Ȃȃȃ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophynew regulatory measures be coupled with repeal of others of comparable
scope (perhaps as judged by numbers of regulators involved, or number of
persons or dollar volume of activities in the private sector directly affected).
Perhaps it would be necessary to settle for some vaguer and more nearly
only hortatory restraint. Anyway, good intentions would not be enough
to justify a new regulation; the proposed measure would have to be shown
to be not merely desirable but exceptionally so, desirable even against the
background of an already overgrown government. Ļe objective is a frame-
work of constraints and opinion in which different government activities
are seen to be in rivalry with one another, each costing the sacrifice of
others. Ideally, advocates of each new regulatory measure would accept
the obligation of showing it to be so desirable as to be worth the sacrifice
of specified existing regulations.
Opponents sometimes charge that a budget limit would undemocrat-
ically tie the hands of democratic government, and a similar objection
would no doubt be made to constitutional restrictions on regulation. Yet
the purpose of either limit is not to undercut democracy but to make it
more effective by remedying a flaw that has so far kept the people from
controlling the overall consequences of piecemeal decisions. A budget
limit or a regulatory limit no more subverts democracy than the First
Amendment does by setting limits to what Congress may do. Without
that amendment, popular majorities might have placed many particular
restrictions on freedom of speech, but our Founding Fathers rolled all
these issues up together instead of letting each one be decided by a sepa-
rate majority vote (FriedmanȀȈȆȇ, pp.ȇ–Ȁǿ).
Just as proponents of tax cuts or budget limits face the supposedly
embarrassing demand that they draw up lists of specific expenditure cuts,
so proponents of limits to regulation might encounter a similar demand.
Ļis one might well be easier to comply with than the demand about
spending cuts. Either demand, however, is unreasonable. It in effect invites
the limitationists to shut up unless they exhibit detailed knowledge of gov-
ernment (and private) activities that they cannot realistically be expected
to have. It tacitly denies that the principle of specialization and division of
labor applies in public policymaking as in other areas of life. It tacitly sup-
poses that general knowledge—namely, knowledge of bias in the current
system—is worthless unless accompanied by detailed further knowledge
on the part of the same persons. Yet the very purpose of an overall limit
is to bring the detailed knowledge of its possessors to bear in coping with
that bias.