Michael Chapman
Michael Chapman
There are so many government regulations placed on businesses that it’s like “a million little strings that tie Gulliver down” and eventually he “can’t move,” said billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk in an interview with Cato Senior Fellow Johan Norberg. At the governmental level, he added, there needs to be a “regulation removal department.”
Musk, who runs Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and several other companies, made his remarks at the Buenos Aires conference, “The Rebirth of Liberty in Argentina and Beyond,” which was sponsored by the Cato Institute and Libertad y Progreso. The event’s main speaker was Argentine President Javier Milei.
In the interview with libertarian author and filmmaker Norberg, Musk was asked about the risk-averse culture that regulations create and how entrepreneurs can innovate and grow given those roadblocks. Musk replied that the long period of prosperity following World War II has, ironically, contributed to the problem.
“When things have been prosperous for a long time, you get an accumulation of laws and regulations, naturally,” said Musk. “And these laws and regulations are immortal whereas humans are obviously mortal. So, the longer you have this generation of – this creation by rules and regulations, you sort of get to the point where each law or regulation is not perhaps crippling in and of itself but they’re all like little strings, like a million little strings that tie Gulliver down. So, each little string – eventually the giant can’t move.”
The “regulatory gridlock” in Western societies is so stifling that it effectively makes big projects seem illegal, nearly impossible to get off the ground or complete. As an example, Musk cited a high-speed rail venture in California. “They spent $7 billion dollars and there’s a 1,600-foot section. That’s all they have to show for it. It doesn’t even have rails on it.”
“It’s really too absurd for parody,” said Musk. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/elon-musk-cato-conference-government-needs-regulation-removal-department-0