In my NTFB blog I describe friction costs in finance eating investor's capital. Government has friction costs as well covering payments to lobbyist to influence, legal teams to reap, government bureaucracy to counter and then the court to adjudicate the resulting claims and counter claims. Plenty of friction for everyone to bear and a nice living for lobbyists, lawyers and accountants.
I propose reducing easy points of friction that have lost their sponsors by a rate of ten to one with the simple proposition that an elected legislator finding that they are forced to make an unseemly compromise counter with the requirement that ten articles be eliminated from the federal code in compensation much like earmarks were used earlier on. The result would be a Pac-man like government eating away at the old and irrelevant.
I have some knowledge of the tariff code of the United States. It's as old as the country and is very much loaded with special interest clauses. Chapter 64 deals with "footwear, gaiters and the like." The chapter refers to sneakers and other sports footwear. The chapter is chock full of articles covering the influence of special interest in the U.S. that are now dead and gone. The sponsors lost the economic battle in spite of 40% duty rates favoring them. In the mean time the American consumer is perpetually saddled with exorbitant and really regressive tariffs for the consumer and protecting no company and generating heat favoring those ministering the process; yes lawyers and accountants. The beginning of the Pac-man revolution would find many of these easy sponsor-less articles that a LBJ like legislative horse trader could offer with no sweat. It would be after ten years of massive devouring that finally the super legislator would break into a sweat looking for deadwood to make a Pac-man deals. By that time a lot of the tax and tariff and many other codes would have been cleaned up considerably.
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