The Devil Is in the Details
Implementation may be more important than rules.
The Department of Education’s FAFSA Fiasco
A ham-fisted overhaul of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) system means that families are on tenterhooks waiting to see if they qualify for financial aid or scholarships. Families who rely on financial aid to fund the college experience need to know how much aid they can get before committing to a college. Delays of several months put needy students at a significant disadvantage to those who can afford to pay full freight. It turns out that transitioning a system written in COBOL and running on an IBM mainframe to a cloud-based system with contemporary code is no trivial task. What’s worse, the new form “contains technical errors that make it impossible for some families to complete the application.”
“The department had been overconfident as far back as the tail end of the Trump years, when it told Congress that its deadlines were workable. But it also didn’t give Congress the information it needed to reassess the deadlines and the department’s funding needs, according to Douglas-Gabriel: “As the release date neared, lawmakers, colleges and other stakeholders say the Education Department kept them in the dark. Despite regular briefings to Congress on the FAFSA, congressional aides say the department did not divulge the problems it was contending with.” The result has been chaos that looks like the offspring of the Obamacare rollout and the ORCA system.”
Euroviews. 'Regulation stifles innovation' is a misguided myth
“In reality, regulation is less about stifling innovation and more about channelling [sic] it responsibly — before it’s too late and irreversible harm is caused. Regulation keeps big tech in check and without it, we end up with endless apologies from tech executives who say “Just trust us”.”
The syllogism here appears to be:
· Assumption #1: There is an externality in which the companies that develop technology fail to account for various negative spillover effects of the implemented product
· Assumption #2: These pejorative impacts are knowable in advance and government regulators are uniquely adept at anticipating them
· Therefore, government regulators should be involved in the product development process from the earliest possible stage
In Europe, they neither move fast nor do they break things.
Judge in Coinbase case endorses SEC's crypto regulation-by-enforcement strategy
In essence, crypto defendants and their supporters contend that instead of bringing enforcement actions against selected targets, the SEC should either have waited for Congress to enact laws regulating the burgeoning industry or engaged in formal rulemaking to guide crypto issuers and exchanges.
By opting to set policy via lawsuits, Coinbase and its backers have argued repeatedly, the SEC has violated defendants’ constitutional due process rights by failing to provide fair notice that they’d be subject to enforcement.
Of course, one could make two arguments. One, the legislative and rule-making processes are too slow and cumbersome to address the evolutionary speed of crypto. Two, there is nothing fundamentally new about crypto. Securities are securities are securities. Their method of distribution doesn’t alter essential characteristics of these instruments.
““The fundamental problem with housing today is that federal, state, and local regulations constrict supply, which drives up prices. Biden’s backwards solution is to subsidize demand by handing out more government money to buyers, renters, and developers. These subsidies would further drive up prices, waste public money, and drive home ownership even farther out of reach for many Americans,” he concluded.”
This stands in contrast to Minneapolis where local authorities are deregulating, leading to a 12% increase in housing stock over a five-year period. It also contained rental increases significantly in comparison to the rest of the state.
VICTORY! Idaho Becomes Latest State to End Judicial Deference to Administrative State
Idaho passed legislation to return power to the legislature from the state’s bureaucracy The legislation “ends judicial deference to agency interpretations of statutes or rules and requires courts to instead interpret the relevant questions of law themselves, or de novo.”
When bureaucrats exercise discretion and courts defer to them, the risk is that the court’s inaction “effectively turn the executive branch into a lawmaking entity in direct contradiction of the separation of powers laid out in our Constitution.”
This is interesting in the context of the upcoming Chevron litigation.
Sarah Ingham: The Church of England’s bureaucracy has forgotten its mission
“The Church often appears to be just another bureaucracy, existing primarily to serve itself, with layers of self-interested administrators getting in the way of its core purpose (think the NHS). As in every bureaucracy, there is empire-building and mission creep, i.e. time-wasting diversification and gasping to catch up with transitory trends, which can be usefully summed up as wokery.”
The product of regulatory sloth
“In 2022, Congress amended the Tobacco Control Act to ensure an appropriate framework existed to conduct enforcement on synthetic nicotine products, many of which pose significant harm to consumers. Nearly 18 months later, the agency has yet to finish its full review of over 9,500 accepted applications for products using synthetic nicotine, with many of these products currently illicitly marketed and available to the general public.”
Slow regulation can be deadly.
Biden’s Order: Let There Be Electric Trucks
The EPA made an announcement on the Friday before Easter.
“EPA’s new emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks will effectively require that electric semi-trucks make up an increasing share of manufacturer sales from 2027 through 2032, similar to its recent rule for passenger cars. The difference is that the truck mandate is even more costly and fanciful.”
This is despite several facts:
· “No electric long-haul tractors are currently in mass production”
· “Most electric trucks can’t go more than 170 miles on a charge.”
· “Electric semis require bigger and heavier batteries, which means they must carry lighter loads to avoid damaging roads.”
· “Fleet operators will have to use more trucks to transport the same amount of goods.”
· “An electric semi consumes about seven times as much electricity on a single charge as a typical home does in a day.”
· “Most trucks will recharge at night when solar isn’t available since drivers don’t want to waste prime daylight driving hours.”
· “Some 1.4 million chargers will have to be installed by 2032 to achieve the EPA’s mandate, about 15,000 a month.”
Under the Dome: Mark Robinson wants to defund ‘bloated bureaucracy’ in education
The new North Carolina governor sounds familiar, elected on a promise to cut waste in government spending, even as he defends teacher compensation. Let’s see what he does.
Twitter thread on UK sewage and water
How does a regulated industry enter financial distress? The government miscalculated the investment requirement, motivated by a desire to keep consumer bills down. The companies had windfall profits (paid out as dividends, natch) because of the incorrect assumptions that the regulators made, even as the companies underinvested in water and sewage infrastructure. Now that interest rates are higher and in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, rates are going up. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Washington’s regulations frenzy shouldn’t shortchange Middle America
In mandating deep cuts to the “swipe” fees financial institutions charge retailers, the Federal Reserve’s Regulation II will transfer money from these financial companies to the retailers. The banks, in turn, will increase other fees they charge consumers, in all likelihood, if they don’t cut back services that the interchange fees subsidize. A gift to big box retailers is funded by a tax on consumers.