Dr. Henry I. Miller uses Bjorn Lomborg’s ideas as a springboard for discussing regulation, in ‘We Solve More Problems Than We Create’:
Among many activists, regulators and legislators, there is a pervasive myth that a little over-regulation never hurt anybody. But a “little” here and a “little” there adds up. The reality is that today regulation exacts societal costs whose magnitude is almost unimaginable. According to a recent analysis from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, U.S. regulatory costs in 2005 were approximately $1.13 trillion, equal to almost half of all of the government’s discretionary, entitlement and interest spending ($2.47 trillion), and much larger than the sum of all corporate pre-tax profits — $874 billion. Much of the expenditure on regulation is ill-spent on (to paraphrase Mr. Lomborg) the most expensive cures that do the least good.