The chart of the century is powerful. It illustrates how administrative bloat has made healthcare and education more expensive and lower quality. Here are more charts that show how commissars are making our country less healthy and intelligent: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-fire-a-commissar-part-2
There are four considerations worthy of adding to this discussion:
1. There has to be a financial consideration that asks, "How big of a regulatory state can we afford?"
This has an impact on taxes. How much can the state take from the taxpayers and what should the taxpayers expect from the perspective of fairness.
I have never made any business mistakes when I was broke. The gov't should operate like it's broke.
2. There is a gigantic problem with the creation of rules. When the Congress and President pass a law, the rules must be created to implement that law.
Almost 100% of the time, the implementing rules -- drafted by the agency that will enforce them -- far exceed the authority actually mandated by Congress.
[If you are a serious student of this mischief, you will immediately note the Chevron legal precedent and its inherent danger.]
Chief amongst such examples is the EPA that expanded its authority to regulate navigable waters to stock ponds on ranches because the stock pond overrun drained into streams and then rivers that connected to navigable waters.
It took the SCOTUS to fix this gigantic regulatory overstep.
3. Texas has something called the Sunset Advisory Commission to review the authorization and practices of more than 130 state agencies. Since 1977, they have abolished 92 agencies with 41 completely terminated and 51 had their functions consolidated with another existing agency.
This is a good practice and actually works. It exists today.
It is no stretch to suggest this is one of the reasons why Texas' economy flourishes.
4. The most effective means of "walking the cat backwards" is to go back and examine why entire agencies and gov't departments were created. There is no real reason to have a Dept of Ed when funding is derived from local property taxes within school districts.
Trump had a good program whereby any new regulation could only be enacted if two existing regs were eliminated. That was good policy.
Number of healthcare administrators has grown 1,115% since 1970, outpacing the number of new physicians by almost 6x. It now takes an average of $2.7bn to get a new drug approved and on pharmacy shelves.
Yale University now has the equivalent of one administrator for every undergraduate student. Stanford’s army of managerial and professional staff leapt from 8,984 in 2019 to 11,336 in 2021. MIT has almost eight times as many admins as tutors.
No coincidence healthcare and education are two of the most heavily regulated industries.
And no coincidence little innovation has happened in these sectors over the past 20 years.
AI can disrupt these industries, if it's allowed too.
@Joe, I will be in Austin for business in April and would love to drop into UATX if you are around. I'm a small donor. Cheers
Yes! Deregulation must be a priority at all levels of government for the next few years. Policies and regulations must all have a sunset clause built in, with actions required to renew upon validating value > costs. An alternative to eliminating bureaucratic entities all at once is to rapidly eliminate one element at a time to assess the impact and then continue cutting or replacing elements based on the results. Agencies must embrace a first principles mindset and work with Congress to align around a common set of guiding principles. Then use a set of validation questions for each new law or regulation under consideration. Cutting the red tape will enable greater speed, agility, and impact. https://defenseacquisition.substack.com/p/first-principles-for-congress
The more regulation, the more inflation. is a falacy. This is very much an American problem. I urge you to take a look a most other countries in the world where education and healthcare are basically provided by the state.
Joe you live in Austin and one would assume would receive a receptive audience with Abbot regarding this topic. Press forward with making these changes in Texas.
If Congress is supposed to be permitted to regulate (to make regular, not to control) certain things, then I would prefer that they be the only ones allowed to write the rules. This will result in many fewer rules being written, since there would be more difficulty in getting enough agreement on what the rules would be.
As a permanent fix to the Administrative Procedures Act, I would propose a new law that would be something like the Anything With A Letter Act: Eliminate every agency that begins with a letter.
This is a very important article and makes critical points. My one observation is that simplicity is key. Any efforts at a change need to be as simple as possible, so even a bureaucrat can understand it. one other thing that might be viable would be a legal maximum limit of regulations, something like 500,000 regulations at the Federal level are allowed and above that number there needs to be a culling. in fact, create the incentives so that bureaucrats are incented to remove regulations, pay them a bonus to do so.
Regulations in and of themselves aren’t a bad thing (generally). The problem is that we now have a tangled web of federal, state, and local regulations that have outlived their usefulness, are no longer needed, or not achieving the outcomes the policymakers set out to achieve.
Good regulations should have clear goals, strategies, and metrics to tell you whether you’re on the right track or achieving the target outcomes.
Managing good policies should be very similar to effective management of a financial portfolio, IT portfolio, or product portfolio: based on data, metrics, and outcomes.
AI tools can do much of the heavy lifting, as long as citizens are able to easily log complaints of perceived regulatory harms and inefficiency, tech can find causal chains and reveal the bureaucratic ‘technical debt’ responsible and even help resolve it. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/Chevron-legal-precedent-90M7LnQxSjOuJsD_f8jf8A
The chart of the century is powerful. It illustrates how administrative bloat has made healthcare and education more expensive and lower quality. Here are more charts that show how commissars are making our country less healthy and intelligent: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-fire-a-commissar-part-2
There are four considerations worthy of adding to this discussion:
1. There has to be a financial consideration that asks, "How big of a regulatory state can we afford?"
This has an impact on taxes. How much can the state take from the taxpayers and what should the taxpayers expect from the perspective of fairness.
I have never made any business mistakes when I was broke. The gov't should operate like it's broke.
2. There is a gigantic problem with the creation of rules. When the Congress and President pass a law, the rules must be created to implement that law.
Almost 100% of the time, the implementing rules -- drafted by the agency that will enforce them -- far exceed the authority actually mandated by Congress.
[If you are a serious student of this mischief, you will immediately note the Chevron legal precedent and its inherent danger.]
Chief amongst such examples is the EPA that expanded its authority to regulate navigable waters to stock ponds on ranches because the stock pond overrun drained into streams and then rivers that connected to navigable waters.
It took the SCOTUS to fix this gigantic regulatory overstep.
3. Texas has something called the Sunset Advisory Commission to review the authorization and practices of more than 130 state agencies. Since 1977, they have abolished 92 agencies with 41 completely terminated and 51 had their functions consolidated with another existing agency.
This is a good practice and actually works. It exists today.
It is no stretch to suggest this is one of the reasons why Texas' economy flourishes.
4. The most effective means of "walking the cat backwards" is to go back and examine why entire agencies and gov't departments were created. There is no real reason to have a Dept of Ed when funding is derived from local property taxes within school districts.
Trump had a good program whereby any new regulation could only be enacted if two existing regs were eliminated. That was good policy.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Great post, thank you.
Number of healthcare administrators has grown 1,115% since 1970, outpacing the number of new physicians by almost 6x. It now takes an average of $2.7bn to get a new drug approved and on pharmacy shelves.
Yale University now has the equivalent of one administrator for every undergraduate student. Stanford’s army of managerial and professional staff leapt from 8,984 in 2019 to 11,336 in 2021. MIT has almost eight times as many admins as tutors.
No coincidence healthcare and education are two of the most heavily regulated industries.
And no coincidence little innovation has happened in these sectors over the past 20 years.
AI can disrupt these industries, if it's allowed too.
@Joe, I will be in Austin for business in April and would love to drop into UATX if you are around. I'm a small donor. Cheers
Yes! Deregulation must be a priority at all levels of government for the next few years. Policies and regulations must all have a sunset clause built in, with actions required to renew upon validating value > costs. An alternative to eliminating bureaucratic entities all at once is to rapidly eliminate one element at a time to assess the impact and then continue cutting or replacing elements based on the results. Agencies must embrace a first principles mindset and work with Congress to align around a common set of guiding principles. Then use a set of validation questions for each new law or regulation under consideration. Cutting the red tape will enable greater speed, agility, and impact. https://defenseacquisition.substack.com/p/first-principles-for-congress
Agencies should only be allowed to propose regulations, requiring congressional approval. And congressional reapproval every 5 years.
Similarly, there should be a word count limit on how much can be voted on at once.
No more omnibuses.
The more regulation, the more inflation. is a falacy. This is very much an American problem. I urge you to take a look a most other countries in the world where education and healthcare are basically provided by the state.
Joe you live in Austin and one would assume would receive a receptive audience with Abbot regarding this topic. Press forward with making these changes in Texas.
Fair point. Then let’s follow Milei’s lead and simply close have the cabinet departments
If Congress is supposed to be permitted to regulate (to make regular, not to control) certain things, then I would prefer that they be the only ones allowed to write the rules. This will result in many fewer rules being written, since there would be more difficulty in getting enough agreement on what the rules would be.
As a permanent fix to the Administrative Procedures Act, I would propose a new law that would be something like the Anything With A Letter Act: Eliminate every agency that begins with a letter.
This is a very important article and makes critical points. My one observation is that simplicity is key. Any efforts at a change need to be as simple as possible, so even a bureaucrat can understand it. one other thing that might be viable would be a legal maximum limit of regulations, something like 500,000 regulations at the Federal level are allowed and above that number there needs to be a culling. in fact, create the incentives so that bureaucrats are incented to remove regulations, pay them a bonus to do so.
Regulations in and of themselves aren’t a bad thing (generally). The problem is that we now have a tangled web of federal, state, and local regulations that have outlived their usefulness, are no longer needed, or not achieving the outcomes the policymakers set out to achieve.
Good regulations should have clear goals, strategies, and metrics to tell you whether you’re on the right track or achieving the target outcomes.
Managing good policies should be very similar to effective management of a financial portfolio, IT portfolio, or product portfolio: based on data, metrics, and outcomes.
AI tools can do much of the heavy lifting, as long as citizens are able to easily log complaints of perceived regulatory harms and inefficiency, tech can find causal chains and reveal the bureaucratic ‘technical debt’ responsible and even help resolve it. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/Chevron-legal-precedent-90M7LnQxSjOuJsD_f8jf8A
Re transparency - government bills should have a sort of docusign/tracked changes feature where anybody can see who wrote/edited a part of the bill.
Great summary and useful recommendations. This should be a top priority.