Distorted
Regulations distort decisions.
Congress Put the Wrong Date in the Tax Law. Companies Are Reaping Millions.
In the wake of Loper, Congress needs better legislative writers. Yesterday.
‘Congress accidentally left a hole in the 2017 tax law by writing mismatched effective dates for new tax rules—and then failed to fix the problem. That is now allowing big companies to save tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that otherwise would have gone to the government.
‘The Internal Revenue Service tried to plug the gap with regulations, but a unanimous U.S. Tax Court this past week said the law’s plain language delivers a double benefit to some companies, even if Congress didn’t intend that.’
California’s divisive AI safety bill sets up tough decision for governor Gavin Newsom
Newsom is in a tough spot.
On the one hand, he has a chance to dictate national AI regulatory policy (in effect).
On the other hand, he is on the receiving end of ferocious lobbying from people who think it will do irreparable harm to California’s AI innovation ecosystem. (Of course, the ramifications will arrive after he’s long gone from the scene with sufficient plausible deniability to distance himself from the consequences.)
He has a month to decide whether to veto it.
‘Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun wrote on X in July that the bill would be harmful to AI research efforts, while OpenAI warned it would create an uncertain legal environment for AI companies and could cause entrepreneurs and engineers to leave California.’
The Zombie Myth of Job-Killing Regulations
This is really a straw man argument.
The problem isn’t that regulations kill jobs. That’s a symptom of the more general and insidious problem.
Lots of regulations distort decisions, favoring one outcome over another, often at the expense of overall economic efficiency. Maybe it’s jobs. Maybe it’s just that it is more expensive to make things, overall. Maybe we end up delivering too much of some things and too little of others.
I get it. The author loves environmental regulations. Good for you, pal.
‘Given the lack of evidence to support it, why has the idea that regulations are a massive threat to jobs hung on so long? There are three reasons. First, regulated industries have a big stake in promoting this myth. They also have a lot of money to devote to this effort. Second, the connection makes intuitive sense to conservatives, and it’s hard to dislodge such preconceptions in our increasingly tribal society. Finally, layoffs are very visible and easy to attribute to regulation, while new manufacturing jobs don’t carry the same oomph. Just as people overestimate the risks of air travel because crashes are so vivid, they also overestimate the degree of job loss.’
How They Broke It: Environmental Regulation
The author descries the ineffectiveness of UK environmental regulation and enforcement, blaming the now-deposed Tories. Did she think that the Minister was the one who would do the inspections of the water companies?
Maybe, and hear me out, these agencies are run inefficiently, they have loose mandates, they shouldn’t have been privatized in the first place, let alone sold to private equity, or journalists and the public should have paid more attention.
‘Nothing exemplifies the UK government’s failures on the environment as clearly and as strikingly as the floods of raw sewage fouling England’s rivers and beaches. It is a tragedy for the UK’s natural environment, a running sore that is killing rivers and could take generations to heal – and a stark case study in how not to do environmental regulation, a warning to other countries and to future parliaments.
‘Ministers by turns ignored the problem, obscured it within an opaque regulatory system, slashed funding to the regulator, failed to bring the water companies into line, and finally made inadequate attempts at solutions that merely muddied the regulatory waters. The result? A stinking mess, one that has not only sickened the electorate – literally, in some cases, harmed tourism and sport, and made Britain an object of international horror, but has become an emblem of systemic failure that has dragged on through long parliamentary years, featuring strongly in two losing by-elections, and haunted this year’s general election.’
Digitizing bureaucracy may make things more efficient. In theory. Maybe.
‘The expat claimed the first major downside is the Italian bureaucracy because the simplest administrative tasks take months to complete.’
A reminder of why those darn government bureaucrats and regulations save lives
The only safe bet here is that there will be an expansion of the agency that screwed up.
‘Both the company and the agency responsible for inspecting the plant failed to detect Listeria — why that happened will need to be addressed — but there does seem to have been actions taken to correct problems that were identified. That being said, there should also be questions about just how much of a priority compliance with regulations was, and what kind of regulatory actions were imposed. What kind of resources did the inspectors have, how well were they trained, how was enforcement carried out — and how quickly?’
Public faces State bureaucracy designed ‘around everyone but themselves’, Taoiseach says
You might be in a bureaucracy if you spend time trying to get other people in your organization to do the highly risky work while you focus on taking the easy jobs so that you can be the hero.
Call it anti-collaboration.
‘Government departments and State agencies too often avoid responsibility and leave the public facing bureaucracy that is designed “around everybody and everything but the citizen”, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said.
‘“That’s not intentional. It’s not on purpose. And I don’t say this to be disparaging, but if passing the parcel was an Olympic sport, we would be in with a chance of a medal,” he told the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross, Co Wexford, on Friday.’