Comment by jiggawatts

Your article reminds me of Elon's run-ins with insane regulations for the Starship development, where he had to evaluate the risk of rockets landing on top of endangered sharks, but the department he was dealing with kept the density of sharks in the ocean a secret from themselves because they were worried about the information leaking out to illegal sharkfin poachers. Then SpaceX having to put headphones on seals and play sounds of sonic booms for them to see if they're terrified or not.

Lots of people right here on HN were making the argument that yes, yes, it makes perfect sense to nail humanity's feet to the ground, that we shouldn't reach for the stars, because there's an infinitesimal chance that one shark could be hurt by a falling rocket one day!

The main problem I see is that in some sense regulators have infinite power to say "no" or make demands, often with no recourse available to those applying for permits.

What might be needed is some sort of independent arbitration, where a CEO could go and say: "Hey, random paper-pusher here is holding up a $10 billion dollar project because they think it's hilarious to make me wrangle seals." and then have that result in a real consequence for the bureaucracy in question. As in: Your dumb arse is fired, because you wilfully mis-interpreted the intention of the law, doing millions or even billions in economic costs, you're doing more harm than good, etc...

There's precedent for such monopolistic organisations. For example, the telecommunications industry ombudsman in Australia. Individual citizens can submit complaints to the ombudsman and the result is always spectacular: Suddenly the impossible is possible, the unfair sneaky bullshit charge becomes miraculously reversible, etc...

Something like that could work for government bureaucracy also. Something vaguely like DOGE, but actually useful, and independently controlled and funded in some manner so it isn't captured by the special interests it is meant to curtail.

Think it's hilarious to make someone fill out paperwork where the required input is a secret nobody is allowed to know? Let's go see the ombudsman and have you risk getting kicked out of public office for life. Still need the paperwork filled out? No? Funny that.