Regulation in Theory vs. Practice
24th October 2012
In theory, regulation should arise as a response to market failures. In practice, regulation is more accurately characterized as a government tool for redistributing society’s resources toward those groups that have successfully enlisted the support of the government on their behalf.
For example, the 50 biggest-spending lobbying groups spent $176 million on lobbying from July through September this year. If agencies weren’t cranking out 3,800 new rules per year, and if the Code of Federal Regulations wasn’t 169,000 pages long, it is unlikely that so much money would flow into Washington.