Monday, May 10, 2010

The Regulatory State



When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. - George Orwell

H/T Jccarlton at Talk Polywell

2 comments:

Jeff Gauch said...

To answer the first question posed in the video, you don't need the government's permission to wake up. Instead the regulations serve to ensure that when you buy a mattress you're not buying something that was last slept on by a Typhoid patient, and when my neighbor buys a new alarm clock it doesn't screw up my WiFi signal.

Regulatory compliance may cost nearly $2 trillion a year, but how much economic cost would come from consumers following a caveat emptor policy and verifying each and every purchase they made?

This is why Libertarians (with the capital L) are idiots. Their ideas don't work in small communities and they don't scale for shit.

J Carlton said...

The mattress tag only works for new mattresses, not used ones and doesn't cover infections. Frankly as someone who in the last week spent way too much time chasing stupid regulation certifications I have a pretty good idea what regulation really costs