United States' economy: Over-regulated America

The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation

AMERICANS love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down children’s lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licences. The list goes hilariously on.

But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.

Consider the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. Its aim was noble: to prevent another financial crisis. Its strategy was sensible, too: improve transparency, stop banks from taking excessive risks, prevent abusive financial practices and end “too big to fail” by authorising regulators to seize any big, tottering financial firm and wind it down. This newspaper supported these goals at the time, and we still do. But Dodd-Frank is far too complex, and becoming more so. At 848 pages, it is 23 times longer than Glass-Steagall, the reform that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. Worse, every other page demands that regulators fill in further detail. Some of these clarifications are hundreds of pages long. Just one bit, the “Volcker rule”, which aims to curb risky...

The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which.

The author of this article should do some more research before including something like this in it. The FRA regulation about the "F" does not apply to all trains, but to locomotives. This regulation was put in place so that different types of locomotives with different types of cab, equipment and hood configurations could be identified under a uniform standard. Switching locomotives and yard locomotives, for example, move in forward and reverse for short intervals so they are basically designed to be operated easily in both directions. For some of these models the "front" of the locomotive wasn't always so obvious.

Here's a good example:

The purpose of identifying the "front" of a locomotive is so that all of the locomotive's hardware can be numbered and documented in a front-to-back configuration. In an FRA locomotive inspection report, for example, wheel R1 is the front-most wheel on the right side of the locomotive. Take a look at the locomotive pictured above . . . If I told someone to replace the right front wheel of that thing, would anyone here even know which wheel I was referring to?

Personally I am simply sick of the nanny state mentality that is pervasive.

Don't eat this food, it is bad for you.

Don't drink that drink, it might cause cancer.

Don't drive that vehicle, it might be unsafe.

Don't go to that air show because you might get hurt.

Screw all that. I am at the point where I am ready to demand the right to do things, even if they are dangerous, just to poke my finger in the eye of the nanny staters...and I am no risk-taker.

I saw this picture recently and it made me laugh:

This was apparently a video taken on some highway in Russia, these guys are tooling down the road on their trike playing rock music at high volume and high speed, and the people they pass think it is hilarious.

I laughed, then immediately realized: You could never do that in this country. You would be pulled over so quickly it would make your head spin.

No helmets.

No seatbelts.

Speeding.

Disturbing the peace.

Driving to endanger.

Probably vehicle not up to code.

And so on. When I thought of it, I suddenly realized, in some ways, they may have more freedom in Russia than we have here. And I can't tell you how galling that was to even entertain that thought. It was worse than the Russians or the Chinese telling us how to run our economy, and being right in their criticism.

I get the fact that these guys driving a vehicle out of code and distracting people could cause an accident and injure others or themselves. But the regulatory tentacles of our government are winding into the fabric of our very lives, telling us how much trans-fats we can eat, how much water we can flush, or how much electricity our lightbulbs can use.

I read another story of a guy who was honored by a city in Russia because he managed to get an Ikea store built in some ungodly time frame like eight months. I do understand there is a high likelihood the guy was a gangster, paying lots of bribes, twisting arms and so on. I don't want to live in a country that is run that way,but...it is equally as frustrating to live in a country where it might take twelve years to build something like that, if ever.

Over-legislation and over-regulation is to industry as barnacle encrustation is to the speed of a warship.

I am just sick of it all. Legislation is added, layer upon layer each year, bur regulations and legislation and the accompanying bureaucracy are NEVER, EVER rolled back or reduced.

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