Regulation that we all agree with...

As I've noted in the past, I really try to avoid writing about politics here. However, sometimes I can't help myself. The other day, I was working on this post -- sort of a funny idea that had been percolating in the graphic design part of my mind -- but I wasn't really feeling it was publish-worthy. Then I came across this second, slightly related story in the news, and I knew that the two must be published together.

Here's what I started...

One political meme that gets a lot of traction these days (there's a whole party built around it, more or less) is the idea of less government regulation. Everyone hates regulations... why should the government make rules? We can do so much better without all of these government regulations, etc.

Have you ever tried to park your car in a lot with no lines?

When you park in a lot that has been striped, you may find yourself periodically frustrated -- the lines are too close, there aren't enough close spaces, that guy took two spaces, etc. At the same time, there is an established sense of order. Instead of complete chaos, your parking lot problems tend to be more like Seinfeldesque notions of mismatched numbers of hot dogs and buns.

Most parking lots are systems that are ripe with with frustrations. They may cause you to question the motivations, logic or intelligence of your fellow humans -- or perhaps the rather low regulatory threshold that we set for enabling people to operate a vehicle. But who would really question the idea that the structured space increases utilization over an unregulated space? 

Then, I came across this story, GOP Jobs Plan: More Snakes? Here's an excerpt.

GOP members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today called attention to a proposed regulation that would restrict the transportation and importation of nine types of snakes, including the Burmese Python.

In a new report entitled "Broken Government: How the Administrative State has Broken President Obama's Promise of Regulatory Reform," GOP members cited the proposed snake ban as one of seven examples of red tape choking off job growth in an already ailing economy.

Now admittedly, if I hadn't seen this post, I wouldn't have known about the constricting force that snake-selling regulations have on our economy -- perhaps even the global economy. At the same time, this probably wouldn't have made my top ten list of solutions to fix the economy, much less my top seven. Still, the creative part of me is pretty impressed -- in terms of message, this is truly an example of out-of-the-box thinking.