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When I acquire a new phone or computer, one of the wonderful attributes I thoroughly enjoy is how "clean" it is. By "clean" I mean that it is not cluttered with files, apps and so forth. Soon, however, due to my curiosity and impulsiveness, it becomes a cluttered mess. I would say the same thing happens with offices. I have been in my current office for eleven years, and it has become a collection of items of all sorts I simply cannot live without.

My best friend, a great disciplinarian and obsessively clean person, kicks in once in a while and I scour my office to close to his standards. However, that is not often and seems to be becoming less frequent with age. In a mill environment, I would perform as a much better example than I do in this independent environment where I work.

Speaking of environment and regulations, as we are this month, the same phenomenon has occurred here. If one goes to Wikipedia and looks at "Environmental policy of the United States" one finds a little table labeled "Major Environmental Legislation." This table chronicles the major environmental laws promulgated in the United States, starting with the first one in 1899. There are thirty-three line item entries on this list (which includes major revisions to earlier laws). Fourteen, or almost half the list, were enacted in the 1970's. Twenty-four, or almost three fourths of the list, were enacted since 1969.

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Of course, these are just the major authorizing pieces of legislation. The same section in Wikipedia lists eighteen departments and agencies of the federal government that either write or enforce regulations arising from the thirty-three major laws cited above.

We have become like an old computer or an old mobile phone. These eighteen departments employ thousands of people, most of whom seem to think their only job is to find ways to write new regulations. They find their authority to do so in their interpretations of the wording of the thirty-three major laws. They do this without ceasing.

Consequently, today the number of regulations with which a business or even a homeowner must comply has reached an incalculable quantity. It is as if one were reading the Book of Leviticus and attempting to understand how one properly prepares for the Jewish Sabbath--times ten million.

The regulators, bureaucrats and their contractors see it to be their sacred duty to write just one more regulation. This leaves us with an impossible task--how to comply with all the regulations and the new ones constantly being foisted upon us.

In November of 1977, I took a short course at Southeast Missouri State University on running your own business. One of the classes was taught by a lawyer. I have always remembered how he started his lecture. He asked us to pick one object on our person or in the room that was not covered by a legal precedent judgment. We picked combs, handkerchiefs, chairs, walls, lights--you name it. In every case he could cite case law precedent tied to that subject. As he explained, the world we live in today is blanketed in a finely woven web of legal precedent touching everything we encounter.

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The same web of legalities applies to environmental and safety regulations. Except that we have bureaucrats who wake up daily and decide we need "just one more" regulation. Now our regulatory world is as crowded and cluttered as a seventeen-year-old's two-year-old iPhone.

We need a purge and a fresh new device on which to start over.

The sad news is that we will not get a new device and we will not see a slowdown in regulation writing. Unless there is something of a major upheaval, the regulation pile will continue to grow. The other day, I read somewhere that the European Union's regulations on cabbage are slightly longer than 26,000 words. I then read that this had been debunked--it is only 263 words--but there is a much broader set of regulations about growing farm produce which reaches 32,000 words.

All I can tell you is that when we get to the point we are discussing how many words there are in regulations. there are too many regulations.

What do you think? Please take our quiz this week and give us your opinion. You can take it here.

And as I have stated continuously in this series, there are some regulations we need, in order to conduct our businesses in a manner that is safe for our employees. The best of these are short, sweet and to the point.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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