What I could only think: Wait. No barriers? I’ve never worked in a daycare, but I drop my kids off almost every day of the week, attesting in part to the endless streams of snot and other bodily fluids that turn these places into potent germ distribution hubs. It does not seem controversial to say that a few Barriers on fruit preparation might be welcome – for example, not washing them in the same sink where children clean up after going to the toilet, or at least washing your hands before serving them. These things are “common sense,” but the codification of “common sense” is a big part of what governs TO DO. To quote Gluesenkamp Perez: “No barriers” sounds good on paper, but what does it look like in the real world?
We have some experience with other approaches. In the early 20th century, shocking examples of the ability of the profit motive to trump safety concerns—dirty stockyards producing rotten food, rickety factories set on fire—sparked public outrage and a radical expansion of regulatory standards and enforcement agencies. If the market encourages companies to do the legal bare minimum to protect people, we decided, then that bare minimum must be improved. Of course, once the state is responsible for identifying possible danger vectors in, say, a daycare center – not just food safety procedures but also the location of electrical outlets, water temperature, the height of the sinks, the construction materials of the playground – it is very easy for the state of the list to become extremely complex. This is how the pendulum swings. Most of the time we are bored by the mess of senseless regulations and are fools for a politician who promises to sweep them away. Then, sometimes, we are so horrified by death and disaster – listeria outbreaks, nightclub fires, predatory financial scams, collapsing cribs, polluted wells – that we are fools for a politician pledging to crack down .
The regulations around us are obviously not perfect. Many could be written more simply; many could really benefit from more worker input and less manipulation from economically interested parties. There is a simple solution to these problems, but it is precisely the one that is the most difficult and least exciting to defend, especially when antipathy toward government increases: do not eliminate regulations, but implement the boring work of writing better ones. This approach does not stir the soul when mentioned in speeches, and it is unlikely to go viral in short videos; we are rarely fond of hearing about the development of moderately complex and skillfully restrained rules. It can nevertheless have many advantages to recommend it.
The administrative state is a tangled landscape of people doing the slow, undramatic work of refining complex regulatory standards, tracking and studying their impact, and hoping they don’t make headlines. It may be that much of what machete wielders in this landscape do today is simply complain about it; often, on this subject, posture matters more than politics. But they can also reshape – shrink – parts of that landscape through rhetorically pleasing, barrier-removing interventions. Bad rule? Kill him. You can’t give bananas to children? Now it’s possible! No more administrative formalities! Exciting stuff: call the social media team. But sometimes, of course, you cut through the red tape and discover that it’s all that was keeping something important from falling apart.
Peter C. Baker is a freelance writer based in Evanston, Illinois, and the author of the novel “Planes.” He edits “Tracks on tracks” a newsletter about how people experience songs.
Source photographs for the illustration above: Lew Robertson/Getty Images; Burke/Triolo Productions, via Getty Images; Photography/Getty Images.