This is a bit off-topic from litigation, but one of the issues I touch on from time to time in my own blog is just how hard the government makes it to conduct business. While Ted and Walter seem to enjoy what they do, not all of us want to shuffle documents through the legal system every day.
As brief background, my small business runs recreation facilities on public lands under concession contracts. This week we won our first contract with the National Park Service, to run a restaurant and a couple of marinas in Colorado. Since this is our first foray into that state, there are a lot of legal hoops we must jump through to get all the permissions we need to conduct business in Colorado. In fact, as I describe on my blog, my work list is up to 20 fairly time-consuming approvals we need to obtain. And I am sure this list will grow. Even after years in a state, we still can have some random inspector coming by looking for our (fill-in-the-blank) licence, which we had never heard of to that point. My favorite so far is probably Kentucky’s requirement that I get a licence to sell eggs.
About six months ago, a business school professor asked if I would just write down what I was working on that day, as a part of a lesson in entrepreneurship for his students. Later, I posted the list on my blog. I ended the post by saying, “An alien from another planet in reading this post might question whether I am really working for myself or this ‘government’ entity”
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Please!!! Please!!! I don’t wanna be a lawyer
I know it’s tempting to blame the lawyers & politicians for this, but I suspect that much of these hurdles are the result of rent-seeking by existing businesses. Business is against goverment regulation except when regulation will benefit them. I think it’s inaccurate to portray this as government v. business, and that it is actually business v. business, using government as a tool to gain a competitive edge.
any document that has “by April 1” printed on it as a due date (rather than handwritten) automatically raises suspicion đŸ™‚
But then most government programs are a joke anyway…
Mr. Meyer is not the first person to be tangled in red tape when contracting with the feddle gummint, nor will he be the last. A former Air Force Officer, using the pen name “John Rickey” wrote “The Free Enterprise Patriot,” a book first serialized in Research and Developent magazine in 1963-1964.
The book is set at the time of the American Revolution, and comprises a series of back and forth letters from Andrew Farnsworth and various government officials concerning a contract to make a cannon for the colonial army.
The book starts out with the following statement: “Had the complexity of today’s bureaucratic government existed when the War of Independence began, this is how it might have been, with one exception . . . we probably wouldn’t have won.” It is a must read.
You can read The Free Enterprise Patriot and the misadventures of Farnsworh with his government contract at:
http://www.first-team.us/journals/div_arty/fep_saga/
Purchasing a hard copy gives you a few extra items not found on-line.
I can vouch from first hand experience with military contracts and the Federal Acquisition Regulations that The Free Enterprise Patriot is no exageration. In fact, back in the late 80’s and early 90’s I was so frustrated in dealing with the nonsensical jump-through-the-hoop regulations that I bought copies of the Free Enterprise Patriot for the contracting officers.
John Rickey wrote a sequel to the Free Enterprise Patriot titled “Patriot’s Mountain” about a decendant of Farnsworth who contracts with the National Parks Service. This is too a must read, but the Free Enterprise Patriot is a better book in my opinion
By the way, I have no economic interest in these books.
Mr. Meyer will probably repost with a comment that everything in the books happened to him. History does repeat.
Home Depot: I Couldn’t Do It Today
Bernie Marcus, who founded the Home Depot chain as a “regular guy” starting from one store, says that he couldn’t have done it in today’s legal environment. We went public after opening our fourth store…
The problem is not that they necessarily want to annoy you. It is that each of those 20 approvals you need supports the households of at least 2 state employees (likely much more).
If they couldn’t harrass you like that, how would the poor people in the various agencies survive?