The regulators and regulations will be controlled by the regulated. Do not imagine that you can find some pure, omniscient regulator who can see through and overcome the interests of those he regulates.

I don’t imagine that. I imagine — and I grant that at this point in time it requires imagination — a well-functioning democracy, in which the people hold their representatives accountable for representing their interests, and fire them if they fail to do so; directly and via their representatives, demand competence and effectiveness in their executives, and fire them if they fail to demonstrate those qualities; and at the critical juncture where “the will of the people” is translated into policy, require honesty and fidelity in choosing apt courses of action to achieve common goals.

First, who are the “representatives of the people” who decide the goals of public policy? Are they some god-like beings who know better than us? Or are they just politicos who give in to the pressure group who screams loudest?
Second, how are you going to separate the goals and the means, since one inevitably affects the other?

I’ve written a more complete exposition of my thoughts regarding this, but it’s too long and wanders too far from Radley’s topic to include in a comment, so I’m linking to it: Democracy, Ends and Means.

Third, how are you going to prevent bureaucratic inertia?

A degree of inertia is crucial; without it, a democracy truly responsive to the will of the people would change its policies too easily and too often. However, I think excess inertia, like disproportionate responsiveness to special interests, can be largely explained by the defective “feedback loop of democracy” I describe in the essay linked above.

Keeping pretty good records is generally not difficult. Keeping absolutely impeccable records which are not only correct, but can be proven to be correct despite the existence of other records that contradict them, is another story altogether.

If the government behaves in its usual fashion, it will ignore most of the errors that will occur in the records associated with livestock, but if a particular farmer becomes a nuisance it will pore over that farmers’ records with a fine-tooth comb, ready to pounce on any little discrepancy it finds.

Actually, that’s a fairly charitable interpretation of the government’s real motives. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other motives that are far worse.

By your terms, then, I’m probably not a real lefty. I don’t believe that the results in any given instance of regulation (or government intervention of any kind) must, on principle, be less desirable than the results of not involving government at all. However, I do hold that in practice unfettered, distributed decision-making in the presence of reasonably apt incentives proves so consistently superior to centralized control that the burden of proof should always be on those who suggest that government involvement can make anything better.

Nearly so, yes. A fairly simple system can export the inventory data into a spreadsheet, and the reporting can be done via email.

Look, you may have a water-tight philosophical argument against regulations, but this rule is not particularly burdemsome, and the cost is only going to break the cows back on farmers that already were tottering near failure. I also wonder how many of these “family farms” are being propped up by subsidies and friendly regulations in the first place – anyone have any numbers on that? A number of commentators here have argued passionately that small businesses should not be protected simply because they are smaller (the Wal Mart argument). If that’s true, and many of these small farmers/ranchers have been subsidized just like the big boys (or even more favorably?), then the only difference this regulation makes is to end their zombie like business.

My contention is that a more useful paradigm would be to separate the goals of public policy — which are appropriately decided by representation of the people — from the means of reaching those goals, which are best worked out by independent, objective analysis.

First, who are the “representatives of the people” who decide the goals of public policy? Are they some god-like beings who know better than us? Or are they just politicos who give in to the pressure group who screams loudest?
Second, how are you going to separate the goals and the means, since one inevitably affects the other?
Third, how are you going to prevent bureaucratic inertia?

Take the FCC as an example of a regulatory agency. The “goals” of the FCC have varied over the years from ensuring competition (which was somehow done by limiting entry into the broadcast market) to ensuring ‘decency’ (remember the freakout over a one-second boob-flash?). Goals change.
The separation of the goal and the means was impossible -for the people who had the most knowledge of how broadcasting worked were the broadcasters themselves – and the regulators were either drawn from their ranks or functionaries so ignorant of broadcasting (both technically and economically) that they were incapable of dealing with the masses of evidence that the broadcasters would present to bolster their own case. Even when they did oppose the broadcasters, the FCC regulators generally did so in ways that did not serve the best interests of the consumers.
“Technical and objective analysis” in a bureaucratic context almost always means “postpone a decision and make another study”. The FCC dithered for 20 years on upgrading the TV signal from the 256 line standard originally implemented. The problem was eventually solved not by the FCC, but by clever computer programmers. Analog broadcasting should have died no later than 1980. It is still with us today (given yet another life extension just this year by Congress.)
If the FCC could have regulated the home video market, we’d still be waiting for them to decide between VHS and Betamax. I just bought a Blu-Ray player. I love it. It gives me a great picture. But it wasn’t a result of an FCC decision. I know damn well that the thing will be obsolete in another 10 years, but I don’t care and I definitely don’t want some regulator to tell the electronics companies to hold off on the next format until it can be made compatible with my by-then-ancient Blu-Ray.

You say you don’t follow the comments in my later paragraphs in post # 30. To boil it down to the simplest terms:
The companies being regulated can afford to spend millions to influence regulations and regulators in their favor. I, as a consumer, do not have the resources to match their spending and would not do so in any case because the cost to me of the regulations is at most a couple of hundred bucks.

In summary: The regulators and regulations will be controlled by the regulated. Do not imagine that you can find some pure, omniscient regulator who can see through and overcome the interests of those he regulates. Even if he could, who do you think appoints him? If the companies don’t like him, they will put pressure on the politicians to remove him. And you can’t take that away from the politicians; nor would you want to as you would then be faced with an individual whose power was unchecked.

Why are the politician’s bitching! They are just voting for a raise just like congesss does!

When in Rome . . .

Isnt nationalization grand!!!!???

I suggest you read Friedman on concentrated vs. diffuse interest.

The problem with regulation is only partly the regulatory burden. A huge part of it is that, for the regulated parties, the form of regulation can make a difference of hundreds of millions of dollars spread over a hundred million transactions.

For you, the nominal “beneficiary” of the regulatory regime, the difference in cost is a few cents to at most a couple of hundred bucks per transaction. However, added up to the regulated companies, it makes billions of dollars in difference. Which is why the regulated companies concentrate on getting control over the regulatory regime – by lobbying legislators to shape the regulations, by paying big bucks to high-powered legal teams to argue their side before the regulatory boards, or by getting “their men” appointed to the regulatory boards themselves.

An individual consumer, looking at the cost of such a fight, simply does not have the time or resources to compete with the vested interests, nor would it be cost-effective for them to do so.

Even if you have a consumer organization, they find it very hard to raise the money to fight all the causes before all the regulatory boards. (Even assuming they are only fighting the “right” causes.)

Question for my lefty friends:

I identify myself as a “left-side libertarian” — somewhere in the vicinity of libertarian socialist. So, for example, my attitude towards the bailouts is that what is “too big to fail” is too big to be treated as private enterprise. AIG and its ilk are government under another name — a decidedly undemocratic branch of government which seeks to privatize profit and socialize loss, and at present is succeeding in that endeavor.

A few months ago on this site, we had a discussion about the morality of people who utilize offshore tax shelters. And Joe Biden said during the campaign that it was “unpatriotic” to avoid paying your taxes. At what point in this bailout madness does doing what you can to avoid federal taxes become acceptable? In other words, what percentage of the federal budget has to go toward bailout-out failed companies and their corrupt executives before taxpayers are justified in getting fed up, and refusing to fund the circus anymore?

Law has nothing to do with morality — this is a fiction from which it is very, very difficult to escape. It is not immoral to evade taxation — it’s dangerous. Whether it’s worth the risk is a personal calculation, but government expenditures (which are independent of taxation anyway, aside from the net effect on the debt) surely can’t have much bearing on that.While I’m pontificating, I’ll put in a plug for the Fair Tax. As a libertarian of any stripe, the important thing about this to me is that it doesn’t require collecting data on individuals. I don’t care whether the government taxes sales, income or whatever; only that taxes on any given transaction are independent of other transactions, so they can be collected immediately, consistently and without any need to accumulate personal information. The current tax regime is like posting “Please, Do Not Enter” above an open doorway; much better simply to lock the door and dispense with the appeal to an (allegedly) ethical denial of self-interest that just confounds the issue for everyone. Take what you’re going to take, but do it simply, directly and with certainty. The system as it stands creates “criminals” and then feigns shock at how unpatriotic people can be.

And while I’m picking on the left, here’s yet another example of how increased federal regulation helps big business by screwing medium- and smaller-sized competitors. Be it the CPSIA, FDA regulation or tobacco, or now this livestock origin bill, there’s a reason why the affected industries’ biggest players supported the new regulation.

Us left-libs (what the hell, I’ll speak for all 29 of us) don’t oppose regulation — we oppose stupid regulation. Who is in favor of or opposed to the regulation is immaterial. The answer would lie in a cost-benefit analysis, if anyone has bothered to do that. That probably no one has — as everyone is too busy arguing ideology to be bothered with pesky facts — I would identify as the big “What’s wrong?” in contemporary politics.

“…AIG wouldn’t have to be bailed out in the first place if…”

Bailouts are a problem with socialism, not the free market. Failure is part of the competition of ideas in capitalism, but it is dealt with quickly rather than spread out as a burden for all in a slow, lingering cancer (I’m looking at you TARP).

Taxpayers are a priori justified in not “paying” their taxes.

Taxation is larceny.

The bailout is a magician’s sleight-of-hand. Look at the bailouts, but pay no attention to the root cause.

RFID costs pennies per tag. Even a full system costs relatively little compared to overall operations. Notification requirements don’t sound burdensome either (wouldn’t an email suffice?). Regardless of the merit or injustice of this regulation, I think any operation this shuts down wasn’t long for this world anyway.

Are extra layers of record keeping and reporting free in your world?

For me, the point came six years ago, before the bailout madness, when the Iraq Invasion madness happened (that, too, was funded by tax dollars… or at least it will be when the government gets around to paying off its debts).

There have been a number of conscientious objectors to the U.S. tax system — mostly anti-war types who trend leftish, along with some people from the traditional peace churches — but lately I’m seeing signs (http://sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=15Mar09) that small-government conservatives and libertarians are also finally deciding it’s time to put their money where their mouths are.

Regardless, police unions fight any sort of oversight from any ‘civilian’ non-government source. I fully expect that they will push to make videotaping police a felony under some bullshit pretext that it endangers officers if the serfs can photograph them in uniform.