How to Deregulate

Elon Must is one of many coming into political office pledging to cut red tape and make regulation simpler and lighter. Few manage to do it because every regulation has its vociferous supporters. Many big established companies support regulation in their sector because the costs of compliance inhibit new market entrants. They are big enough to support it but the new upstarts who might complete with them cannot.

Furthermore, regulations appeal to those cautious enough to want everything to be proven safe before it can be allowed. The EU is notorious for embracing the precautionary principle, banning GM foods and even internal gene editing using CRISPR technology, despite no evidence of harm to humans and with huge potential benefits.

Anyone starting a new business has to comply with thousands of pages of regulations. House builders have to comply in minute detail with stacks of regulations constituting a pile several feet high.

There is a way to do it which goes along with the grain of English Common Law, but against that of the Stature-driven Continental law. It is to establish standards by broad directives that are then later detailed by the decisions of judging bodies.

For example, instead of the many pages detailing the toilet facilities that employers have to provide for their employees, the requirement might be imposed upon employers to provide adequate and decent toilet facilities. The critics might pounce, asking what counts as adequate and decent, and the answer is that this would rapidly be established by a series of decisions by courts and tribunals, building up a body of precedent in the way Common Law works in England. Very soon employers would know what they had to do.

By using Common Law precedent to build up regulations instead of trying to put in writing at the start the detailed requirements, the regulations would be made simpler and more flexible. It would also free up businesses to build up markets and create wealth instead of spending a large part of their time in form-filling and excessively detailed compliance.

Knowledge of Elon Musk and his record suggests that he might just be the one to succeed where thousands have failed in cutting out the wastage of excessive regulation and detailed compliance. If someone manages to draw his attention to this article, he will know how to do it.