Davis On Rule In Addition To To A Greater Extent Than

Steve Davis has a thoughtful speech on regulation, policy uncertainty, as well as to a higher house all the ask for simplicity.  (On the policy uncertainty website).  A few excerpts:

... the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which compiles all federal regulations inwards outcome each year...grew nearly eight-fold over the by 55 years, reflecting tremendous increase inwards the scale as well as complexity of federal regulations. At 175,000 pages, the CFR contains every bit many words every bit 130 copies of the King James Bible.  While Ten Commandments sufficed for the Hebrew God of the Old Testament, the CFR contains well-nigh i one K one thousand commandments inwards the shape of “shall,” “must,” “may not,” “prohibited,” as well as “required.”...

The size as well as complexity of the the U.S. revenue enhancement code too grew dramatically inwards recent decades. As of 2011, it takes 70,000 pages of instructions to explicate the federal revenue enhancement code (McCaherty, 2014). The code has well-nigh iv i K one thousand words as well as 67,000 sections, subsections as well as cross-references. It’s all crystal clear if yous read the instructions carefully. ...

And the best paragraph:

The practiced Catholic Sisters who saw to my moral teaching inwards main schoolhouse devoted many hours to the Ten Commandments. They wanted my classmates as well as me to avoid sins. Their success inwards that take in is inwards doubt. But at to the lowest degree the Sisters could survive confident that nosotros did non sin out of ignorance or uncertainty. How they would cause got instructed us on i one K one thousand commandments, I create non know. The delinquents inwards my schoolhouse constitute it difficult to absorb a mere ten....