Words matter.\u00a0 Although Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty was perhaps wrong to claim that words meant what he wanted them to mean, it’s still helpful to remember that sometimes people mean different things.\u00a0 This may be so with the term “regulation.”<\/p>\n
“Regulation” as Oversight\u00a0 <\/strong>As a former regulatory bureaucrat I always thought of “regulation” as meaning that some part of the government gets to tell someone not in the government (a “private actor”) what he or she must or may not do in some specific context.\u00a0 The Federal Aviation Administration is a great example of a regulator.\u00a0 It tells builders and operators of aircraft what they must or may not do via certificates, regulations, orders, exemptions, and a host of other regulatory mechanisms; and that’s just on the aviation side.\u00a0 On the space transportation side of the agency, the FAA regulates launch, reentry, and non-federal spaceports, including those operated by states.<\/p>\n The FAA issues regulations through rulemaking.\u00a0 If a private actor violates one of the agency’s regulations the FAA may impose fines in the form of civil penalties or revoke the private actor’s authorizations to fly or build an aircraft or launch a launch vehicle.\u00a0 I long thought this was what everyone meant by regulation.<\/p>\n “Regulation” as the Rule of Law<\/strong>.\u00a0 I think I was wrong.\u00a0 In the past year or so I’ve heard other references to regulation that left me quite puzzled at first.\u00a0 They did not apply to some part of the executive branch telling the private sector how to conduct itself.\u00a0 Instead, these people spoke of regulation more as a sort of order.\u00a0 Some wanted regulation and title to protect property rights.\u00a0 Investors wanted regulation for certainty, so they would understand the lay of the land.\u00a0 When questioned more specifically, some investors turned out to want rules of the road, not a series of authorizations and rules.\u00a0 (Others, by the way, the ones who wanted what I think of as regulation, stressed they did not want a lot of it.\u00a0 That was bad for business, too.)<\/p>\n This broader use of the term regulation suggests that people want to understand what law applies.\u00a0 Specifically, the question of certainty over property rights appears to loom large.\u00a0 That concern I understand.\u00a0 If a private actor spent a fortune and decades of his or her life getting to the Moon, that person might worry that the investment might not be protected by the rule of law out where no nation has sovereignty.\u00a0 After all, how will two private entities handle disputes when they both lay claim to the same patch of ice on the Moon?\u00a0 Who will decide such disputes?\u00a0 What law will apply?\u00a0 What if another country wants to claim the lunar village you just finished building?<\/p>\n Words of Caution<\/strong>.\u00a0 These are important questions.\u00a0 The critical thing is not to mix the questions of regulation as rule of law with “real” regulation, if I may be allowed to call it that.\u00a0 Assigning some agency in the federal government to authorize lunar roving does not address the questions of how to tell who owns what, how to handle disputes, how to ensure that no one takes someone else’s hard work, or what law will apply.\u00a0 Those people looking for rules of the road should avoid asking for regulation.\u00a0 They should be more specific and say they want certainty about property rights or the rule of law.\u00a0 If they ask Congress for “regulation,” they’ll get it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Words matter.\u00a0 Although Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty was perhaps wrong to claim that words meant what he wanted them to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[63,84],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-property-rights","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n