Government Regulations: The Princess and Pea

The “Preserve Access to Affordable Generics and Biosimilars Act” will do nothing of the kind.

by Charles Sauer July 15, 2019

In “The Princess and the Pea,” an old queen proves that a midnight traveler is a true princess by hiding a pea under an almost unbelievable number of mattresses and down bedclothes. Because she is indeed a real princess, she feels the pea and the prince marries her. It is an awful story, one I don’t suggest telling your kids — unless you change the old queen to the old bureaucrat, the prince to the politician, the visiting princess to an entrepreneur, and the ending to a riot from the entrepreneurs after they figure out the pea was put there on purpose.

Then, although it is still an unpleasant tale, it will at least teach your kids a lesson about the way government works. They manufacture a problem, and then they create a regulation to “solve” the problem. When the market reacts negatively, they attempt to make things better by creating even more laws — and entrepreneurs, no matter how close or far away from the manufactured crisis, are affected by the regulation.

We see this in issues ranging from immigration to imports. We see it in wage laws and retirement laws. Most recently, the government has been focusing on technology and pharmaceuticals. Their regulations are doing a pretty good job at making it hard for businesses to build, innovate, and move forward..........To Read More....