Thursday, June 24, 2010

Unanticipated consequences of regulation

London in 1831 was rocked with scandal - body snatching scandal. The Murder Act of 1752 regulated the supply of cadavers available for medical school anatomy lessons. Specifically, only corpses of executed criminals could lawfully be used for these studious dissections.

The problem was that there were many new medical schools, and fewer executions, and so there was a pronounced shortage of lawful medical "supplies". Well, nature abhors a vacuum, and where there's a will, there's a way - especially when there weren't any questions asked when delivering the goods to the school.

Londoners began to wake up to find that their freshly buried loved ones had been dug up, and the body missing. Some wealthy families began construction of fortified mausoleums, with twenty-four hour security. Then the living began to disappear, too. After the second murder wave, enough was enough. Parliament passed the Anatomy Act of 1832, which (mostly) deregulated the cadaver market. Supply and demand equalized, and Londoners could sleep soundly in their beds once again.

History offers a lot of examples that our government could learn from, if our government were as smart and progressive as nineteenth century Parliament. Nobody in 1752 intended to incite murder, and nobody in 1832 thought that the government could be effective by adding more layers of regulation on top of the existing layers. Rather, they repealed old outdated laws and replaced them with something less restrictive, and more suited for the day.

From the War on (some) Drugs to Health Care "Reform", Washington should put down the remote control and pick up a book.

1 comment:

Midwest Chick said...

They need to Repeal, rather than Reform. Take a look at everything and start peeling back the layers of rules and regulations that are strangling this country.