Friday, January 20, 2012

If You Any Doubts About How Regulations Kill Business...

Watch the TV show, "Gold Rush". 
Gold Rush is a TV show that is based in Alaska and follows 3 group of miners while they dig for gold.  Some of the miners have been mining for years while others are rookies or 2nd year miners.
And then, in 2 of the mines, the federal mine inspectors came in and shut down the mines.  And the inspectors, if the show's segments were not faked, were quite arrogant towards the mine owners.  Further, some of the rules seem more than a bit strange.  For instance, 3 miners took 24 hours of safety classes in North Dakota, but the mine inspectors and their regulations demanded that the safety training be done at the site of the mines.  Why?  Who knows.  Of course, this creates a nice cottage industry of on site mine safety instructors who probably make a small fortune going from mine to mine giving classes, in which most of the old time miners will forget the information 5 minutes after the instructors leave the mine.
While there is certainly a need for inspectors and regulations, it seems like the inspectors and regulations were not acting with common sense.
And this is just 1 show, but these scenarios happen everyday in every kind of business.  You have some inspectors who refuse to use common sense, have regulations that don't make sense and/or are cumbersome to the business.  This is at the local, state and federal levels and it happens to the largest and smallest businesses.
Yes, we do need some regulations to maintain safety (not to keep inspectors employed) but they have to be common sense regulations that don't strangle businesses.  And this is what is needed to help create and maintain jobs.

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