Dear Friends,
It seems to me, a fundamental problem with most regulation, is that they require as a precondition, people are stupid. This premise of regulation doesn’t comport with reality. People are smart, self interested, and for the most part rational maximizers. The ability to reason, makes our desires like water, they will seek any opening to flow downhill. Regulation that seeks to stymie some want or need of people, whether to be free, to be able to engage in the business that best suits them, to be famous, to be wealthy, to take drugs or whatever their heart desires… usually drives that activity underground. Those with sufficient desire and enough craftiness will find some loophole in the regulation that they can slip through. If not then violence is the next choice. In the face of more regulation, the desires that self interested individuals will seek, will not be stopped, they will only become more pernicious, more damaging to society and more inhuman, warping our society by the tensions built up from the disparities regulation creates.
Regulation always has, as it’s justification, the intent to stop the meeting of one’s interests by damaging the interests of another. In this, regulation has a noble intent, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Regulation is usually not put in place to protect citizens, regulations are, more often than not, enacted to allow an oligopoly to form. Governments believe oligopolies are in their economic self interests, and so, are always trying to help them form. Proposed regulation, that is actually to protect some economic interest, cannot be sold to the public as such. That would be a certain kiss of death. It has to be sold to the citizenry, how it is to protect them from “unlicensed” practitioners, or “unscrupulous” businessmen. Reality being that the very people protected by the regulation are often the unscrupulous ones, the ones barred, the entrepreneurs.
Think about a group of people walking through the woods. A large tree has fallen across the path. They will quickly find the easiest way around the obstacle. Once the most effective path is found the majority of the group will take this path. The path will be enlarged, and made easier to go around the tree, for the next group that stumbles across it. Regulations for economic interests, are like cutting brush and filling in the path you have made around the obstacle, enhancing the barrier of the fallen tree to those who will come later. People however, have the inherent ability to size up an obstacle, and find a way around it, even enhanced ones. Regulation is no different than any other obstacle, if someone wants to get by it, they will. Therefore, regulation is only a true obstacle for people inclined to follow it anyway, or those dumb enough not to be able to find a way around it. Those that have the desire, intellect and daring, will find a way.
There are many kinds of regulations that this philosophy applies to. Sin tax regulation for example, The higher the government taxes cigarettes the more the black market for cigarettes grows. No one is foolish enough to believe that the black market is a benevolent phenomenon. Therefore the government, through regulation, provides the incentive and ensures the profitability, of bad actors. Obama’s fiat regulation, that mental health care givers, report on patients that have guns is another example. This sets up an entire universe of negative incentives and feedbacks magnifying those incentives.
Remember our premise is that “people are not stupid.” The information that Obama has ordered this new law by arbitrary rule, and so it is now the law of the land, will not be lost on those people who self identify as needing mental health help. Being self interested they will forgo treatment, even where they themselves understand it is necessary, because they understand that the person who administers to them, will be nothing more then a government snitch. If this is the case with those who self identify, then how much more, for those who do not?
I am sure all of you know of many other examples to go along with these. It is a fact that human beings are sly. This makes it true, that regulation is merely an obstacle, and we are smart enough to get around obstacles, cannot be overstated in the case of regulation. As additional poorly considered regulations, build more tension and further warps our society, the functions of civil life, our standard of living, our emotional well being, our safety and the safety of our children… will be put more at risk. The answer, is to remove the distortions in our civilization, with more liberty, more standards and less regulation.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
