I really wish libertarians would – from time to time - point at actually unambiguously government overreach. All I ever see is "seat belts are great, but making them mandatory is a nanny-state gone wild, and soon you won't be allowed to leave the house".
I think the myth of regulatory strangulation is just some fantasy of people who see a stack of paper more than an inch thick and for their lives cannot imagine why it would require so many words to make air travel (etc.) safe.
There is a fantastic overview of this by Matt Levine at Bloomberg.[1] (The following is all quoted text):
I am working on a tentative theory of regulation. It goes like this:
1) There are two kinds of regulations: custom regulations and bulk regulations.
2) A custom regulation is designed to accomplish a particular goal. You want people to do something, so you write a rule mandating that they do it and punishing them if they don't. For instance, if you want U.S. companies to keep jobs in the U.S., you might write a rule to mandate that, and to "impose a 'very major' border tax on companies that move jobs outside the U.S." That is an example of a custom regulation, and it is good because it keeps jobs in the U.S.
3) Bulk regulations are the kind that you buy by the yard, ones that you measure by quantity rather than purpose. They don't have a purpose, really; they are just generic "red tape." These are the regulations that presidents frequently announce they will cut in half, or freeze with an executive order. They're the regulations that come not from a reasoned desire to achieve a particular goal, but from a pure impulse to regulate. Bulk regulations are bad because they prevent businesses from doing business-y things without accomplishing anything good.
4) All regulations are custom regulations.
5) All discussion of "regulation" is about bulk regulations, which do not exist.
I love Matt Levine, but he's wrong that "Bulk Regulations" don't exist. They are called licenses, and you have to have them do operate many types of businesses. See hair salon licenses, landscaping licenses, etc. There is zero reason for licenses in many low-skill sectors, but they exist and are regularly codified into state or federal laws as a requirement of doing business. These licenses are enforced by rent-seeking gatekeepers, who effectively drive out competition and raise prices on consumers. This is very much "bulk regulation", and is terrible for everyone.
Cosmetology licensure requirements usually specify hours, not days.
Even still, cosmetology is a surprisingly complex practice which really does require a lot of hands-on training to become proficient. You should talk with a licensed cosmetologist sometime to get the ins and outs of their education.
Or talk to someone who actually uses a cosmetologist's services regularly. It's very easy to gloss over the depth and complexity of a field when you don't even need its services.
This time of year and all, the tax code comes to mind. It's my only real window into government bureaucracy, but if it's anything to go by the idea that the government can produce a tangled mess from its competing incentives and constituencies is plausible to me.
While we're on the subject of really great federal websites take a look at the Federal Register. I think you'll come away with a wider and more empathetic perspective on the issue of regulation.
Agencies have the power to create rules, and they create a lot of them. The Federal Register was 81,611 pages in 2015. Granted not all of that was new rules.
I seriously love this website, and I love the Federal Register. The typography of the PDF's, the searchability of the website, the open API's. It's really fantastic.
I think the myth of regulatory strangulation is just some fantasy of people who see a stack of paper more than an inch thick and for their lives cannot imagine why it would require so many words to make air travel (etc.) safe.