Scholarship / New Threats to Freedom Scholarship Essay - Max Borders on Over-regulation [3]

I am submitting the following essay for consideration in the New Threats to Freedom Essay contest. My essay is a response to Max Borders' video on government regulation.

I have decided to respond to Max Borders' argument against over-regulation by the government. My own family went through a situation reminiscent of what Mr. Borders experienced when my mother decided to relocate her day care.

My mother bought ownership of an established daycare in 1998. Her business prospered to the point that twelve years later she decided to purchase a larger building a few miles away. The process gave our family first-hand experience of government over-regulation in action.

Moving a business (or at least, moving a daycare) involves significantly more than just purchasing the land and setting up new signs. In order to transfer the business license, my mother had to negotiate various levels of city and state bureaucracy.

Some of it seemed appropriate for moving a daycare. My parents were required to set up a fence around their new playground. They had to receive approval from the fire marshal, a plumbing inspector, and an electrical inspector. The problems started to arise when we needed city and state officials to work together.

For example, we needed to receive approval from two separate fire marshals, one for the city and another for the state. The two marshals requested different standards for exits, sprinklers, and other safety features, because they could not agree on how to classify my mom's school. After reversing our fire safety plans several times, our electrical engineer finally said that she was not going to do so again until after the two fire marshals had worked out their planning issues with each other.

Several times, we experienced over-regulation in the form of laws and guidelines that were either outdated or nonsensical from the start. But even laws that seemed to have been written appropriately were often explained to us or applied haphazardly. It is easy enough to understand why the city council would require a certain number of trees per square foot of property - little children need shade when they are playing outside in the summer. We, however, did not find out until after we had already planted four trees that they needed to be of a certain size, none of our trees would count, and we would have to plant two more.

No single requirement was onerous by itself. It was only when they were taken together that the legal process of moving a business became burdensome. And although it is easy to see the good intentions behind some of these regulations, the net effect is overwhelming. It is the exact opposite of what Max Borders proposed - to "make it easier to start [or, as in this case, relocate] a business than to collect a welfare check."

It has become a joke in our family that government regulation is like a person who doesn't know what they want to do, so they try to plan for everything, by first putting on long underwear, then a swimsuit, then sweatpants, then a suit and tie, then coveralls, and so forth...until they can no longer do anything at all.