Regulation, the regulatory environment of the Biden administration has been obvious to many who come up against it routinely in these last years.

The example that burns my memory is the FAA holding up the Starship tests for weeks or months at a time because they were unhappy with the environmental assessment or the fish and wildlife had to look at how the concrete thrown from the blast off of an early starship might have landed in the wetland and damaged the local environment.

Or just because it's going to achieve the speed of sound as the first stage

descends and therefore we have to look at the damage that might do to the environment.

I'm not making this up.

That's the regulatory environment.

But what about cost?

Does that cost anybody anything?

Well, with Starship, it's hard to say because this is a joy of a program where an enormous amount of money is being pushed into it by people who are eager to spend it to get to Mars. But there is a cost of regulation. And I welcome Professor John Cochran of Stanford University,

who's an esteemed fellow at the Hoover Institution

and part of the Goodfellas podcast I recommend.

He has the Grumpy Economist blog,

which is available at Substack,

and I learned this week about the word regulation,

the word deregulation, which is now banished from my vocabulary,

and the word smart regulation.

Professor, a very good evening to you.

Regulation costs, how so?

How do we know this?

Good evening.

Good evening, yeah.

Our economy is not growing as fast as it should be,

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