File This Under: The Price of Over Regulation
The best example of regulatory lunacy since The Tuna Confiscation of 2011 has to be this: the FAA has grounded a little aircraft used to escort endangered whooping cranes to their summer home. (via Drudge.)
Operation Migration is a nonprofit organization that seeks to reintroduce whooping cranes into eastern North America. Their website explains that, in the 1940s, the species was reduced to just 15 birds.
The whole operation is fascinating. They have to make the birds think that they are their mother.
So why was the migration grounded? Apparently, someone got worried they are paying the pilot for the task of flying the bird-looking “light sport” aircraft.
Now, don’t get too outraged. A waiver process is already in place. Certainly, a conservationist quest to save the whooping cranes will qualify for a waiver, and the migration will soon resume. Everything is completely friendly, explains the latest news report from Operation Migration (dated 05 January) : “The FAA is in support of this project and is working hard to resolve the matter in our favor. We appreciate their efforts.”
They seem very patient about the whole thing. Would a couple of days delay jeopardize the migration completely? Weather windows can be so fleeting.
Anyway, a waiver process makes everything copasetic, dontcha know. Rule of law, schmule of law.
The uninformed among us are largely unaware of the sheer volume and weight of regulation from every level of government. It blankets every nook and cranny of our society, and stifles activity in innumerable insidious ways.
Blissfully unaware, some people say, well what’s wrong with trying to prevent banks and corporations from abusing power? What’s wrong with making healthcare available to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay? What’s wrong with insert a well-meaning goal here.
These questions sound reasonable at first blush, but (aside from the whole running out of money to pay for it problem) we can glimpse the truth of the matter in situations like this one.
When we try to control the behavior of our fellow citizens (yes, even when they are corporation-y or bankish), right down to the smallest detail, we don’t get rid of abuses of power. We don’t get everyone the healthcare they need. We don’t get insert a well-meaning goal here.
We get lunacy. We get a guy who can’t benefit from the good luck of accidentally catching a giant tuna. We get an amazing charitable cooperative enterprise between individuals, governments, and businesses–stopped in its tracks.
We get a society that says, but we like the regulation that causes the problem here. We want to control businesses and charities, to keep them from taking clients on joy rides in risky Light Sport Aircraft.
Silly old me, I figure that if the clients are grown-ups, maybe they can decide for themselves whether flying in a glorified kite might be worth the patently obvious risks.
Society seems to disagree. Society seems content to replace the Rule of Law with Arbitrary Rule, doled out as privileges and favors in a myriad of “waiver” systems.
This fact frightens me more than, well, pretty much everything on our political landscape today.
Exit question: if a Tea Party was in need of this waiver, what would be their chances of receiving it? We could ask the Richmond Tea Party what they think.
Allow a lone, lorn citizen to receive a non-for-profit pittance for the time he spends leading a flock of inexperienced young whooping cranes on their first migration?
Puh-leese.
What’s his paycheck compared to those of the teams of highly paid gov’t lawyers, administrators, and staffers required to ground the guy and his innocent flock; deliberate, write, duplicate, and sign a waiver; and conduct the media interviews to make it all seem reasonable?
There is a big problem with trying to run EVERYBODY else’s business. EVERYTHING! How does government make the task manageable? To make the task manageable, EVERYBODY has to stop doing almost EVERYTHING.
Wow, that’s all I can say.
You could ask the Bend Tea Party as well.
There’s a flipside that some societies are just way too dumb to be allowed to do what they want… running a thousand bison off a cliff to eat two is fine when there’s 50 of you, not when there are 300 million (yes, that was an extreme example). But also saying that you can regulate society via itself just compunds the dumb.
The true fallicy to me lies in a few “smart” society members deciding what can and can’t be done. Then you’re getting into “for the good of the people” territory that makes any libertarian-leaning person itch between the shoulder blades.
“We don’t get (insert a well-meaning goal here.) We get lunacy.” Great post.
Lin, standing back, it’s interesting to note that there’s a sophistication to the adult thought process that includes appreciation for unintended consequences. Kids, adolescents, even college tweens up to thirty don’t typically use it. The default condition is statist – that a “law” and “government” can solve the problem. Yet when we allow our neighbors powers over us, we achieve in the long run the exact opposite of (insert a well-meaning goal here.) We get lunacy, exactly as you say.
Cheers
It is truly amazing how far reaching some regulations are and the unintended consequences that result.
The “evil” pharmaceutical companies are reviled for the expense of new drugs, but few people consider the R&D cost it takes to bring a new drug to market. I do believe regulation is required, but I’ll bet the regulations fill a pretty large room and they need a staff of full-time people just to navigate them. My husband worked in a firm that made medical instruments and he said that there are so many regulations that some of them are contradictory.
We were watching “Moonshiners”. I’m sure there would still be people making moonshine, but do they really need regulations that fill a 6″ or thicker notebook? The show mentioned that it takes over $100,000 just to get the permits to be legal and there are “FDA” approved tools that must be used. Talk about barrier to entry to competition. I’ll bet almost every business faces some maze of regulations or other. No wonder the US is losing their competitive edge.
If the government really wants to create jobs, maybe they should look at simplifying the regulatory mess.
B-b-b-but…’rule of waiver’ sounds so much kinder than ‘rule of law’.
The “rule of waiver” also gives authority to those with the power to waive the rules.