the stinkers. We've been down that road before, and I think most of us don't want to go back.

It would be great if every government agency and every legislator had a portion of their staff who's job is to go through the regulation inventory and identify those that may have outlived their usefulness, meet with honest people in industry to compare notes, and recommend the needed changes. Maybe someday that will happen...

compare how the regulators functions are organized

to say any QA/QC department in any multi/mega national...

how do we bring the sense of urgency/purpose/accountability to government?

We could start electing pragmatists rather than ideologues. But to do that we'd need more voters who are pragmatic. Being pragmatic is hard work. You need a deep understanding of where we are, how we got here, and what we need (not want) to do about it. Being an ideologue is pretty easy - it's like a real life role playing game. We are at our de Toqueville moment. America has been great because the people were great. I think we've become too petty, self-centered and lazy, and now get the government we deserve.

The main stream media provides the type of news that they believe will attract the most people with the money and inclination to buy their advertisers' products. It's pretty middle of the road with a corporatist slant. If you think the media is too liberal or too conservative (as opposed to just bland and superficial) then you're probably an ideologue. When we learn to elect officials based on our sense of their competence, rather than on how well they push our fear, envy and flattery buttons, we'll have a chance to live under a government that shares our sense of 'urgency/purpose/accountability'. Until then we'll get the same food fight nonsense.

this whole mess started in 1913, with the criminal deception that created the Fed. The people have been consistententy and incrementally deceived along the way, to create much of the 'root cause' of this problem... and I don't think any law abiding citizen deserves that.

"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws"

Mayer Rothschild

? What is so restrictive about the licensure? Don't they just require some working experience in the field and that you pass an exam?

This sounds like the chemical engineer I was chatting with who wanted the authority to design structures at chemical plants in the bay area, but didn't want to have to take the state specific seismic exam that would be required to obtain a civil enginering license so he could have that authority. I asked him about the stability of the structures if a earthquake, which occur reasonably regularly around san francisco, occurred. He indicated that he would consult a structural engineer when it came to structures, but wanted to design the tanks and facilities himself (obviously he considers tanks and such standing a few 100 ft in the air not structures). He just felt he should not have to demonstrate his abilities before being allowd to practice. If he felt he was qualified he should be allowed to practices, and if he didn't do an adequate job the market would take care of it when he got sued later. Now that is a situation I would be uncomfortable living under, where some plant like Bhopal was designed under the premise that if it failed someone would sue the engineer later.

oh look

a neo con Reach Around Fest

regulation is a reaction to the market failing to act in a responsible manner