Comparing bad regulation and bad management

[nancylebov]

My impression is that, in the US, regulation is like everyone over the age of 7 having to wear a 30 pound pack all the time. It's a very bad rule for children, sick people, and old people, and a cost generally, but most people can deal with it.

Bad management is more like Parkinson's disease, or something else equally serious.

Comments

[redbird]

If you're using "regulation" to mean "bad regulation," it would be more appropriate and parallel to use "management" to mean "bad management."

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I'll change the title and edit the article.

[fallenpegasus]

Even the "good" regulation is like carrying that damn 30 pound pack.

And we can disagree all day on whether some regulation is "good" or "bad", while bad management is easy to see.

[madfilkentist]

Bad management is self-limiting. A company whose management is sufficiently incompetent will go out of business.

Bad regulation is self-enhancing. Screw-ups caused by inept regulation often are "fixed" with more regulation or direct control (for example, the federal takeover of Fannie Mae).

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

In principle, you're right. But in fact, bad management actually seems to be the larger burden at present.

Part of the problem seems to be that there's little feedback to limit bad advice to businesses. If your competitors are making mistakes of the same magnitude that you are, the dead hand can move very slowly.

And it can take decades to wreck a sufficiently large company.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

A company whose management is sufficiently incompetent will go out of business.

I suspect that you think the managers who rode it into the ground will just disappear, rather than what they will actually do next.

[avram]

Is there some reason to compare the two? Are you concerned that doing away with bad regulation will cause bad management to bloom?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

As I said in my first comment to my poll post, this grew out of conversation about what's wrong with business. I was surprised that anyone could think regulation was a bigger problem, so I took it to lj.

[avram]

It just seems like an odd thing to discuss. Like "Which is worse, the bubonic plague or earthquakes?" The two don't have much to do with each other. You can suffer both, or neither.

It reads like one of those false either-or dichotomy arguments that are used in the US to distract people from noticing what's really going on in their political environment. Which shouldn't be a surprise, since the discussion grew out of something a Limbaugh fan said to you, and Rush Limbaugh is a prime vector for superficial distracting propaganda.

[twistedchick]

Regulation or management of what, specifically? I don't think you can simply issue a blanket statement like that. Some areas are badly managed -- Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Mines. Some are managed worse than that -- FEMA, DEC. Some are purposely being screwed up -- Health and Human Services. And some are not mismanaged but are starved for funding -- can't think of the name, but it's the department in charge of maintaining infrastructure, specifically highways.

It's not all the same kind of management or mismanagement, and regulation may or may not have something to do with some of it, but not all of it.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder how you would measure these. After all, government suffers from bad management at least as much as private industry, and that's much of what makes regulation work badly. And companies and industries and standards groups impose some kinds of non-governmental regulations, some of which are just additional 5lb weights in the backpacks of those working in those industries or using their products.

--albatross

[twistedchick]

There are ways to measure the effects of regulation -- many ways, in fact, and I spent two years and more hours than I want to consider in acquiring a master's degree that includes knowing how to do quite a few of them. It can be done. The indisputable fact that it is NOT being done can be laid at the feet of the Republicans who as a first measure when cutting costs demand that no records can be kept of the outcomes of programs, the number of people served, the quality of that service, and similar statistics that would enable anyone with a few handy formulas to be able to determine exactly whether the regulations were effective and in what way.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

It's intellectually dishonest to pretend "regulations" means "destructive regulations."

Individuals, or groups without much power, are generally protected by regulations. You can count what OSHA costs a company, but when fewer employees get hurt (because an OSHA-compliant plant is safer), it's the individual employees who benefit. Sometimes the company is saving some money on worker compensation payments, or health insurance, but it's never as much real benefit as the workers are realizing by not getting hurt in the first place. (Workers without much money or bargaining power are less likely to have employer-paid insurance. And don't worker comp requirements count as regulations, anyhow?)

OSHA has saved my life any number of times. So has the FDA. I know a lot of people are upset with the FDA because it takes so long to approve new drugs. But when I get medication from the pharmacy, I know what I'm getting. I'm confident the manufacturer is following FDA regulations about labeling, so I know how many mg of what drug. I can even find out inactive ingredients, and so if there are pills made without lactose, I can find them. That's not regulation saving my life, it's just regulation making me not throw up, but it's nice anyhow.