This probably goes best with my "Tales from the Over-Regulated State" series, except I don't have a specific example. Just this take home fact:
In the last 90 days, the Fed.gov has issued 5999 new regulations.
They're not shy or ashamed about this - the web site is there to help you find all those new regulations. So I screen-capped it.
In what was
my most-read piece for the longest amount of time, I wrote:
Although the legislators and regulators never consider this, every
regulation consumes some amount of time and money to comply with. The
new Finance Reform bill [note: Dodd-Frank - SiG] has been estimated to required the development
of 250-300 new regulations. Every regulation slows down, hinders and
costs every honest business real money. Despite the widespread talk of
corrupt CEOs and general lack of corporate ethics, I've been working in
the manufacturing industry since the mid 1970s, and every company has
had an active, if not aggressive, ethics compliance program with
requirements for training and seminars every year. There are exceptions
but most companies do their best to be honest and law-abiding. Government seems to think it's mere coincidence
that countries with lower tax rates and lower regulation attract
business, and they demonize companies for moving to countries where the
environment is better.
Here's a question for the math geeks: if in every session of congress more laws are passed, which require more regulations, what's the limit of the sum of regulations? If you didn't see that eventually, there's an infinite number of regulations and everything is illegal, guess again. We seem to be on the fast track to "everything is illegal".
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system." Ayn Rand, in Atlas Shrugged
ReplyDeleteI used to work for a firm for which the only rule stated was "don't do anything that would make us have to set up stupid rules." Unfortunately, the owners of the company did something that the IRS or somebody didn't like, and we suddenly has an avalanche of picky, stupid rules. All I can say to the whole situation nowadays is, good grief (eye roll).
ReplyDeleteChipmunk - every small company I've ever been around that had a policy like that ended up becoming a big company with stupid rules out the wazoo.
ReplyDelete