75-08-A5
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Regulations / New Wave # 2
TranscriptToday, mind bogglers from the new wave of regulation. I'll be right back. Yesterday I discussed a recent speech by Dr. Murray Wiedenbaum concerning a new wave of regulation that threatens to bankrupt small business and raise prices for American consumers. Dr. Wiedenbaum pointed out that small businesses reeling under a mountain of paperwork and is finding it impossible to determine what it is the new regulators really want. But there are other problems as well. They stem from the narrow focus of each of the new agencies. Some of their mandates contradict not only a healthy economy and low prices but each other. Since each of the new agencies cares only about its own legal role, the larger picture is invariably lost. For example Dr. Wiedenbaum tells us the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, O.S.H.A., requires backup alarms on vehicles at construction sites. Nothing wrong with that, but then O.S.H.A. says the workers on those sites have to wear earplugs for protection against noise pollution, which means they can't hear those required alarms if they ring. Here's a single agency pursuing two worthy but contradictory goals. Which one does the small businessman choose to follow? Then there's the case of a woman who wants to legally wash her children's pajamas in New York State. Now that sounds like a pretty fundamental freedom, but the Consumer Product Safety Commission says the only way you can legally wash pajamas without washing out fireproof materials, which are required by that same commission, is to do so with phosphate detergents. But in 1973 in a move against water pollution New York said it was illegal to use phosphate detergents. So Mama has to choose between fire hazard to her child or committing an act of illegal laundry. The hidden costs of this new wave of regulation are immense. I've already mentioned the enormous cost of the paperwork alone. There's also the cost of the bureaucrats themselves, more than sixty-three thousand at a cool two billion dollars a year, and there's the cost to the public in the decline in new technological improvements. The longer it takes for a new product or invention to win government approval, the less chance that a business will ever find it advantageous to market the product or utilize the invention. This is already evident in the decline of new drugs and medicines, because of Federal Drug Administration regulations, most of all these regulations increase the cost of producing a product to the point where often only big business can stay in the field. When a business has three or four employees and has as many forms to fill out as a firm with three or four thousand, you know who's going to go under? The result is less competition, bigger business and higher prices. Dr. Wiedenbaum's conclusion on the new wave of regulations says it all. Quote, "No realistic evaluation of the practice of government regulation fits the notion of benign and wise officials making altogether sensible decisions in the society's greater interests. Instead we find waste, bias, stupidity, concentration on trivia conflicts among the regulators and, worst of all, arbitrary and uncontrolled power." Unquote. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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