Everyone Wants to Be Singapore
Small government is effective government.
UK financial regulators should copy Singapore model, say peers
The perception that the post-Financial Crisis regulatory impulse was an overreaction is picking up steam.
‘Britain’s financial regulators need to learn from Singapore by ditching their “risk-averse culture”, stepping up support for economic growth, and becoming more welcoming to businesses, a House of Lords committee has said. Since the 2008 banking crisis, the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority had introduced “unnecessary frictions” that undermine growth and innovation and “discourage new entrants”, the House of Lords Financial Regulation Committee said on Friday. The peers’ conclusion that the UK has “valuable lessons to learn from Singapore’s approach” to financial regulation underscores widespread frustration in the City of London over how the two authorities have responded to a new objective to support economic competitiveness and growth they were given two years ago.’
UK ministers delay AI regulation amid plans for more ‘comprehensive’ bill
What do you bet that next year, after a ton of technological advances, the UK delays, yet again, its regulation of AI? Things are moving so quickly that whatever they come up may be obsolete and will not contemplate the new, to-be-revealed cutting edge.
This is a key problem with AI regulation.
‘Proposals to regulate artificial intelligence have been delayed by at least a year as UK ministers plan a bumper bill to regulate the technology and its use of copyrighted material.
‘Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, intends to introduce a “comprehensive” AI bill in the next parliamentary session to address concerns about issues including safety and copyright.’
World Bank lifts ban on funding nuclear energy in boost to industry
Why now?
How much consumer welfare was never created because of the ban on funding nuclear energy?
The ad hockery is something.
“We will support efforts to extend the life of existing reactors in countries that already have them, and help support grid upgrades and related infrastructure,” the email said. The shift follows advocacy from the pro-nuclear Trump administration and a change of government in Germany, which previously opposed financing atomic energy due to domestic political opposition to the technology. It is part of a wider strategy aimed at tackling an expected doubling of electricity demand in the developing world by 2035. Meeting this demand would require annual investment in generation, grids and storage to rise from $280bn today to $630bn, Banga said in the memo seen by the Financial Times’
Europe’s inability to scale start-ups could be disastrous
The EU has a dismal track record over the past fifty years when it comes to cultivating entrepreneurial ventures that scale to large market capitalizations.
Legislating and regulating their way to success isn’t going to work this time, either.
‘The starting point for the European Commission’s recently announced “Startup and Scaleup Strategy” is therefore weak. Young companies can’t scale and large ones are shrinking. This double whammy poses a threat to Europe in a world where sovereign power is often projected through the size and growth of homegrown companies. While the measures announced in the strategy — better regulation, talent support and more finance — are welcome, they are not enough. The last thing Europe needs is more heavy-handed, top-down political interventionism for either start-ups or industry. The fact that both have traditionally been treated as distinct by the public sector demonstrates that most bureaucrats simply don’t understand innovation and commercialisation.’
‘Brussels bureaucracy’ becoming political player, says Orbán cabinet
It’s a simple enough argument. The bureaucracy wields power and influences the decisions made by the legislative body. It writes draft legislation, for example. The EU elected officials vote up or down, but the influence of the bureaucracy in the way the sausage is made is significant. It is not passive.
Hungary sees the EU bureaucracy as representative of the interests of an elite that holds itself above the petty national concerns of its member countries.
‘The rules of this cooperation are laid down by treaties which clearly state that the bloc’s political direction is set by the European Council comprising the member states’ political leaders, he added.
‘This is not the case today,” Bóka said. “Today the Brussels bureaucracy is itself becoming a political player. And as a political player it uses every tool and resource at its disposal to achieve its political goals.”’
Cost and size of bureaucracy has increased in Switzerland
Urbanization brings with it denser bureaucracy, too.
‘Between 2011 and 2022, the number of administrative offices per inhabitant in these metropolitan areas rose by 15.6%. In rural municipalities, the growth was 12.9%, in the core cities 9.7%, as the IWP announced on Wednesday. In the same period, suburban areas also saw the highest increase in personnel expenditure, with a rise of 13.5% per inhabitant. In rural municipalities, expenditure rose by 6.6%, in cities by just 2.6%.
`Nevertheless, cities still have the largest number of employees and the highest personnel expenditure per inhabitant. The cities included in the IWP analysis employ an average of 19.6 people in full-time positions per 1,000 inhabitants. In the agglomeration municipalities, there are less than half as many at 9.6, and even fewer in rural municipalities at 7.7.
‘The urban centres are also ahead in terms of personnel expenditure: they spend an average of CHF2,545 (about $3,095) per inhabitant. In rural municipalities, the figure is CHF 2,205 and in suburbs it is CHF1,798.’