Regulations Are An Exec’s Best Friend!

“The government uses corporations to get around its limits, and corporations use the government to get around their limits.” ~Bloomberg News

By Bruce Duncil

We’re repeatedly being told that high taxes and onerous regulations are behind the joblessness in the ‘jobless recovery’. Aside from the obvious fact that there is no recovery (except for Wall Street and Washington), this ‘colloquial wisdom’ consists of lies.

No corporation pays taxes. Taxes are born solely by the customers and shareholders. Corporations are parking money offshore because that is where they have their factories, many employees who cost a fraction of American labor, and their real opportunity for growth.

Since before GE and Westinghouse lobbied congress to put the US on 60 cycle AC power to prevent European manufacturers from competing locally, and before they also lobbied for laws to ‘electrify America’ to sell every house major appliances, major corporations have LOVED regulation! Here, for your enjoyment, are 15 reasons why:

1. When shaped properly, they limit competition, They can be used to favor some suppliers and exclude others, by design.
2. They replace the customer with the government; the easily influenced single bureaucrat dictates market needs and wants, the latter becomes relegated to the role of mere consumer for whatever is thrown out.
3. They allow government bureaucracy approvals, not the purchaser or user, to determine what ‘quality’ means; government approvals become synonymous with ‘quality’.
4. They can drive, and therefore limit, requirements for innovation. All new entries must meet the criteria, thus favoring incremental rather than revolutionary product development which benefits suppliers and retailers alike.
5. They can mandate features which can minimize the risk of product failure in the market.
6. They facilitate development of so-called ‘public-private (government/business) partnerships’, creating revolving doors between government and business to mutually benefit employees of both.
7. They shift the ‘burden’ of R&D along with capital investment to government (or ‘public-private partnerships’), along with the risk, costs, and choices circumscribed by R&D prior to product/service development.
8. They benefit large and limit small companies by controlling competition and innovation, they drive industry consolidation further, leading to oligarchies which are easier to control.
9. They can force premature product obsolescence, reducing time between necessary replacements, thus increasing purchasing and raising costs by adding additional ‘bells and whistles’ that are intended to increase profit margins
10. They provide job security for both the government bureaucrat and the employee.
11. They allow the means for throwing off all additional costs to the public in taxes or to consumers in higher prices at little economic risk (‘the government made us do it!’) as part of the ‘cost of doing business’.
12. They allow additional ‘bells and whistles’ to be added, thus greatly expanding the possibility of higher after-market service contracts on products sold or leased.
13. They leverage the public’s increasing desire to ‘standardize’ products to minimize the pain of choice.
14. They make the public think they are magically protected from risk.
15. They become the ‘silver bullet’ solution to every problem discovered, thus extending themselves in perpetuity!