

The Hunt for Elusive 'Dumb' Rules - vegashacker
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/22regulate.html

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jerf
"Dumb" is the wrong metric. "Costs in excess of benefits" is the correct one.
But this is hard, because it "ought" to be done in terms of costs to society
and benefits to society, but instead since the government is doing the audit
it gets analyzed in terms of costs to government vs. benefits to government.
(How could it be otherwise?)

The cost to the government of a new regulation is zero. Either they will
appropriate the money from the endless money fountain to pay for the necessary
expansion, or they will simply fail to enforce it at their discretion. The
benefit to the government of a regulation is always positive; if nothing else
they get the choice of enforcement, and the corresponding power.

It is no surprise this system never produces results, beyond cosmetic fixes. I
don't know what the solution is but somehow the incentives to the government
have to be fixed first.

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waqf
Saccharin _is_ toxic waste. I don't see the problem there.

(Okay, Wikipedia tells me it's no longer considered carcinogenic, but
certainly it was considered so during a period in which it continued to be
used as a sweetener.)

