Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘regulation and its reform’

Philip K. Howard, “The Rule of Nobody”

Nick Gillespie reviews the new book by the author of The Death of Common Sense:

The Rule of Nobody updates and expands Howard’s original brief, and it helps to explain why government at all levels not only is on autopilot but on a flight path that can only end in disaster.

Every Philip Howard book is notable for its horror stories of regulation and systemic dysfunction, and reviewer Kyle Smith in the New York Post relates one I hadn’t heard, about the mammoth Deepwater Horizon spill:

When the oil rig started leaking mud and gas, the crew should have simply directed the flow over the side. Dumped it in the gulf. That would have been a small oil spill, of course, and no oil spill is a good thing. But in trying to avoid that, the crew caused a gigantic oil spill. Eleven lives were lost.

Safety protocol called for the men to aim the flow into a safety gizmo called an oil and gas separator, but that became backed up and made matters worse. Explosive gas filled the air around the rig, which finally exploded.

Then some workers who escaped in a raft almost died. Why? They were tied to the burning rig, and regulations forbade them to carry knives so they couldn’t cut themselves free.

More on the book here. Another review: Jesse Singal, Boston Globe.

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Mark your calendars: Mar. 27, “Why Government Fails So Often”

why-government-fails-so-oftenI’m particularly pleased to have played a role in bringing so many terrific authors to speak at Cato this year, including Virginia Postrel and Lenore Skenazy (I helped a bit with Megan McArdle too). Next up, on Mar. 27: Peter Schuck of Yale Law School, “militant moderate” whose magnum opus on how government fails is forthcoming from Princeton. Commenting will be Arnold Kling. Register now! (or make plans to watch live online). Event description:

Featuring the author Peter Schuck, Professor of Law Emeritus, Yale Law School; with comments by Arnold Kling, Economist and Adjunct Scholar, Cato Institute; moderated by Walter Olson, Senior Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute.

From the doctor’s office to the workplace, the federal government is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive, incompetent, wasteful giant. In this book, lawyer and political scientist Peter Schuck lays out a wide range of examples and an enormous body of evidence to explain why so many domestic policies go awry. Economist David Henderson, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and coeditor of EconLog, lauds the book as full of “gems” and “juicy” insights: “Schuck does a beautiful job of laying out all the problems with government intervention.” But can the state get better results by pursuing more thoughtfully conceived policies designed to compensate for its structural flaws? Schuck believes it can. Many libertarians will disagree — and that debate will enliven our discussion.

A sampling of the book’s argument is here.

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Fear of regulatory retaliation: ObamaCare and beyond

“According to CNN investigative reporter Drew Griffin, the White House is pressuring trade associations and insurance providers to keep quiet about the changes the Affordable Care Act is creating for some people’s health coverage plans. One industry official told CNN on the record that the White House is applying ‘massive pressure’ to combat the impression that the ACA is resulting in the cancellation of some plans.” [Mediaite]

This is not the first time, or the tenth, I’ve heard about regulated entities feeling pressure to shut up about things that might embarrass the regulators they answer to. These stories did not begin with the Obama administration and I don’t think they’ll end with it. Quite aside from whatever we think of ObamaCare itself, shouldn’t they disturb us? And can anything be done about it? Following media attention to the plight of “whistleblowers” in the workplace, lawmakers have created fairly elaborate procedures intended to identify and remedy cases of retaliation against federal employees who speak up about problems they notice, procedures that in some instances have also been extended to some private-sector employees. Should there be procedures aimed at unearthing and rectifying retaliation against regulated entities, too, when they blow the whistle? Or would that be too easily manipulated by regulated entities in search of profit, revenge, or point-making?

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NYC bureaucracy and the expediter culture

Businesses in New York that permits from City Hall — which at one time or another is likely to be most of them — commonly pay thousands of dollars for “expediters” to navigate municipal departments for them. That this system continues even after years of putatively pro-business, modernizing administration by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, says Ira Stoll, is “outrageous.” [Future of Capitalism]

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The California disease

“We once had to get something like 7 permits just to remove a dangerous and dilapidated deck. …Approximately the same expansion that cost us just under a million dollars in Alabama several years ago was going to cost over $5 million [in] Ventura County, and the County was still piling on requirements when we gave up. … Even as a service business we do a bit of this [manufacturing avoidance], no longer stick-building anything but having all our buildings, cabins, stores, etc built in Arizona as modular buildings and then shipped to California.” [Coyote]

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August 29 roundup

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