Monday, September 28, 2009

Another for the "Why regulation is bad" files.

Today's lesson on why regulations are bad: because innocent grandmas get arrested for buying over the counter cold medicine at the pharmacy, is why. 

The larger question, of course, is what idiot arrests an -obviously- innocent woman for an -obviously- legal business transaction.  Answer, Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander, the usual kind of civil servant idiot one usually finds behind these stories. 

Here's what Nina baby says about it:

"Just as with any law, the public has the responsibility to know what is legal and what is not, and ignorance of the law is no excuse, the prosecutor said. "I'm simply enforcing the law as it was written," Alexander said.

AKA, she's just following orders.  And herein lies the problem.  They are all, always, just following orders.  The fact that no human being could possible know all the myriad regulations, laws, codes, guide lines, strictures and etc. we are supposedly subject to is completely irrelevant. Orders are orders.

This is a common theme these days. There is no reasonableness in bureaucracy.  Reasonable men do not become bureaucrats and officials.  Power tripping, by-the-book, "I was just following orders" willfully heedless cretins are who become bureaucrats.  Its the nature of the job.  Reasonable, intelligent human beings quit in disgust.

Therefore regulations have to be designed so that UNreasonable robot-men can't hurt innocent people with them through malice, boredom or simple stupidity.  Which is pretty near impossible.  No matter how foolproof you make something, the universe will keep delivering greater and greater fools until it breaks.

The answer is to de-fund the bureaucracy.  You can't trust them to make reasonable laws, and you can't expect them to enforce laws reasonably.  All you can do is starve them out.

Tax cut now.  No cut is too big.

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