Magic Bullets
Everyone has ideas. Execution is everything.
Closest Point of Approach is about helping decision makers predict bureaucratic action. The more of these cases we see, the better our pattern recognition becomes.
Liz Truss: ‘I don’t believe in guardrails’
It’s always something. Apparently, if you want to deregulate, you need to account for the behavior of the people who may not agree with you. They may resist. Life isn’t a computer simulation in which you push buttons and things happen. Complexity is hard.
“Over Sauvignon Blanc and well-prepared local fare, Truss gives free rein to her belief that her experiment with radical free-market, deregulatory, tax-cutting Conservatism would have succeeded, had it not been for incompetent and hostile officials from the deep state, aided and abetted by weak-willed Conservative members of parliament. Weren’t officials simply acting as guardrails, I venture, trying to stop her committing grievous bodily harm to the British economy? “I don’t believe in guardrails,” she says.”
Bypassing Bureaucracy to Innovate Through Digital Transformation
On the other hand, you have someone in Singapore who knows what he’s doing.
“Governments are inherently conservative, which is a problem in many ways. So if anyone gets the sense that you're doing something that will blow up the government, nobody's going to help you. That's why I believe in one of the most important mantras, which is, "Think big, start small, but move really fast."
Governments are used to big projects. Every project is a hundred million dollars, $200 million, $500 million. And when you have a project this big and it fails, it's extremely obvious, very conspicuous, and the public will know about it. So these projects are not meant to fail. But you and I know that innovation is about failing. If you can't fail, then everybody will be very conservative. They'll just outsource the responsibility and pray that they'll deliver it someday, whether it's three years or five years from now and they probably rotate out of the position in the first place. So I think that's really the context which inhibit innovation.”
U.S. Supreme Court Revisits, Tightens Regulatory Takings Limits on Land Use Regulation
Regulation is a form of taxation.
“The U.S. Supreme Court first declared a century ago that government regulation of private property, if “excessive,” can constitute a compensable “regulatory taking” of private property under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But it was not until the late 1970’s and 1980’s that the Supreme Court first began articulating the details of regulatory takings law.”
Steve Schwarzman Says There Needs to Be Global Regulation on AI
Beware of billionaires bringing gifts. Schwarzman says that “everyone he knows” is worried.
“Schwarzman also warned about AI, saying almost everyone he knows is concerned about what might go wrong with the technology, and that it was the first time he’s seen business people rooting for regulation.”
Biden Hides Plans for Obama-Era Housing Regulation
A key conservative principle of regulation should be that it should be as local as possible. Housing policy is a potential upcoming battleground.
“Last week, I said the president’s rebooting of Obama’s controversial Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation is the unspoken key to Biden’s second-term housing plan. I added that Biden’s decision to wait until after his reelection to fully revive AFFH is politically motivated. AFFH inserts the feds into heretofore local decision-making on zoning, transportation, parks, school-district boundaries, and plenty more. This overweening bureaucratic regulation is going to stir up mighty resistance from Democrats and Republicans alike, especially in the suburbs. Biden is trying to disguise his plans so as not to alienate suburban voters.”
Liz Truss’ certifiable bat skit
She’s promoting a book, apparently. So she’s everywhere. It’s her against the “deep state.” The FT Alphaville blog mocks her arguments, including her telling of the story behind a special bridge for bats that held up construction of a highway. Theoretically, the bats needed the lines of the bridges to help them navigate their traditional routes that the highway would disrupt.
“The problem is the bats don’t use them — bat bridges are now considered so unsuccessful that The Observer called them one of “nature conservation’s epic fails” earlier this year. In the case of the Broadland Northway in Norfolk (near to, but not in, Truss’s constituency), slightly fewer than half of the bats observed flew close enough to the bridges to be considered users (from Appendix A here); …”
The Deep State Lies in Wait for Trump
Truss writes in the Wall Street Journal with more of the same: railing against the bureaucracy. There are some people who might think that her ham-fisted execution set the regulatory reform movement back significantly. Methinks she doth protest too much.
“Across the West—especially the English-speaking world—there has been a shift of power away from democratically accountable officeholders to unelected bureaucrats and technocrats. The administrative state undermined Mr. Trump’s first term and undermined my tenure as Britain’s prime minister, forcing me out of office after 49 days. I assumed that I would be able to drive through the agenda on which I was elected. How wrong I was. The opaque British bureaucratic state undermined my proposed reforms, and their American equivalents will have Mr. Trump in their sights if he is victorious in November. The deep state will attempt to undercut him even more than it did in his first term.”
Why is the Biden Administration Against Fee Transparency in Education?
Coordinating policy across bureaucratic agencies is hard.
“Strangely, the Biden administration’s Department of Education wants to ban colleges from offering inclusive access programs. Thus, the Dept. of Education is arguing that simplified pricing is bad for consumers at the same time as the FTC is arguing that simplified pricing is good for consumers. What makes this contradiction even more baffling is that Inclusive Access was a program promoted in 2015 by the Obama-Biden Administration!”
John Arnold on Regulatory Capture in Organ Donation
Congress enabling monopolization of organ transplant procurement.
30,000 died in fiscal 2023 waiting for disability decisions from Social Security
Lack of speed kills.
“The 30,000 individuals who died were waiting for a decision from the agency at the initial, reconsideration or hearing levels. That’s out of over 1.6 million who were waiting for a decision on average that year, according to an agency spokesperson who said that this was the first time the agency calculated this statistic.”
Internists blame bureaucracy as top cause of burnout
“Approximately 80% of male internists and 85% of female internists said that their feelings of burnout and/or depression were driven by their jobs all or most of the time. The job-related stress and burnout come home with them — 76% of respondents overall said that burnout had negatively affected their personal relationships.
“Too many bureaucratic tasks such as charting and paperwork were by far the top contributor to burnout, reported by 70% of respondents, with insufficient compensation and lack of respect from employers, colleagues, and staff as relatively distant second and third contributors (40% and 37%, respectively).
“In addition, nearly half of the physicians said that their burnout was severe enough that they might leave medicine.”
US senators unveil stablecoin regulation bill
So often, regulation comes after failure. On the face of it, this makes sense. The execution will be important.
“The legislation, aimed at bolstering financial stability and transparency, sets a US$10 billion issuance cap for non-depository trust institutions and seeks to prevent algorithmic stablecoins.
“The bill requires stablecoin issuers to maintain full reserves and operate with dollar-backed tokens exclusively, a measure intended to ensure that stablecoins can be reliably converted to dollars for consumer protection.
“Issuers will face oversight from state and federal regulators, with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors overseeing non-depository trust companies and depository institutions authorized as national payment stablecoin issuers.”
Now’s the Time to Stop Worrying About Tech Regulation – Here’s Why
There are those that think of regulation as some sort of magic bullet. You fire it off and there is zero chance of collateral damage. The regulator assumes that the benefits would arrive with a perfect inelasticity to the level of regulation and only the bad stuff would be deterred. Interesting that the article included this tidbit.
“A 2023 study by researchers at MIT’s Sloan School of Management found that regulations put a literal cap on growth. Companies will hesitate to invest in their operations and increase headcount if it means greater regulatory oversight.
“In most Western countries, regulatory rules switch on after a firm reaches a certain size. If headcount stays below a given threshold, companies can usually sidestep more painful regulation.”
Consumer Data Privacy Regulation Is Now In The Spotlight
Bureaucracy favors the large. It may be getting more difficult to innovate as a small business.
“APRA is a far-reaching bill. It preempts comprehensive state data privacy laws, responding to a concern that federal uniformity is needed to eliminate the costly burdens of overlapping and conflicting state laws. It nevertheless does not preempt specialized state “consumer protection laws” and privacy laws directed to narrow concerns (for example, financial records, public records, and cyberstalking). There remains a risk that some such provisions may be applied by some states to data privacy, limiting the potential of APRA uniformity.
“APRA requires businesses to minimize their collection, processing, and transfer of data beyond what is necessary to provide or maintain a required product or service. Consumers are given strong controls over the use and transfer of their data and the right to opt out entirely of having their data utilized. Data security requirements are imposed on businesses. Other key provisions include restrictions on data brokers and prohibitions on the discriminatory application of algorithms in violation of civil rights. As is the case with the CCPA, businesses are barred from denying or charging different rates for goods and services to individuals who invoke these new rights.”
The Solution for Stablecoin Regulation
“In drafting this legislation, we prioritized allowing innovation to prosper. Under this bill, stablecoins will create the ability to send a payment anywhere in the world instantly with a lower fee than the current options. Right now, financial transfer technology like wire transfers can take up to ten days, which is often too long if the money is being sent for an emergency. It will allow innovators to build new programs and apps that give consumers more control and flexibility. The possibilities for using stablecoins are numerous, and we are just starting to see how financial innovation will thrive once stablecoins become a common form of payment.”