Sunday, March 01, 2009

Thoughts on regulations and laws.

Here's an interesting article from Slashdot
Click to read. Note Slashdot is a technically oriented site, more interested in technology then politics.
So if a huge rental fee is charged, enough to leave the wireless bands to the major players in the space to rent we stand a good chance of killing innovation. While I don't subscribe to the "All innovation comes from small company" theory, with the state of things now, it's very cheap and easy to start a business and get it running on the internet. Wireless internet, and the devices like iPhone, Storm, Android and others on the way; we could be chilling new company's from getting started.
Let me give you an example: Click to read article
Did the Federal Alcohol Administration Act of 1935 mean to squash competition? No, I don't think they did. Did they mean to effectively make Budweiser the national beer of the U.S? No, I don' think so.
Nor do I think Jimmy Carter intended to allow 1,463 breweries, including 975 brewpubs to spring up across the country. I think his intention was to de-criminalize a hobby. I would tend to doubt that he even thought something like this would happen. I don't think anyone did. They just lifted the regulation, and Capitalism took over. As it always does.
I'll give you another example. There is something called The Ugly C Code Contest (okay, if you Google for that you wont find it, try The International Obfuscated C Code Contest). C is a programming language. The contest is to use and abuse the language to create the ugliest working program you possibly can. Every year, at least 1 new rule is added, because someone obeyed the rules in a new and unique way, that really shouldn't have been done. These are celebrated, although not allowed to win, as being particularly clever. However, despite the ever increasing number of rules, the contest is very freewheeling and encouraging of new ideas and strategies. It is it's view of the rules, and encouragement of innovation that keeps it going for 24+ years. Missing only 1 or 2 years in that entire time.
That's pretty much sums up how most conservatives (that I know) view business regulations. There is a fine line between killing innovation, killing the economy, and keeping people from killing the ideas and concepts that are the United States. I can look at what the financial industry put together and appreciate the cleverness of what they did. I also support eliminating derivatives, and mark-to-market accounting. Those two things alone would have at least made the crash easier. A third thing might be to give up trying to control the economy all together.
This may very well mean getting rid of the Fed. You can make a very strong argument that one of the keys to the real estate collapse was cheap money.