Regulating Regulations

Dear George,

The authoritarian society is an over regulated society, a society so regulated that a prole pauses before farting to wonder if the fart would be in violation of a clean-air ordinance.

Free societies are plagued by an absence of unnecessary and petty regulations, and we all know that freedom destabilizes. Let a man feel that he is free and his actions become unpredictable.

The Industrial Revolution taught us that societies function best when they are run like factories with their manifold rules of who may do what when. I know of one company where employees are required to log every visit to the bathroom, and female employees must notify HR when their periods begins and when they end so they don’t abuse their bathroom privileges.

Therein lays the beauty of over-regulation: it discourages proles from abusing what few privileges they have.

The key to successful over regulation is to regulate possibility and not probability. Everything is possible, therefore everything must be regulated. To me, the utopian society would be one that required its citizens to wear hardhats 24/7 because of the possibility that a torn piece of metal from an overflying 747 could plunge to the earth and crown them.

It is possible!

Regulations are based upon two premises. First that the proles are too stupid to behave properly, and secondly, that they are too stupid to take care of themselves. Since productivity requires them to be overworked and underpaid, it follows that they are ad hoc property of the corporate state and that the state’s well-being depends on their well-being.

There is one caveat to this. Freedom, like wealth, works best when it is concentrated at the top of the pyramid. Only an unregulated elite can run a well-regulated society. Freedom is the birthright of any man born to wealth and privilege.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones