Our Compulsive Urge to Regulate: A Response

The following is my written response to Max Borders’ video on regulation, submitted as part of the New Threats to Freedom essay contest.

Max Borders’ example of the bureaucratic tendency to use regulation as a go-to solution opens up a huge window onto many of the problems the U.S. faces today. Borders’ example has to do with the prohibitively thick layer of red tape that lies between an enterprising individual and a simple business goal such as selling jars of barbecue sauce. However, the problem Borders highlights extends much deeper into the American mentality, touching on problems evident in business regulations, politics, and even healthcare.

Today’s problem solvers tend to focus on simple, fast, highly visible regulatory solutions rather than on less obvious and potentially more effective answers. In many cases, the urge to present a functional solution as soon as possible overcomes the need to discover the true cause of an issue and present a well-researched, targeted solution. Especially in issues of business and politics, non-agendized problem solving often takes a back seat to the career-boosting, newsworthy “quick fix.”

This mentality has produced regulatory disasters such as the uncontested banning of ice cream trucks from Chicago’s 18th Ward in 2008 over one alderman’s personal suspicions of drug dealing. Other examples include the 2007 banning of Harry Potter books from a Boston Catholic school due to a pastor’s perceptions of witchcraft (one of many such bans on the series), and an overall regulatory system built on red-tape bureaucracies, such as the one impeding Borders’ selling his barbecue sauce, that seems to tower well above the needs of common sense. Larger issues such as the classification of marijuana as a schedule-1 narcotic, and the overwhelming number of Americans relying on prescription medications for daily functionality, also owe their roots to quick-fix problem solving. This “patch” approach, arguably the worst kind of permanent solution, has somehow become the most used tool in America’s toolbox.

Attempts have been made to execute more well-planned solutions to America’s problems — Obama’s healthcare bill with its pay-for-performance compensation structure could be cited as one example — but typically the results of this approach threaten the agenda of those benefitting from the current arrangement, and the same bureaucratic wheels that promote the patch approach are called on to prevent departure from the status quo. It would be comforting to believe a change of direction is plausible in the near future, but with political goals, personal greed and other deeply engrained factors keeping the quick-fix mentality stubbornly afloat, a fundamental shift would be an extremely steep uphill battle.

Hopefully Americans have the palate for it.

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