The New National Nightmare; J. Kilpatrick

The dangers are widely per ceived, but they are separately and not collectively perceived. It is the occluded vision of the man who cannot see the forest for the trees. Doctors see one part of the pic ture, educators anoth,er, business men yet another. We dwell in small rooms, in little shut-off cells, and sometimes we labor to breathe. "It is stifling in here," we com plain. And we are not always aware that air is being sucked from the next room also. Yet the atmospheric changes are so slow, so gradual, so apparently insignifi cant, that we seldom complain at 1975 T'HE NEW NATIONAL NIGHTMARE 713 all. We do not understand what is missing : It· is the very air of freedom. Thomas A. Murphy, chairman of General Motors, recently spoke to the National Association of Ac countants. As a businessman, he spoke from his own small room: "Our economic system, founded with our nation 200 years ago, has come more and more under gov ernment control. Very conspicu ously in the marketplace, the gov ernment, by man (:late and edict, is substituting its sovereignty for that of the individual consumer.

Government, rather than the buy ing public, .is increasingly determ ining the kinds of products and services offered for sale, and gov ernment regulations are influenc ing their costs and consequently their prices. What is of greatest concern is that each intrusion of government, because it takes decision-making power away from the individual consumer, dimin ishes his economic freedom." Dr. Murray L. Weidenbaum, di rector of the Center for the Study of American Business, notes a "second managerial revolution." The first such revolution saw the rise of professional managers, as distinct from owners. "This new revolution is far more subtle. It involves the shift of decision making from managers, who rep resent the shareholders, to a cadre of government officials, govern ment inspectors, government reg ulators." [See "Where Overregu lation Can Lead," Nation's Busi ness, June, 1975.J The Age of the Regulators The last word is the keyword: regula tors. If we were to give a name to the ominous new age that lies ahead, the age beyond the tip point, we might well term it the Age of the Regulators. A part of the ominous aspect of the ap proaching era is that many Amer icans see nothing ominous in reg ulation. It is a friendly word. We are favorably inclined toward a regular fellow. We shy from the irregular. The dictionary lumps regular with "normal, typical, nat ural," as in "a regular pulse." A regulated life is popularly thought to be a good life.

This very complaisance contrib utes to the creeping oppression. "The people never give up their liberties," said Edmund Burke, "but under some delusion." Here the delusion is that, if a little regulation is good, more regula tion is better. On the sound. prem ise that freedom cannot exist with out order, a fallacious conclusion is erected: the more order, the more freedoin. It does not work that way. The enveloping process begins with a perceived ill.· Thalidomide.

714 THE FREEMAN December Smog. Racial discrimination. The fly-by-night private school. The fire ant. The rickety ladder. The dangerous toy. In our struggle toward a more perfect society, it is altogether natural and desirable that ills be remedied. A boy drowns at summer camp; a little girl dies when her nightgown catches fire. Such tragedies pluck at the heart; and compassionate government re sponds. But the vice of regulation is that it follows an inexorable proc ess: first a little, then a lot. Within the Congress -and the state leg islatures are not materially differ ent -there develops what John Randolph called the legislative itch. On the body politic a rash is seen; it must be scratched. Stat utes tumble upon statutes, head over heels, pell-mell, laws upon laws, and these 'laws must .be ad ministered. They m,ust be inter preted, construed, amplified, ex 'tended, and enforced. Enter the regulator. He is a decent man, more often than not, eager to do good. But his passion is to regu late. It becomes a consuming passion.

Out of the perceived ill of thali domide came the straitjacketing procedures that now govern new drug applications; and these pro cedures have stifled the drug in dustry. Out of the perceived ill of smog came the staggering array of environmental controls - con trols that have accomplished some good and have added billions of dollars to the cost of consumer goods. Reverse Discrimination The perceived ill of discrimina tion has produced the new egali tarianism. Its purpose is to re dress old wrongs with new wrongs. Thus, Boston writhes in the un happiness of racial-balance busing. At Washington University in St. Louis, the chancellor is given four days to sign a 30-page statement of conciliation or be denied a $1.8 million contract. Athletic directors are commanded to rewrite their budgets. The Supreme Court holds that "great deference" must be accorded the "guidelines" of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. Whole states embark upon the neuterization of their codes, solemnly amending chair man to read chairperson.

Increasingly, the process per vades the field of health care. At Kettering Medical Center, near Dayton, the regulators descend. The hospital is new, sparkling, modern, safe, efficient; it has met or surpassed every state and local building requirement; it has been professionally accredited. But the regulators are not pleased: The windows are wrong, the airflow system is wrong, the kitchen doors 1975 T'HE NEW NATIONAL NIGHTMARE 715 are wrong. And these deficiencies must be corrected at once, never mind the cost, or else-! Or else Kettering will not be reimbursed for Medicare and Medicaid patients. Kettering is not alone. Scores of hospitals face the same threat. One of the busiest agencies in Washington is the Consumer Prod uct Safety Commission. Its mim eographs run night and day. Here the regulators, in an altogether typical week, are concerned with book matches, lawn mowers, tele vision receivers, playground equip ment, bicycle brakes, and baseball bat grips. The regulators are con cerned with carpets, cigarette lighters, and a prototype child resistant closure for use by the elderly. They will regulate these things.

Committees of the House of Representatives are at war over FIFRA. This is the Federal Insec ticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, administered by the Environ mental Protection Agency. In their zeal to regulate, the FIFRA regu lators set up a toll-free telephone network to generate complaints of pesticide misuse. To some mem bers of the House, this is an "in defensible informant system." To others, it is a justified step in pesticide regulation. Our regulators, state or federal, have this in common: They mean to be obeyed. The smallest offender cannot be ignored, lest larger of fenders be encouraged. Thus, in Ohio, the regulators of education have cracked down upon the Taber nacle Christian School in Green ville and brought criminal prose cution against 15 disobedient par ents. It is of no consequence that the children in this fundamentalist school are achieving at levels high er than comparable students in public schools. The school does not comply with regulations. Whip it into line!

Tocqueville/s Warning of Democratic Despotism More than a hundred years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville visited the young American republic. He re turned to France and between 1835 and 1839 delivered himself of that great work, "Democracy in America." Toward the end of volume II, he reflected upon "what sort of despotism democratic na tions have to fear." It would be a different kind of despotism, he thought, from the despotism of old. "It would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them." Looking far ahead, he foresaw a nation populated by an innumer able multitude, all absorbed in their own affairs, preoccupied with "the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives."

716 THE FREEMAN December This was De Tocqueville's terri ble vision: "Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, prov ident, and mild .... For their hap piness such a government willingly. labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and sup plies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their' industry, regulates the descenf of property, and subdivides their in heritances. What remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? ~'Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself.

The principle of equality has pre pared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits. "After having thus successively taken each member of the commu nity in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net work of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened,. bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not, tyrannize, but it compresses, en ervates, extinguishes, and stupe fies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious ani mals, of which the government is the shepherd."

A magazine recently counted 63,444 federal regulators. It put the cost to consumers of federal regulation alone at $130 billion a year. The regulatory network spreads and grows; the tip point approaches; and De Tocqueville's nightmare consumes the American dream. ~ E. C. PASOUR, JR. The World Food Crisis SOCRATES said that the best sauce for food is hunger. Today, as in the age of Socrates, there is no lack of hunger sauce. There is widespread concern about the re lationship between population and food supply throughout the world. Questions are being raised about the appropriate response by the western world to meet the world food crisis. Numerous actions have been proposed. Senator Humphrey has urged us to reduce our consump tion of hamburgers by one per week. Jean Mayer, the famed nu tritionist, holds that a 10 per cent decrease in meat consumption by Americans would release enough grain to feed 60 million people.