Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Think Before You Regulate

Jacob posts this interesting article about the unintended consequences of do-gooder legislation, in this case the toy safety act passed in 2008. Seems it's threatening small makers of hand-crafted toys who can't possibly afford to test all their toys before selling them.

I probably disagree with the author and with Jacob when I say that it's not an argument against regulation per se. Rather, it's an argument against hurriedly passing regulations without fully understanding the effect it will have on everyone under the law's jurisdiction. In general, it seems that the quality of legislation is inversely proportional to the speed with which it gets through Congress...

1 comment:

Ben said...

And, on the other end of the spectrum, OSHA is consistently criticized for taking years to create safety regulations.

Also, without having read the article or anything Jacob has to say, I also wonder whether it's worth small toy makers going out of business IF it means the toys our kids play with are safet.