Insight
Momand: Agencies only revise rules for statutory changes or special interest outcry
“And the only reason they'll change the regulation is if the law changes their statutory authority or a really massive special interest, like throws a fit.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Momand: Legislative Shift to Regulatory State Occurred in the 1980s and 1990s
“The shift in power to the regulatory state really happened in like the later 1900, like eighties, nineties where the legislature kind of gave away some of their power to these agencies and the agencies are now creating and enforcing regulations.”
Insight
Momand: Regulatory reforms increase regulations by adding paperwork without process change
“The federal government has introduced a lot of regulatory reform during that time period, aimed at, like, keeping the number of regulations low, but because they haven't really changed process, they've just, like, added more paperwork and more people to it the…”
Assertion Supported
Momand: Mercatus Center estimated regulations slow annual economic growth by 0.8%
“So this is a cool paper that came out a few years ago from the Mercatus Center. And basically it looked at the level of regulation, the cumulative cost of regulation from the 19 eighties to present day. And they estimated that, you know, the economy has slowed…”
Opinion
Momand: Regulatory agencies do not know net trade-offs of stacked rules
“I don't know, and the agencies don't know. That's the issue. So right now regulatory agencies, they'll pass, you know, an occupational licensing regulation in 2000, and then they'll pass a new one in 2015, and a new one in 2020, and they begin to stack on top …”
Insight
Momand: Bureaucracies Expand Because They Lack Dynamic Feedback
“Whereas the government is not getting dynamic feedback and it just continues to grow because they don't have any reason not to.”
Opinion
Momand: Regulation, Not Small Business, Is the Backbone of the Economy
“People talk about the small business being the backbone of our economy. I actually think regulation is like the backbone of our economy, good or bad, sometimes even bad back.”
Opinion
Momand: Big Companies Have Regulatory Capture Advantage Over Startups
“Big companies can, and they definitely have an advantage. But smaller companies, innovative startups, things like that don't really have as much say there.”
Insight
Momand: Both Parties Want Regulatory Reform but Frame It Differently
“I wouldn't say that people push back on it per se. I think that, especially in the past two years, even after we started Archive, there's definitely a recognition across both sides of the aisle that, you know, we need to improve regulation, but the language in…”
Insight
Momand: Government agencies collect zero data on real-world regulatory enforcement outcomes
“So what I think is actually probably the biggest issue right now in the regulatory state, we're working on the process, but agencies, you know, write these regulations and then they put them into administration and enforcement. You know, they've written their …”
Insight
Momand: Regulatory sandboxes provide the closest model to a healthy feedback loop
“I think the, it's actually way more collaborative and probably the closest We've seen to a healthy feedback loop because the agency is actually talking to the company and they're chatting with them and they're kind of giving them free reign, but watching them …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Momand: Regulators exploit loosely defined laws to add substantial new requirements
“It's really loosely defined in law and the regulators go in, you know, with scissors and pencil. Like they like really like edit it down and like add more to.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Momand: Government agencies make policy using Excel and Word without centralized records
“Typically when Esper like starts, you know, working with an agency, they are making policy like on the fly using Excel spreadsheets, word, like they don't have a single place of like record for all of their data.”
Opinion
Momand: COVID-19 catalyzed positive regulatory reform
“Yeah, so I think that COVID actually was a really great catalyst for a lot of regulatory change in a positive direction, and we're continuing to see that trend go, go well.”
Assertion Supported
Momand: US state regulations total hundreds of thousands, federal exceeds one million
“In the state level, there are usually several 100,000. At the federal level, there are like over a million.”
Disclosure
Momand: Esper built an NLP database of US and Canadian regulations
“So basically when we started us where we invested a ton of time into building up this like database and ontology of regulations across the federal state and Canada, and we've applied some cool NLP and other, you know, tech things to analyze the data and find s…”
Opinion
Momand: Wealthy Entities Have the Resources to Game the Regulatory System
“I think actually like the rich people have the resources to gain the regulatory system and get ahead. Whereas the small people are the smaller businesses.”
Assertion Partly supported
Momand: Government rulemaking takes at least one year end-to-end
“Each rulemaking takes about a year end to end at least to, you know, be promulgated.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Momand: Manually fact-checking 3,000 environmental regulations takes five people one year
“If I'm a regulator at the Texas commission for environmental quality I need to like read through my like 3000 regulations and go back and like Fact check every single law that I cite. That's like a year long process for like a team of five people.”
Opinion
Momand: FOIA Is a Powerful Tool That Agencies Generally Comply With
“FOIA is a really powerful tool. It's used a lot by journalists and a lot by law firms. And it's sometimes abused, but agencies generally respond.”
Assertion Supported
Momand: Retrospective regulatory reviews exist in 10 to 15 states
“And this is introduced in probably like 10 to 15 states right now with various levels of success.”
Assertion Supported
Momand: Arizona created a regulatory sandbox for FinTech
“Another example would be like in Arizona, they did a regulatory sandbox for FinTech a couple of years ago.”
