Posted by
Andrews on Monday, April 20, 2009 4:43:18 PM
I visited this topic once before, but a recent viewing of the BBC's program
The Hotel Inspector reminded me again of why regulation is so often a waste of effort.
In my prior post I discussed the many, many terms that exist for ham, and argued that no consumer understands the many grade, making the distinctions useless. Since no one knows the differences between "cheese" and "cheese food" and "cheese food product" for example, why bother distinguishing those categories legally? If I don't know what the terms mean, does it help me to distinguish them? And doe sit make sense to spend a lot of time and money to inspect the products and ensure the terms are used "properly" if it won't convey information to anyone but the regulators and industry insiders?
Well,
The Hotel Inspector taught me yet another useless terminological law. In Britain, to be a hotel, one must receive certification from a government inspection body. One can call oneself anything else, with or without "guest house" or "guest accommodations" inspection, but to use the word "hotel" one must be inspected and certified by the hotel inspection body. And one of the requirements is that you must provide dinner.
So, if you travel, you now know that in England anything saying it is a hotel will serve dinner. Does this help you in any way? And would you suffer if you made reservations at someplace calling itself a hotel and then found out they did not offer dinner? Does the US suffer for not having laws requiring hotels to provide dinner? Is the lack of a defined hotel terminology harmful to travelers?
Once again, this points out how much of our regulatory framework is absolutely pointless, serving no purpose but to employ inspectors. So often terms are defined with great precision, requiring countless hours of inspection and huge amounts of money, and yet no one knows what the terms mean. One must ask, why do we bother? Does the distinction between "franks and beans" and "beans with franks" mean anything to consumers? If not, why make laws requiring they meet certain standards.
I know that many of my readers do not agree with my absolute opposition to regulations as I describe in my posts "
Medical Regulation II" and "
Another Thought on Regulation" (among other posts), but at least I hope we can agree that at some point regulation carries rapidly diminishing returns, and that point is long before this minute defining of terms and senseless inspection regime which defines every last word on a label with scientific precision, even though no one outside of the industry knows what those terms mean.