Sunday, April 21, 2013

Chronic Regulation Addiction

Chronic Regulation Addiction (CRA) is a disease that infects (mostly) leftists and wreaks havoc on society.

Specifically, it is when a leftist in the form of a bureaucrat, regulator or politician simply cannot stop making new laws.

The disease manifests itself when the host gets addicted to its ego.  He or she fails to acknowledge or accept that there is such a thing as "enough law" and instead insists on making new laws and regulations, not for the benefit of society, but rather to stoke their ego.

A person with CRA typically has no other real world experience, skills or purpose in life and naturally gravitates towards government, regulation or non-profits.  However, there is a natural point where additional codification, law and regulation no longer provides a benefit to society and further decisions should give way to common sense, leadership, and human thought.  Again, this sort of genuine statesmenship never occurs to the person infected with CRA.

Some governmental organizations fight CRA.  For example the Texas State Legislature which meets only once every two years.  Unfortunately most don't.

Mayor Bloomberg, on the municipal level, is infected with CRA his law-making goes so far as to tell people how much soda they can drink.

The "Forest Stewardship Council," an international organization that tries to standardize forestry standards across various countries' DNR-equivalents is increasing their "certification" standard to include 350+ NEW standards 25% of which are contradictory (this from an inside source who was the inspiration for this post).

And how many principals do we know that substitute "zero-tolerance" policies for genuine leadership, resulting in expulsions over pop-tarts eaten in the shape of a gun or a kid playing "Save the World"

Nearly every career-politician is infected with CRA and continues to make unnecessary laws which only slow down and further (though microscopically) erode societal freedoms. 

If you want to stop CRA vote for term limits and a constitutional limit on the number of years people can serve in public office at all levels as well as limit the number of years one can work in the public sector.

This has been a public service announcement from Cappy Cap.

12 comments:

Amateur Strategist said...

Let's also give time limits to regulations. Yes, as it is now, they will just be reinstated, but this is also why we need limits on the number of regulations or RE-regulations that can be signed into law every year.

Thus, if they want to approve the new "fluffy kitties and dazzling rainbows" regulation, they will have to forego reinstating the "ultra communist-no-business-can-get-done, This-is-the-only-high-point-of-my-life" regulation, which is set to expire this year.

jabrwok said...

I'm not sure that term limits are a good idea. I'd expect the politicians to take even more advantage of the time they have in power to steal everything they can, then get replaced with newbies who don't know how to do the job and just see it as a time-limited opportunity to rob the taxpayer.

I'd rather see Congress not meeting as often, and a Sunset Commission that served ONLY to repeal laws.

PUMPsix said...

Supreme leader Julia Gillard, here in Australia, decides to hit the CO2 producers with a carbon tax. Businesses do what businesses do and pass the cost down to the consumer. So what does Julia Gillard do? Gives the "poor" people cash. That week was about as busy as Christmas at my local shopping centre and it was in May last year (if I remember correctly).

Johnycomelately said...

Big business loves regulation (they also 'assist' in writing most of it, or at least give their expertise) as it drives up compliance costs and makes it impossible for start ups and the small guys to compete.

In Australia carbon tax is a boon for the big guys as they get special 'licenses' that won't be as cheap for new market entrants.

heresolong said...

I love Heinlein's idea of two houses. One passes laws, requires a 2/3 majority to pass any law. One repeals laws, requires a simple majority to repeal a law.

I'd also love to see one week a month devoted to repealing unneeded laws. Just spend a week going through lists submitted by citizens, bureaucrats, whoever, for the sole purpose of deciding whether the law was still necessary or was accomplishing what it was intended to accomplish.

Bub said...

It's essentially a moral hazard in that the regulators have little or no incentive to care about the NEGATIVE effects of the rules they create or even if the rules address the problem in any measurable way at all - and if they don't make new rules how can they justify their jobs? A lot of the time even the very existence of the problem is questionable. The global warming brigades succinctly demonstrate all of these characteristics and on a huge scale. It's depressing. Maybe I'll pick up that book something about enjoying the decline. I hope it's on kindle.

Eric S. Mueller said...

I've always wondered what leads leftists to the conclusion that the world's biggest problems are a shortage of laws. If we only had the right laws, nobody would ever be killed. If we had enough laws, there would be no corruption on Wall Street. There would be no car accidents if we only had enough traffic laws.

I've long since come to the conclusion that "zero tolerance policies" are a mark of laziness if not outright idiocy. Even in outright cases of guilt, there are always extenuating circumstances that need to be addressed. But lazy, stupid leftist school administrators expell 6 year olds for having safety scissors because "we have a zero tolerance policy on weapons!" They obviously have a zero tolerance policy on independent thinking among employees too.

Anonymous said...

Calling this one was a lay up, http://reason.com/blog/2013/04/17/sen-lautenberg-wants-background-checks-t . Pretty safe to say that if you're a politician then you're very likely a lazy moron, as well!!

Anonymous said...

Laws primarily exist to provide employment for lawyers.

Anonymous said...

Law exist primarily for the purpose of providing employment for lawyers

Paul said...

The biggest lovers of regulation are actually big businesses.It is an astoundingly effective anti-competitive measure, that allows large players to live in comfortable cocoon, where innovation and competition are stifled by the government in the name of the 'public good'.

Not to mention the almost inevitable regulatory capture, whereby any regulator almost invariably starts to regulate in favor of the industry it regulates, namely the large players.

Nils said...

How about you put an expiration date on every law? It has to be reauthorized say every 10 years. Keeps the politicians busy and automatically gets rid of a lot of legislation.