On Regulations
Rules and Violence
I have a difficult relationship with regulations.
Specifically, with government regulations - the kind created by the administrative state/executive bureaucracy.
When I was younger and more wrong, I thought they were all useless nonsense.
Nowadays I know better. They’re only mostly useless nonsense.
I kid. Sort of.
But some of my favorite hobby horses - housing, economics, education, healthcare, technological advancement and human progress - are awash in a sea of regulation, so I had to try to understand what regulations were and what they weren’t.
Technically speaking, a regulation is a rule made by a government body empowered to make said rule by the legislature. It is a rule with all the force of the law, but (theoretically) none of the compromise or politics.
A regulation is not a law, nor is it a distillation of platonic ideals of justice and truth.
It’s a rule, made by people, hopefully in an effort to create a good outcome.
That’s it.
But that’s not how people treat regulations.
I see, in multiple areas of life, people calling for ever-higher levels of regulation, as if regulating is always a helpful action, as if there aren’t costs to regulation as well as benefits.
I see people behave as if regulations are magical rules that, once ratified, reality must abide by instantly and without human effort. They’re not.
I hear crowds calling for the regulation of a field as an excuse to destroy it. I see corporations calling for regulation in order to dig themselves a moat.
The public - that teeming mass of idiots everyone becomes they’re when merged into a collective noun - treats regulation as if enforcement and compliance are never an issue, as if new rules won’t generate yet another soulless bureaucracy that will demand more and more power over time.
I watch people worship regulation as holy writ, as if following the rules means they’re somehow immune to bad outcomes, failures, and Goodhart’s law. I observe others burning people at the stake for daring to suggest a dangerous field be regulated at all.
And yet I don’t think I’ve truly captured the essence of a regulation yet.
For you see: the essence of a regulation is, in the end, someone with a gun telling you to do things a certain way, Or Else.
That’s it.
Whether or not a regulation is good or bad, or has good consequences or bad consequences, doesn’t change the nature of the thing.
And the nature of the thing is violence, because that’s what happens in the end when you don’t follow the rules of people with guns.
Surely this can’t be right! We live in a society!
But it is.
Shall I prove it?
Imagine you buy some land, and you want to build yourself a house. You buy all the materials, and you happen to be a skilled tradesperson, so you can do all the work yourself.
You start construction. You lay down the foundation, put up the framing, etc.
And then someone - maybe a neighbor, maybe a county inspector, maybe an asshole who wanders around hypothetical thought experiments trying to make trouble - comes along and tells you that your house is too close to the street.
See, there’s a regulation - not a law, but a regulation - that says that houses here have to be at least 10 feet back from the street, and your house is only 9 feet from the street.
The hypothetical asshole is very sorry for the inconvenience, of course, but rules are rules. You’ll have to move your house back.
Let us say, for the sake of our hypothetical, that you decide to take a moral stand.
“No,” you declare, “I will not move my house one inch, not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin.”
(When researching construction methods, you came across a fascinating little tale about three little pigs who built houses. Personally, you think the first pig was lucky their house got blown down so quickly; building out of straw seems like a disaster (and lawsuit) waiting to happen.)
So…what happens?
You have Broken The Rules, and There Must Be Consequences.
But the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, so you finish framing your house and add the exterior and drywall. You put the roof on, and begin the process of installing the plumbing and wiring.
This time it’s definitely an official of some sort who comes to see you; the hypothetical asshole from earlier has found other thought experiments to ruin. You hear he’s gotten quite good at sabotaging trolley junctions.
In any case, the official hands you official-looking documents that say CEASE AND DESIST on them in big red letters.
Once more, you take your moral stand. You will neither CEASE nor DESIST, much less CEASE and DESIST. You will continue to build your house, on your land, with materials and tools that you purchased legally.
You tell this to the official, who is officially frustrated with you.
Consequences will Ensue, you are informed.
You reply that you’re a lot more interested in finishing your house than learning what Consequences do in their spare time, so you ask the official to leave, and they leave.
Some time later, in between installing lights to go with the wiring and doors to go in the door-shaped gaps in the walls, the official returns, only with a fine for non-compliance.
You decline to pay.
“You can’t decline to pay,” the official explains officially. “Why, if you could decline to pay a fine, it’d be called a ‘happy’, not a ‘fine’.”
“And if I decline to pay anyway?” you ask.
The official seems stumped, much like the trees from which you sourced your lumber.
“We could garnish your wages?” the official suggests.
“Don’t have any.”
“Freeze your assets and take the money from your bank account?”
“Don’t have any money in a bank, either.”
“Then how did you afford all of this?” The official waves at the land and material with which you are building a house.
“I bought gold with my previous wages, and hid it,” you explain.
“We’ll take that, then!” the official exclaims in triumph.
“Well,” you say, “there are two problems with that. The first problem is that you’d have to find it, and I’m not telling you where it is. And the second problem is that even if you managed to take my gold, my house would still be a foot closer to the street than the regulation allows for.”
The official raises a finger, then lowers it.
“I’ll be back,” he promises, although perhaps not quite as ominously as he intended. Promises to be back are always more threatening when made with a thick Austrian accent, you’ve found.
By the time the official is back, you’ve finished most of the flooring and are installing cabinetry. But this time, the official is not alone.
Accompanying them is a pair of police officers, belts heavy with the tools of their trade.
“You’re going to have to come with us,” one of the officers tells you.
“I’ll do no such thing,” you reply. “It’s a stupid rule, written by idiots, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing-”
(You’d also been reading a little Bill Shakespeare.)
“-and it’s not even relevant to health or safety or any domain in which the body politic could have a legitimate interest in controlling the actions of a free person on their own property.”
The officer shrugs. “Rules are rules,” they say, and ask you if you are going to come quietly.
“And if I do not?” you reply.
One of the officers unholsters their sidearm.
I am very far from an expert in law or in regulation, but in the end both are only as strong as the government’s will to enforce them with violence. Any other consequence can be denied or resisted.
I’m not saying that regulations are all bad. I quite enjoy clean air, clear water, and knowing the ingredients of my food.
But every regulation is, in the end, enforced at the barrel of a gun.
So if you happen to be advocating for another regulation, remember to ask yourself: is it worth pointing a gun at someone for not following this rule?
And if it isn’t worth risking someone’s life over, consider other means of achieving your desired end.