Category Archives: regulation

Regulation Roundup

Posted on August 31, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulation Roundup


Some of the latest goings on in the world of regulation:

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Posted in Nanny State, regulation

CEI Podcast for August 30, 2012: Delayed FDA Rules Should Be Scrapped

Posted on August 30, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for August 30, 2012: Delayed FDA Rules Should Be Scrapped


Have a listen here.

Major forthcoming rules from a variety of agencies have been delayed until after the November elections, possibly for political reasons. Among them are FDA food safety regulations with a $1.4 billion annual price tag. Senior Fellow Greg Conko argues that these rules should be scrapped altogether for two reasons: they will do little to improve food safety, and they will give large food corporations an unfair competitive advantage over smaller producers.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, regulation

Regulation of the Day 227: Returning from the Moon

Posted on August 30, 2012 | 1 comment


Neil Armstrong died last weekend at the age of 82. He was an inspirational figure for a lot of reasons besides the obvious one of being the first man to walk on the moon. He took great pride in being a nerdy, pocket-protector wearing engineer. In so doing, he inspired a lot of nerdy kids to keep their chins up, work hard, and accomplish great things. His stoic example made the world a better place.

Armstrong also handled his fame well.  He always maintained a calm, quiet dignity. His steady demeanor presented a sharp contrast with his no-less heroic colleague Buzz Aldrin, who is something of a showman at heart. Armstrong didn’t much care for the spotlight, and happily lived a quiet life in his native Ohio.

Which brings us to today’s Regulation of the Day. It turns out that when Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned to Earth after the Apollo 11 mission, they actually filled out a customs form. The Atlantic recently unearthed the document. It’s hard to tell if the form was an exercise in dry humor or the crew really was required to fill it out.

It’s worth a read. The “Departure from” field is filled in with simply, “moon.” The flight routing proceeds: Cape Kennedy; moon; Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A. The cargo manifest includes “moon rock and moon dust samples.” An ominous note sounds in the “Any other condition on board which may lead to the spread of disease” field: a typewritten, all-caps “TO BE DETERMINED.”

One wonders if today’s astronauts still fill out customs forms when they return home.

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Posted in regulation, Regulation of the Day

Congress Should Create a Repeal Committee

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Comments Off on Congress Should Create a Repeal Committee

There are a lot of old, musty, unused, and obsolete laws on the books. Congress should repeal them as part of its basic hygiene, but members have little incentive to do so. A standing repeal committee could help. David Deerson and I look at how such a committee might work in a piece over at RealClearPolicy:

The job would be a big one. All in all, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) rambles on for 169,000 pages, many of which could be dispensed with and replaced with nothing. For example, one of the 50 titles in the CFR is dedicated entirely to the Panama Canal, which hasn’t been under United States jurisdiction since 1999. Elsewhere, an entire chapter consists of guidelines for dealing with the Y2K computer crisis that didn’t happen 12 years ago…

As old Washington hand Joseph Gibson points out in his book, A Better Congress, a repeal committee would almost certainly face strong opposition from members of other committees, who would see it as a threat to their own prerogatives. To soften this opposition, he suggests involving the committee with jurisdiction over the statute to be repealed through a secondary referral—subject to time limit to ensure that the committee cannot sit on a proposed repeal indefinitely.

Read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Public Choice, Publications, regulation

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on August 27, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation


Just another week in the world of regulation:

  •  76 new final rules were published last week, up from 65 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 13 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • All in all, 2,507 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,872 new rules.
  • 1,687 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 52,597 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 78,178 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 29 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $16.5 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and a third cost estimate does not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
  • One economically significant rule was published last week.
  • So far, 250 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
  • So far this year, 474 final rules affect small business. 64 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • Last week’s economically significant rule comes from the intimidatingly-named Safety and Environmental Enforcement Bureau. New oil and gas drilling regulations for the outer continental shelf will cost an estimated $131 million per year.
  • The state of New York wants to set its own odometer standards. They had to petition the federal government first.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

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Regulation Roundup

Posted on August 24, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulation Roundup


The latest goings-on in the world of regulation:

Friends-of-CEI Susan Dudley and Jerry Brito are authors of the new second edition of their book Regulation: A Primer. I finished it yesterday, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. The book covers the different types of regulation, the rationales for regulation, and most importantly for would-be reformers, the regulatory process. You can download an unpriced PDF copy at the link.

North Haven, Connecticut doesn’t allow livestock to live on properties smaller than 2 acres. That’s why one overzealous zoning official wants the Lidsky family to give up their pet rabbit.

Reason’s Mike Riggs with the 5 dumbest drug laws in America.

In Iceland, parents must pick their child’s name from a government-approved list. One condition is that another Icelander must have had the same name. You can view the list here.

An Arizona woman was told to stop handing out bottled water on a 112-degree day because she didn’t have a permit. The woman is thinking of suing.

Chattanooga does not like pedicabs. Eleven pages of new regulations cap their number at six, and institute strict equipment and licensing requirements. From the news story: “When asked what he’d tell another entrepreneur considering starting a business in Chattanooga, Thoreson replied, ‘Stay the hell away.’”

In the UK, you must have a liquor license to sell alcohol. One clever entrepreneur is giving it away for free in his “furniture store,” encouraging tipplers to browse his wares and buy £2.75 beer mats. By giving beer away, he isn’t technically selling any alcohol, so he argues that he doesn’t need a permit. Angry officials had no choice but to cede the point, but will likely amend the law.

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Regulation and the Green Bay Packers

Posted on August 23, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulation and the Green Bay Packers


In today’s Wall Street Journal, Kevin Clark offers a novel theory for the Green Bay Packers’ long run of success under GM Ted Thompson: a clone army.

Deep in the wilds of the Upper Midwest, Green Bay quietly has recruited a regiment of interchangeable players. The team’s novel idea is to find players—usually linebackers, tight ends or fullbacks—who can play in a variety of formations and situations because they’re virtually the exact same size and weight. The ideal specifications: 6 feet 2 and 250 pounds.

As Packers tight end D.J. Williams explained, only 46 players are allowed to dress for an NFL game. Every team has to cobble together its starters, reserves and special-teams players from those 46. “So if you can have one person doing what three people can do, it may only be 46 people dressed out there but it’s like having 60,” said Williams, who at 6 feet 2 and 245 pounds is roughly the magic size. “It’s a great advantage.”

It’s Moneyball adapted for football. Find a hole in the market — in this case, players who are a size that other teams shy away from — and mercilessly exploit it. Fellow regulatory scholar and (and fellow Packer fan?) Richard Belzer points out a lesson this teaches about regulation:

This is an excellent example of how market forces lead to efficient resource use, even under a stringent regulatory regime, so long as regulated parties are allowed to comply any way they see fit…

However, in other sports (e.g., stock car racing) performance standards give way to design standards that seek to prescribe every conceivable input into the production process. They inevitably fail for two reasons. First, there is always some production margin the regulators didn’t think of. Second, regulated parties invest extraordinary sums to search for and exploit loopholes.

In other words, regulation works better when it sets a standard without prescribing exactly how to meet that standard. The NFL has a 53-man roster limit, but it doesn’t prescribe how many linemen or quarterbacks the team must carry. That’s up to the GMs. Not only does this type of regulation open up another level of competition for fans to enjoy — front offices, not just players, trying to outmaneuver each other — but it prevents cheating. Lessons abound.

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Posted in Economics, regulation, Sports

FDA Rules Won’t Work, Will Harm Small Farmers

Posted on August 23, 2012 | Comments Off on FDA Rules Won’t Work, Will Harm Small Farmers

The FDA recently decided to delay implementing about $1.4 billion of food safety regulations until after the November election. The ​USA Today​ editorial board argues in today’s paper that the FDA should stop dragging its feet and enact them now. They were kind enough to give Greg Conko and me some space to put forth an opposing view. We think the FDA should scrap the rules entirely for two reasons: ineffectiveness and rent-seeking:

These rules, being drafted to implement last year’s food-safety law, will waste billions of dollars on antiquated practices unlikely to do much good. They will, however, aid giant food corporations by hobbling smaller competitors and make it harder for companies of all sizes to adopt innovative safety methods and technologies.

Enacted in response to 2010’s massive egg recall, the law will spend nearly $1 billion to double the number of inspections on farms and in food processing facilities. That may sound appealing, but it only means that most facilities will be inspected every five years instead of every 10. Designated “high-risk” facilities would be inspected just once every three years.

Read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Publications, regulation

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on August 20, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation


Just another week in the world of regulation:

  •  65 new final rules were published last week, down from 68 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 35 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • All in all, 2,431 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,868 new rules.
  • 1,943 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 49,910 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 77,985 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 28 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $16.37 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and a third cost estimate does not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
  • One economically significant rule was published last week.
  • So far, 248 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
  • So far this year, 460 final rules affect small business. 63 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • Last week’s economically significant rule comes from the EPA. It changes offshore oil drilling procedures in the wake of the 2010 BP spill. You can read the 137-page rule here; Politico kindly summarizes it here.
  • The National Mine Safety and Health Review Commission is moving its headquarters.
  • The Pagosa skyrocket, Parachute beardtongue, and DeBecque phacelia are more than cool potential band names. These plant species are the beneficiaries of critical habitat designations, courtesy of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
  • If you would like to request that a tv show be closed captioned, take note that the FCC has changed some of its relevant terminology.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com

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Regulation and the Setting Sun

Posted on August 16, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulation and the Setting Sun

Agencies are well-equipped for passing regulations, but not for repealing them. This becomes a problem as the years march on, and dusty old rules that don’t apply in today’s world retain the force of law. Over at RealClearPolicy, David Deerson and I propose an easy fix: automatic sunsets for all new regulations. Here’s how it would work:

Just as every carton of milk has an expiration date, sunset provisions automatically end agencies, programs, and regulations after a fixed period of time, unless specifically reauthorized by Congress. We already know the idea works. Several states already have sunset laws in place. They typically establish a sunset committee or commission, which reviews programs and agencies whose time is almost up and makes recommendations to the legislature. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that Texas saves $42 for every dollar it spends on sunset reviews.

Read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Publications, regulation

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