Bliss -- a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious -- lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
Matt Yglesias on American federalism and regulatory excess:
I wouldn’t disagree with the observation that there are some elements of our economy that are badly over-regulated. It’s much more difficult to start or expand a business than it should be and this is one of the reasons why our economy has gotten so dominated by cookie-cutter chains that have enough scale to amass expertise and legal clout needed to navigate this thicket. There’s more occupational licensing than their needs to be. There’s too much regulation saying that buildings have to be short, or can only occupy so big a percentage of the lot, or have to have so many parking spaces. At the same time that I think the country’s overall policy dynamic is too tilted toward the automobile, the actual vehicle registration process is weirdly cumbersome, and the rules governing auto dealers are positively insane.
But all this malfeasance is done by state and local governments.
Rather than the small scale of the units leading to better policy via competition, what seems to me to happen is that the lack of public attention paid to policymaking at the state, county, and municipal level leads to much more pure interest-group capture than you see on the federal level. Not that interest groups don’t have a lot of clout in federal politics. But the relatively competitive nature of elections and the relatively bright spotlight shown on national politics puts a check on these things. At the state level, bad policy really runs amok. So I wind up being skeptical that you could really improve much of anything even in those areas when I think the libertarian perspective is broadly correct by devolving more authority downward.
When I penetrated back to the day-room I encountered two gentlemen called Sergeant Pluck and Mr Gilhaney and they were holding a meeting about the question of bicycles.
"I do not believe in the three-speed gear at all," the Sergeant was saying, "it is a new-fangled instrument, it crucifies the legs, the half of the accidents are due to it."
"It is a power for the hills," said Gilhaney, "as good as a second pair of pins or a diminutive petrol motor."
"It is a hard thing to tune," said the Sergeant, "you can screw the iron lace that hangs out of it till you get no catch at all on the pedals. It never stops the way you want it, it would remind you of bad jaw-plates."
"That is all lies," said Gilhaney.
"Or like the pegs of a fairy-day fiddle," said the Sergeant, "or a skinny wife in the craw of a cold bed in springtime."
"Not that," said Gilhaney.
"Or porter in a sick stomach," said the Sergeant.
"So help me not," said Gilhaney.
-- Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman (New York: Plume, 1976), 76.
