[kitchencabinetforum] THE GLOBAL COST OF REGULATION IS SIX TRILLION EUROS EVERY YEAR

You remember this quip from former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel during the financial crisis: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What matters to statists is that they see an opportunity in a pseudocrisis to shape public perception and manipulate public opinion.

The financial crisis yielded a government takeover of the financial sector. The healthcare pseudocrisis yielded a government takeover of the healthcare system. What do you think kleptocrats are going to do with this new civility pseudocrisis? They'd be happy to stage a government takeover of media institutions so they can adjust the parameters of free speech. You should take the blood libel seriously.

Friedrich Hayek attempted in his writings to spotlight the interlocking set of ideas - constructivist rationalism, scientism, socialism, the engineering mentality - that was leading the West down what he famously called the road to serfdom and to propose in its place a return to a revitalized form of libertarianism.

We usually do not have the necessary knowledge to intervene effectively in the economy, and the political process is such that, even if we did, we still likely would get bad policy, coupled with an ever-growing government sector. Venitis Law of Intervention: Any government intervention deteriorates an existing trend. Laissez-faire is the only progressive policy.

Every time we cede more control to the government, we become more dependent on it. The better choice is not dependence on government to solve problems for us, but binding together in our community and solving problems together, voluntarily. http://venitism.blogspot.com

When a parliament wants to sidestep an issue rather than resolving it, it calls for a study! The studies can use up lots of resources and parliaments typically ignore them, making them a waste of money. The Wall Street reform bill of the U.S. Congress called for fifty studies, an impressive level of trying to look busy while dodging controversy.

The cost of government regulation is truly staggering; it is also a barometer of how free we are to pursue our own interests and to determine the course of our own lives. The cost of regulations is one trillion dollars in USA and two trillion euros in Fourth Reich(EU) every year. The global cost of regulation is six trillion euros every year. Financial costs are not the only burden.

Regulations also result in a tremendous loss of one of our most valuable and limited resources, time. The private sector is spending over 10 billion hours a year just to meet government paperwork demands in USA, and 20 billion hours in Fourth Reich. It is no wonder that regulation discourages the creation of new businesses, new jobs, new products, and new services. Starve the beast by fighting taxes.

Any government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions in order to address the crises that are generated by the previous interventions. Ultimately the crises continue getting so bad that the government ends up taking over the entire sector. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Ronald Reagan considered those nine words the most terrifying in the English language. And the government has been offering a lot of such help lately.

The government has the opposite of the Midas touch. This has been observed over and over by the reduced quality and rising prices in every private industry in which it entangles itself. Yet somehow people still seem willing, even eager, to relinquish to government control the most important and sensitive portions of our economy and society. Education, healthcare, and energy are all unfortunate examples of industries that are far too important to be left to government control when it is the market that has the golden touch.

There is no magic bullet that will stop the excessive growth of regulation, but there are steps that parliament can take to increase scrutiny of new and existing rules to ensure that each is necessary and that costs are minimized. First of all, it should require a cost analysis of all legislation imposing new regulatory burdens.

Although all proposed legislation must be scored by a parliamentary committee to determine likely fiscal costs, there is no similar requirement that regulatory costs be reported. Members should not be asked to vote on proposals without the best possible estimate of their likely costs. All bills proposing new or expanded regulation should undergo a regulatory impact analysis analyzing and quantifying the likely costs and benefits. This regulatory scoring would ideally be performed by a new parliamentary regulation office. Such a step could be taken by a parliament on its own initiative and without presidential approval.

Parliaments should establish a sunset date for new regulations. Once adopted, rules tend to be left in place, even if they have outlived their usefulness. Currently, rules that have a substantial effect on a significant number of small entities must be reviewed by the promulgating agency every 10 years. In practice, however, such review, if it occurs at all, is usually performed in a cursory manner. To ensure that substantive review occurs, regulations should automatically expire if not explicitly reaffirmed by regulators. This requirement should be applied to all rules, not just those affecting small business. Such sunset dates should also be included in legislation imposing new regulation.

Parliaments have the ability to veto new regulations coming from agencies. To date, however, that authority has only been used successfully once. The review process would be strengthened by requiring parliamentary approval before regulation takes effect. Such a system would ensure a parliamentary check on regulators, as well as ensure the accountability of a parliament itself.

Such reform should be seriously considered. In doing so, a parliament should be careful to avoid two dangers. First, the process should apply only to the imposition of new burdens on consumers or the economy. It should not be required in order to lift such burdens. Second, it should be clear that parliamentary approval under this process is conditional upon a prior grant of regulatory authority to the agency by a parliament and that the parliamentary review process does not itself constitute a grant of authority.

While reforming the regulatory process is important, it is also important to note that such reforms will not by itself solve the problem of overregulation. No set of procedural reforms will be enough to stem the regulatory tide. Ultimately, regulatory burdens will rise until policymakers fully appreciate the burdens that regulations impose on citizens, and exercise the political will necessary to limit and reduce those burdens.

England in 1803 created a new civil service position. It called for a man to stand on the cliffs of Dover with a spy glass and ring a bell if he saw Napoleon coming. They didn't eliminate that job until 1945. In USA, there are only two government programs that have been abolished. The government stopped making rum on the Virgin Islands, and it stopped breeding horses for the cavalry. Fourth Reich(EU) established the office of the President of the Council, in order to get rid of the Rotating Presidency, but Rotating Presidency is still around! Sunsetting government offices is hard to do.

Every person has two ways to become wealthier. One is to produce more, the other is to capture more of what others produce. Washington and Brussels look increasingly like a public-works jobs programs for lawyers and pullpeddlers, profit centers for professionals who are in business for themselves. Instead of encouraging the economy to invest in engineers, technology and new products, Washington and Brussels require firms to invest in lawyers and pullpeddlers just to stay alive. It will do nothing to help create new wealth or new net jobs in the economy, but will transfer more wealth to lobbying and law firms in Washington and Brussels.

There are many central planning czars who now bewilder citizens: Afghanistan czar, AIDS czar, auto-recovery czar, border czar, California-water czar, car czar, central-region czar (Middle East, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and South Asia), climate czar, domestic-violence czar, drug czar, economic czar (Paul Volcker), energy and environment czar, faith-based czar, government-performance czar, Great Lakes czar, green-jobs czar, Guantanamo-closure czar, health czar, information czar, intelligence czar, science czar, stimulus-accountability czar, pay czar, regulatory czar, Sudan czar, TARP czar, Technology czar, terrorism czar, urban-affairs czar, weapons czar, WMD-policy czar, war czar, oil czar, manufacturing czar, cybersecurity czar, safe-school czar, Iran czar, Mideast-peace czar. http://venitism.blogspot.com

SMART BOMB

We sent them to the parliament
To make us some good
A real disappointment
Let's kick them with a broom.

This parliament is a brothel
Infested with kickbacks
Full with imposters
Pullpeddlers many feedbacks.

B.V. is my smart bomb
To vanish those MPs
B.V. brings smart words
To outsmart those freaks.