All true in my opinion, especially about the difficulty of smaller businesses to make it other than by luck and flying under the radar. Easier for small businesses in some ways, harder in others. And the fact is, inspectors are often more lenient on smaller businesses. If state food inspectors held Amish stores which hand-write labels for their products to product labeling requirements, they wouldn't make it. For every law, there are situations where it just doesn't work. Thankfully (depending on how you look at it), inspectors on the ground do utilize common sense and discretion to the point of just overlooking the rules in certain situations.appleman2006 wrote:Here is the thing. We have so many rules and regulations that I will bet just about anything that all of you break the rules far more times than what even you are aware of. It simply is no longer possible to obey all the rules and so what happens is that people actually stop trying. They know that especially if they are small and are a little bit careful and a little bit lucky they can fly under the radar sometimes for years.
I would argue that the smaller a business is the more likely it is that this happens. It becomes physically impossible for a very small business to do all of the paperwork and things that need to be done in all departments. I can speak from experience that as we have grown it has become easier to be in compliance on far more issues.
The fact still remains that many rules are open to interpretation. Often they are written to simply cover the government's liability should something bad happen down the road.
I do not have answers but I do know that anarchy will fast become the result of our over regulated society and perhaps we are already closer to that than we think. Small businessmen in particular will eventually throw up their hands and leave he business world all together if things do not change. Many already have.
Another factor is that the government is short of the resources to police its own regulations. We see a department of ag inspector exactly once per year and a weights and measures inspector once a year.
Those who are in favor of big government do have to recognize that regulations are one of the causes of the decline of some small businesses. I think that technology and economies of scale favor larger businesses also, so over-regulation isn't the only factor.