Among many activists, regulators and legislators, there is a pervasive myth that a little overregulation never hurt anyone. But a “little” here and a “little” there add up. The reality is that regulation exacts societal costs whose magnitude is almost unimaginable.
According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, U.S. regulatory costs in 2005 were $1.13 trillion, equal to almost half of all of the government’s discretionary, entitlement and interest spending, and much larger than the sum of all corporate pretax profits — $874 billion. Much of the expenditure on regulation is ill-spent on the most expensive cures that do the least good.
-Henry I. Miller, Investor’s Business Daily op-ed page, July 11
And if the regulators think it is “just money” they might remember that “just money” funds research, pays tuition, and leads to healthy lives. How many are willing to acknowledge the ddt/malaria tradeoffs for what they were – disastrous? The regulators tend to be people who are quite willing to fight the good because it isn’t the perfect.
Take as an example, the outrageous electricity costs in California when the legislature of California started regulating the regulators in their risky and flawed ‘deregulation’ scheme.