After watching Obama’s SOTU, I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about regulation. Specifically, I wanted to point out to him that I can understand the argument that regulations can be bad in certain cases.

One of the problems is that regulation is slow to change. It’s meant specifically to handle one set of problems. During the evolution of any system, the regulation continues to only solve that one problem. The only way to fix this is to update the regulation. Here is where it got a bit interesting. I compared writing regulation to writing software.

When you write a piece of software, you write it to solve one specific problem. You can, of course, make the software configurable. This would allow you to made changes which fall within the preexisting framework. However, you cannot change the fundamental functionality of the system. As with regulation, when the system evolves, the text either needs to be re-written, or updated.

But this is where the problems come in. When you update software, you have a good chance of introducing new bugs into the system. Not only that, you also have a chance of breaking existing functionality. When you do this work, it takes time as well as money. In addition, you only do one (or a set of) code inspection before certifying the product and deploying to test/operation.

In this same respect, regulation experiences some of these problems as well. One of the disadvantages to regulation is that you cannot test it. Regulation in the form of legislation is typically put into operation almost immediately, or with built in delays. It is notoriously difficult to write, and takes an extremely large amount of time and money.

We did come to some consensus, however. Regulations are a good way of instituting standards. When you have a large population who are being regulated, it ensures that these people are all treated in the same way. I conceded this point, but then asked if it was reasonable that the implementing bureaucracy increases in size as the overall population does in order to handle the larger amount of requests. We never came to a conclusion in that respect.

So, is regulation good? Of course it is. We use it every day, from speed limits to the laws which keep us from killing each other. But it’s difficult and messy. Times change, and with a bureaucracy which was designed to be slow to change behind it, you’re asking for trouble. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned in the computer age, though, it’s that there are plenty of willing superstar coders and occasionally a few special ones who can actually make a difference.