For 25 years I managed a small electronics manufacturing firm. I had uniformly bad experiences with both U.S. regulators and, surprisingly, European regulators. Government regulators respond to political forces. Science and economics comes second and the regulators readily twist the science or economics in order to pacify political forces. Regulation of pollution responds to the scare of the day, be it asbestos, lead, radiation, DDT, dioxin, plutonium, carbon dioxide, etc. Regulators have absolutely no interest in protecting industry unless the industry has political influence. That, of course, favors big companies that can effectively lobby. Big companies often welcome complex regulation because it handicaps their smaller competitors. Big firms can more easily afford the legal and engineering costs of regulation. An example is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation of incidental radio emissions from computing equipment. Some years ago I wrote an article detailing...(Read Full Article)