A recent Cato policy forum on European over-regulation took an unexpected turn when my friend and colleague Richard Rahn suggested that falling prices and increasing availability of writing paper may have been responsible for increasing the number and length of our laws and regulations. (Dodd-Frank is longer than the King James’ Bible, to give just one obvious example.)
Goodness knows what will happen when new legislation stops being printed on writing paper and starts appearing only on the internet. (I never read Apple’s “terms and conditions,” do you?)
Anyhow, Richard’s hypothesis will soon be put to the test in Great Britain, where the lawmakers have just decided to stop writing the Acts of Parliament on calfskin – a tradition dating back to the Magna Carta – and use paper instead. Will the length of British laws increase, as Rahn’s hypothesis predicts? We shall see.
In the meantime, Americans remain stuck with a Niagara Falls of laws and regulations that our lawmakers generate every year. Many distinguished scholars have wondered how to slow our Capitol Hill busybodies down a little. The great Jim Buchanan had some good ideas, but the most effective, if not harshest, means of preventing over-regulation was surely developed by the Locrians in the 7th century BC.
As Edward Gibbon narrates in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “A Locrian who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.” (Vol. IV, chapter XLI; V pp. 783–4 in volume 2 of the Penguin edition.)
Ours is, of course, an enlightened Republic, not an iron-age Greek settlement on the southern tip of Italy. The life and limb of our elected officials must, therefore, remain safe. But, what if instead of physical destruction, a failed legislative proposal resulted in, so to speak, “political death?” What if the Congressman or Senator, whose name appeared on a bill that failed to pass through Congress, were prevented from running for reelection after their term in office came to an end?
Just a happy thought before the weekend.