I will establish a regulatory cap, so that agencies spend as much time repealing and streamlining outdated regulations as they spend imposing new ones.
If only. The importance of something like this just can’t be over estimated. The one thing the government definitely needs is a good spring cleaning every year. For whatever reason, people have a natural tendency to glom crap on top of other crap without ever looking at the big picture. I saw it all the time as a computer programmer. My best days were when I took ten thousand lines of code and turned them into five thousand while improving functionality and maintainability. This was code with all its interdependencies. Regulations have their own kind of interdependencies of course but the same principles apply.
Rules should always be in accord with a foundation of principles. The first principle being, ‘Less is more.’
An hard textual limit on the size of the Federal Register is at least as important to achieve as a hard dollar limit on the size of the national debt.
I see Paul Spudis has another post up trumpeting the advantages of Government Space.
Anyone know why comments are off on that blog?
“I see Paul Spudis has another post up trumpeting the advantages of Government Space.
Anyone know why comments are off on that blog?”
Nope. But is related to this topic.
Paul complains “New Space” isn’t free market enough and it taking money from NASA diminished budget. But he support 3 billion a year to make NASA’s very own rocket [as if that isn’t ripping a big hole in NASA’s budget].
And yeah New Space is sort of like old space, except Lockmart and boeing weren’t going to replace the shuttle with some capability to get to ISS. With New Space, NASA basically has that capability for very costs in terms of budget and time- and got least 4 companies trying to get into that game.
If NASA did it the old way, it would essentially need to support 4 or companies with paying for plans and cost plus contracting which ends up going nowhere [VentureStar]. Instead what happening is original two [boeing and lockmart] are pushed to provide a better service, plus NASA gets more tries or choices.
Imagine if instead NASA doing it’s SLS, NASA simply said it would buy heavy lift launch if anyone made it.
But if course this would cutting into NASA’s budget- it’s could 10 billion dollars going nowhere.
Much regulation seems to me to be like computer code that hasn’t been checked to see if it complies or even does what it set out to do.
That, my friend, is an extraodinarily astute observation. And this is one area where I can claim expert-level knowledge.
Are you claiming expertise in computer programming or regulation writing or both?
Regulation writing was what I’ve had in mind, but in earlier years did a non-trivial amount of programming.
It would be great to hear regulation writing stories, especially from someone with a programmer’s mindset.
That’s what 50 states are for and why federal regulations should be severely limited. If a law is onerous in one state you have the option of trying others. Giving up citizenship is a much higher requirement.
Ken,
You might check with the wine industry on that. The mosaic of regulations governing alcohol sales at the state and local level, with even some states owning all outlets in a socialist fashion, has been a major barrier to selling alcohol products online. Texas is just one example.
I will establish a regulatory cap, so that agencies spend as much time repealing and streamlining outdated regulations as they spend imposing new ones.
If only. The importance of something like this just can’t be over estimated. The one thing the government definitely needs is a good spring cleaning every year. For whatever reason, people have a natural tendency to glom crap on top of other crap without ever looking at the big picture. I saw it all the time as a computer programmer. My best days were when I took ten thousand lines of code and turned them into five thousand while improving functionality and maintainability. This was code with all its interdependencies. Regulations have their own kind of interdependencies of course but the same principles apply.
Rules should always be in accord with a foundation of principles. The first principle being, ‘Less is more.’
An hard textual limit on the size of the Federal Register is at least as important to achieve as a hard dollar limit on the size of the national debt.
I see Paul Spudis has another post up trumpeting the advantages of Government Space.
Anyone know why comments are off on that blog?
“I see Paul Spudis has another post up trumpeting the advantages of Government Space.
Anyone know why comments are off on that blog?”
Nope. But is related to this topic.
Paul complains “New Space” isn’t free market enough and it taking money from NASA diminished budget. But he support 3 billion a year to make NASA’s very own rocket [as if that isn’t ripping a big hole in NASA’s budget].
And yeah New Space is sort of like old space, except Lockmart and boeing weren’t going to replace the shuttle with some capability to get to ISS. With New Space, NASA basically has that capability for very costs in terms of budget and time- and got least 4 companies trying to get into that game.
If NASA did it the old way, it would essentially need to support 4 or companies with paying for plans and cost plus contracting which ends up going nowhere [VentureStar]. Instead what happening is original two [boeing and lockmart] are pushed to provide a better service, plus NASA gets more tries or choices.
Imagine if instead NASA doing it’s SLS, NASA simply said it would buy heavy lift launch if anyone made it.
But if course this would cutting into NASA’s budget- it’s could 10 billion dollars going nowhere.
Much regulation seems to me to be like computer code that hasn’t been checked to see if it complies or even does what it set out to do.
That, my friend, is an extraodinarily astute observation. And this is one area where I can claim expert-level knowledge.
Are you claiming expertise in computer programming or regulation writing or both?
Regulation writing was what I’ve had in mind, but in earlier years did a non-trivial amount of programming.
It would be great to hear regulation writing stories, especially from someone with a programmer’s mindset.
That’s what 50 states are for and why federal regulations should be severely limited. If a law is onerous in one state you have the option of trying others. Giving up citizenship is a much higher requirement.
Ken,
You might check with the wine industry on that. The mosaic of regulations governing alcohol sales at the state and local level, with even some states owning all outlets in a socialist fashion, has been a major barrier to selling alcohol products online. Texas is just one example.
http://www.statesman.com/business/state-curtails-out-of-state-online-wine-sales-1925956.html
Turning it over all regulations to states will produce an business nightmare, and a lawyers paradise, especially for online sales.
In fact, it was just such a mess of state by state rules that generated the demands for a Constitution Convention in 1787…
The key is to rationalize and reduce regulation at the federal level, not create a worst mess at the state level.
Nothing stopping states from working on reciprocity programs.
Nice theory, but not the real world, given they haven’t in the eight decades since the federal government ended prohibition…
A federal regulation making online sales take place in the state where the business owning the website is registered might solve a lot of problems.