| richardhutnik said: I would agree with you on having less rules, more strictly enforced. Except this isn't what the industry seems to want. Big business seems to LOVE a big convoluted mess of rules they can game and hide in, and to reduce enforcement. They know that congress folk will pass more and more laws and turn to them to write it. It is a big lousy racket set up. |
That's the exact problem. Politicians (Dems, mostly) always talk a lot about how we need to really stick it to the fat cats with a bunch of stiff regulations. This appeals to a certain audience, but it's the exact opposite of how regulations actually work. The big guys will always have an easier time complying with regulations, which gives them an unfair edge over their small competitors (the guys politicians always claim to be fighting for), and it's almost invariably the big guys who are invited in to help write the very regulations we're supposed to be "slapping" them with. That's exactly what happened when the EPA decided to start regulating trucking emissions. The American Trucking Association was all for it, especially after they had a hand in crafting the things, and it was only the small independents who raised a fuss.
And, as you say, it's exacerbated by the fact that when you have too many rules, you basically have no rules at all since you only have a limited amount of resources for enforcement. Once there's a culture of letting some stuff slide, pretty much everything slides until you want to go after someone for personal or political reasons.
