Friday, February 20, 2009

Regulation quickly creates more risk

rather than mitigating it:
Professor Paul Light calculated that there are now as many as thirty-two layers of federal officials between the person doing the job and the person on top. (The rule of thumb for well-run companies, by contrast, is five layers.) Laws designed to prevent corruption have the effect of thickening the cover of bureaucracy in which corruption can thrive. . . The problem is in the premise--that law should tell people how to do things. Making detailed laws is like pointing a car in one direction and leaving the passengers in it without the power to turn the wheel when they hit a curve. Sooner or later the car drives off a cliff.

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