The Compliance Industrial Complex will not clap politely and step aside; it will bare its teeth, grind its gears, and fling iron filings into whatever mechanism threatens its comfort. Permitting isn’t a process; it’s a deliberate shakeoff ritual. You’re expected to dance through a maze of filings, certifications, cross-referenced nonsense, and ritual paperwork—each step performed precisely, at the exact ordained moment—just to advance an inch. And to do that you need battalions of specialist lawyers, consultants, clerks, and whisperers of bureaucratic Latin. Only the giants can afford that, which of course rigs the game instantly in their favor. The smaller players don’t “compete”—they simply vanish from eligibility. They never get to the starting line.
So what kind of market does that create? What kind of innovation can you expect when the entire system is engineered to suffocate anyone who isn’t already too big to be strangled? What does that say about the quality of product and service the average consumer can reasonably hope for? But don’t worry—most consumers can barely think past the next TikTok flicker, so the degradation of quality won’t register until the rot is already a lifestyle.
What would actually help would be to sever the political tentacles wrapped around the process. But instead we have absurd situations where you’re politely invited—by force—to hire the consulting firm belonging to someone’s politically blessed brother, to generate forests of paperwork that achieve absolutely nothing except compliance theatre. At that point, no one is pretending to “protect the public” anymore. The mask is off. We’re back to what this always was: a controlled shakeoff, a filtration system rigged to favor the already powerful.
I don’t expect it to improve anytime soon. The machine feeds itself too well to consider reform. But power must always perform the appropriate noises—pretending at renewal, feigning reformist intention—while knowing full well that nothing fundamental will change. Because the system works exactly as intended.