Germany
It's hard work deregulating in Europe. Actually, it's impossible.
BEG IV and the battle against the bureaucratic octopus
Two steps forward, one step back.
The Germans are trying to pare back bureaucracy. The problem is that the EU is doing its best to load up the rules.
Will this force the Germans to accelerate their plans?
‘Buschmann's excursion into Greek mythology had a very concrete background: on 26 September the German parliament passed the fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act (BEG IV). It is part of the „Meseberg relief package“, which the government is celebrating as the „biggest bureaucracy reduction programme in the history of Germany“. BEG IV alone is intended to cut costs of almost 1 billion euros a year for business, administration, and citizens.
‘However, just hours after the BEG IV vote, Parliament was moving ahead with national implementation of the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). As Buschmann himself puts it, this is a „bureaucratic battleship“ that overloads companies with countless additional reporting obligations. Annual new implementation costs: 1.6 billion euros.’
German bureaucracy wasting public money, says taxpayers' association
German organization presents bureaucracy as inconsistent with common sense.
‘According to the report, "year after year, billions of euros of taxpayers' money seep away because of rampant bureaucracy, often with only questionable benefits or even real economic damage."
‘The report provides 100 examples from local, state and national levels, highlighting for the 52nd time where it considers public money is being wasted.
‘At the presentation of the report in Berlin, the association's president, Reiner Holznagel, said that "common sense is often replaced with bureaucratic rules."’
Coordination of multiple agencies and the complexity of having multiple players at the table does not lend itself to agile, dynamic responsiveness.
‘Vance insisted Monday that there needs to be much better coordination of federal resources.
‘“You’ve got eight different bureaucratic organizations, and you’ve got a lot of different bureaucratic fiefdoms that sometimes delay the provision of necessary resources,” he explained.
‘“You need to empower a military commander on the ground to get helicopters to where they need to go, to get supplies to where they need to go, to cut through some of the FAA bureaucracy,” Vance added. “The problem here, I really believe, is just — it’s like the DMV at industrial scale.”’
What the White House Should Do Next for Cyber Regulation
Harmonization of regulations across multiple independent organizations is also critical in cybersecurity.
There may be an optimal number of engaged actors for a particular regulatory problem.
It may also be true that there is a natural regulatory entropy in which the number of players grows.
‘ONCD's office would work to not just "create a coherent regulatory system and harmonize cybersecurity requirements," as recommended by the American Chamber of Commerce, or oversee a Harmonization Committee, per a recent Senate bill. It would draft the strategy, develop an implementation plan and track completion, develop frameworks to harmonize regulations, champion mutual recognition, and help oversee if regulations are working and at reasonable cost.
‘This office would work with other departments and agencies — especially the Cybersecurity Forum for Independent and Executive Branch Regulators and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, recently tasked to harmonize critical infrastructure regulations. ‘
Sorry, There’s No Such Thing as the Corporate Capture of Regulatory Agencies
It’s not corporate capture of the regulators. It’s regulatory capture of the corporations.
Chevron was written for an era in which there was corporate capture. Loper reflects the flipping of the table.
Yet, the sense of this mythical corporate influence persist. Where wrong assumptions continue bad policy follows.
‘Now I wholeheartedly agree with them about the problematic and corrupt merger of state and corporate power. The problem with the analysis is, there’s not a single government agency that has been captured by large corporate interests. Not one.
‘In fact, the dynamic they are describing—again, it is evil and it does exist—works in the exactly opposite fashion. What’s going on around the western world, and especially in the United States, is that large corporations are being routinely captured by even more powerful bureaucratic interests.
‘The stormtroopers in the streets of American life are from the ranks of the professional civil service, and the doors they are smashing down are the doors of corporate boardrooms as well as private homes. The hostages are the corporate directors of America, quivering behind their investment portfolios for fear of angering their bureaucratic overlords.’
It’s hard to understand what the Work Environment Authority was thinking here.
‘Spotify says it’s moving ‘parts’ of 250 Sweden-based roles abroad, following a court ruling denying SPOT’s request to allow its engineers based in the company’s home market to work night shifts.’
White House’s final ‘Trust Regulation’ aims to bolster confidence in federal statistics
It’s more interesting that they need to put out regulations to bolster trust in federal statistics. Presumably, these guidelines exist already in some form.
Is this an indication that trust in government reporting has waned?
‘Specifically, the regulation will outline how federal statistical agencies should carry out responsibilities to produce information that’s relevant and timely, credible and accurate, objective, and protects the trust of respondents and those providing the information by ensuring confidentiality of responses.’
National Security Regulation and the Decline of Cost-Benefit Analysis
Most agencies at least go through the motions of defending their regulations with cost-benefit analysis. But, apparently, when you say the magic phrase “national security,” this becomes more of a suggestion than a hard-and-fast requirement.
‘Under both the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations, the U.S. government has had a seemingly unquenchable thirst for national security regulations limiting investment, trade, and information flows. Rare bipartisan policy alignment has yielded a growing array of restrictions premised on concerns about China, Russia, terrorism, and other international sources of angst.
‘The restrictions have been accompanied by a worrisome trend: the government has given short shrift to cost-benefit analysis. While available data is sparse, preliminary indications suggest some restrictions could, on balance, harm rather than advance U.S. security.’
Dario Amodei on AI and the optimistic scenario
Speaking of cost-benefit analysis that doesn’t get done, here’s a quick comment on AI.
Maybe we’re not beginning to think about the upside properly, even as we imagine Terminator scenarios.
‘Economists often talk about “factors of production”: things like labor, land, and capital. The phrase “marginal returns to labor/land/capital” captures the idea that in a given situation, a given factor may or may not be the limiting one – for example, an air force needs both planes and pilots, and hiring more pilots doesn’t help much if you’re out of planes. I believe that in the AI age, we should be talking about the marginal returns to intelligence7, and trying to figure out what the other factors are that are complementary to intelligence and that become limiting factors when intelligence is very high. We are not used to thinking in this way—to asking “how much does being smarter help with this task, and on what timescale?”—but it seems like the right way to conceptualize a world with very powerful AI.’
‘I'm sure these scientists are really good at building climate models, but I wonder if any of the 118 who signed this letter has actually tried to build a piece of clean energy infrastructure in this country. That might give them a different perspective on permitting reform.’