Discussion about this post

User's avatar
JB's avatar

The Baltimore city council just voted to outlaw gas powered leaf blowers yesterday. This is undoubtedly the most pressing issue for the city of Baltimore right now.

Expand full comment
Matthew McWilliams's avatar

I often read in articles by “smart” people that regulation doesn’t hamper economic growth. As evidence, these smart people point to growth in GDP. What they fail to understand is that GDP is simply the total value of all goods and services purchased in a year. It says nothing about what goods and services are purchased.

Increasingly, our GDP reflects purchases of the services of lawyers and consultants to guide business through the ever expanding morass of government regulation. One of the largest departments in the office where I work is Compliance. They’re nice people, but they produce nothing but Compliance. And no one cares about compliance outside of the government.

Every penny spent on compliance with the latest government edict is a penny that can’t be spent on actually making something. It’s such a simple idea you’d think that even the smart people would understand it. At least it seems that someone in authority is finally waking up to that concept.

Expand full comment
166 more comments...

No posts