Mongoose,

The Left, the Environmentalist and the Lawyers destroyed our ability to compete and create new products; that is not the fault of globalism.

Here in California, the regulation monster ate our manufacturing base. Thirty years ago, California was teeming with manufacturing start-ups, new innovations and new products. Now all that is left are old grandfathered relics, that produce the same old thing. And that California disease has spread to much of the nation.

The media has portrayed much of our new regulation as free and absolutely painless. Nothing can be further from the truth. These new regulations are always meant to sound so innocuous, but these warm and fuzzy edicts from on high are never coordinated with those already in place; many new regulations actually conflict with those in place, and are impossible to comply with in the real world. That is often intentional. Many NIMBY’s on the left simply want the world to stop, and writing conflicting regulations is good way to achieve that end. Then again, many new laws are passed now with the specific intent that new innovation will be necessary to make them work, forgetting completely whether the new required innovation is even possible.

In places like California, the bureaucratic monster will come at you from many different angles, and you are never sure where you will be blindsided next. You are always looking over your shoulder, always afraid that the simplest heretofore legal act will put you on the wrong side of the newest concoction out of the legislature, and land you in the slammer.

There is tremendous uncertainty now in the American businessworld because of our government. The latest rage is ambiguous legislation that demands lengthy negotiation and concessions on the part of the businessman or manufacturer. Or better warm the hearts of many a nihilist leftie, our helpful bureaucrats and lawyers often now want to re-interpret settled interpretations of the law to hamstring our producers whenever possible.

The ability to produce cutting edge technology requires a regulatory environment where manufacturing decisions can be made quickly, with certainty and with a reasonable expectation that those decisions will work. Those regulatory conditions are simply lacking in far too many places today in America. The competitive life cycle of new products demands speed. Too often the regulatory processes demand more time to make a decision than the product life cycle will allow.

Global trade conditions have surely helped ruin our manufacturing base, but the main culprit is the regulatory morass we have constructed to ensnare business.