Peanut Butter Regulations
by Rusty Rustbelt
PEANUT BUTTER REGULATIONS
Watching people spread peanut butter is interesting.
I am a semi-neurotic peanut butter spreader, I try to cover most of the bread and try to get the thickness close to even, but I am not a perfectionist-neurotic spreader. There are also slap-and-eat messy spreaders.
Having dealt with a wide range of government regulatory agencies over 35 years, dealing with both health care and small business, I am familiar with “peanut butter regulation.”
Peanut butter regulation spreads regulatory effort evenly over all regulated entities, even when it is well known that 20% of the targets represent 80% of the problems.
Nursing home regulation comes immediately to mind. Also food safety. And the SEC.
Regulation and regulatory capture are a hot topic these days. Do we need more targeted regulatory efforts?
Peanut butter regulation reminds me of drunk driving checkpoints, stop everybody and eventually the cops find a drunk. Is there a better way?
Some regulators are complaint based, such as wage-and-hour and OSHA, should these agencies be more like peanut butter?
We gotta get better.
Until the A.G. starts inditing those both present & past Government employees, Congress included, then there will be no relief. Sadly, I believe that if the F.B.I. still had the Balls that J.Edgar had, the corruption wouldn’t be as rampart as it is today. I suppose that makes me a sentalmentalist, at least he kept things in line, so to speak.
A regulated economy is an illusion since the economy is too complicated to run and manage. Regulation will always be a reactive band aide. The government should not pretend to be in charge.
I agree Whitewhale. Anarchy rules!
jimmy
i hope you are being sarcastic,
whitewhale
i worked as a government regulator for a number of years. i can tell you it works.
no, you aren’t going to “be in charge” of a hundred percent of everything. but putting in an inspector to keep the contractor from watering the concrete or shorting the rebar is what keeps your bridges safe. because i gurandamntee the contractor will cheat if he thinks he can get away with it.
the only thing worse than government regulation is the unregulated free marketeer.
Yes we have a good example of the free market at work China. Look at the Melamine scandal in the milk. Look at the scandal in the ingredient for dog food. The lead in toys… This reminds on of the US at the turn of the 20th century the wild wild world of the free market where anything went.
To whom it may concern: A lot of U.S. don’t comprehend my blog because they’re too involved in this Finite Existence – and that’s fine. We need families to populate our earthly realm; however, we cannot leave this plane unless we make the daisies grow. Don’t you wanna literally-N-figuratively ‘grow-up’ after this lifelong demise? Join this sinfull mortal Upstairs for my BIG-OL-party-hardy where we celebrate our resurrection for years and years. You’re so invited. You’re so more than welcome. God bless.
I agree that there are limits to the control a regulatory body can hope to exhibit. Have murder laws decreased murder or have people slowly become more aware that killing someone is not a good thing to do, outside of reasons which have anything to do with state punishment? I think the latter. Our society has evolved to a less overtly violent one for reasons having more to do with biology than criminology/law enforcement. Does that mean that crim/law enforce are unnecessary? No, I think not.
People certainly choose to follow most rules and regs. Society is only as non chaotic as the participants choose for it to be. We all understand this and this leaves a great amount of room for deceivers and free riders. People who are benefitting from the goodwill of others without behaving in kind (yet they keep the appearance that for most parts they are). This is why we have the regulatory body we do. To assure those who do play well with others that those who dont will suffer to a degree. We need that or all of us would spend way too much time playing cop/regulator ourselves and we’d get almost nothing done.
Govt is far from perfect (it is mans creation after all) but I do not want to live without it.