Maggie's Farm

I'm semi retired after 44 years in the same industry, a lot has changed in that time - technology, markets, and more - but the greatest and worst has been the extent and degree of regulation. Township, county, regional, state, federal, everyone now has oversight and a hand in the pie.

Paperwork and inspectors were once handled mostly at the plant level by foremen and managers, now the corporate structure is fat in the middle with compliance managers and clerks who do nothing but fill out forms and mail in checks, yet there's always more and something new. The inspectors don't know anything about the business nor do they care, the compliance managers may know less and every one of their memos and directives drives a bigger wedge between what actually makes the money and the tail chasing and expense of trying to satisfy bureaucracies that are never satisfied.

Laws and regulations needn't change for an agency or an office to decide that a new interpretation with new standards and documentation is justified to protect .. [fill in the blank]. Eventually all agencies become so bureaucratic and so much paper passes back and forth that it's hard to see any connection to what the agency was originally established and funded to do.

Some of the bureaucrats are simply drones hanging out for the pay and benefits but the last decade or so has seen the rise of true believers who want to hurt the evil capitalists and/or who see the way to the top is by writing citations that result in fines.

Agencies that overlap with standards that are just different enough to make compliance impossible, fees and fines that have increased tenfold or worse in a decade, intrusions into things that are none of their or anyone's damn business. The inertia or paralysis that companies develop when confronted with regulatory challenges when they consider expansion costs lost opportunities that hurt companies, workers, and the economy.

It's bad and getting only worse. Democrats, Republicans, no matter who is in charge it gets only worse.