Inflation and over-regulation

I had the pleasure this morning of visiting a medium-size third-generation Wycombe family business. These were the issues which came up:

* Inflation is now distorting their business at all levels, from customers’ needs, through staff pay to input costs.

* Over-regulation is grotesque in their industry. They must comply with over 12000 pages of rules introduced in the last ten years to protect consumers. Those rules don’t protect their customers; they protect the business and their suppliers. Meantime, the long local history of the business is testament to the fact that looking after their customers is in their own interests.

* Employment law appears to have been designed to work for large, flabby organisations, not SMEs, which are the mainstay of our economy.

Still, at least their customers in manufacturing are doing well but I wonder to what extent that is due to currency debasement.

All in all, it was a great demonstration of the poisonous effects of government intervention in money and in the rich panoply of relations that comprise social cooperation through production, exchange and consumption: that is, the market.

The sooner the state confines itself more closely to preserving the institutions of property, contract, the classical Rule of Law and good money, the better things will be for us all.