Review: Get the Heck Out of Our Way! by Dale W. Cox

Businessman Dale W. Cox expresses his deep concern over the proliferation of government regulations and their consequences to ordinary citizens in the United States in Get the Heck Out of Our Way!: Examples of Government Regulations That Are Eroding Our Freedoms, Holding Back the Economy, and Costing Us Money and What We Can Do about It.

Cox asserts that early on in our history very few government departments were deemed necessary, but in the past 100+ years such departments have increased in number, size, influence, and power. As someone who desires to pursue small business, he is affected directly, seeing these entities as creating “busyness”: being forced to comply with complex regulations and restrictions rather than conducting business.

He provides numerous examples of how government overreach affects business, and everyday life. For example, the federal government dictates what kind of gas can be sold in each state, instead of leaving that decision to local or state authorities, and so rural consumers must pay for emission controls that are probably only needed in densely populated areas, or ethanol is added to gasoline whether drivers prefer it or not. Almost every product we purchase, Cox believes, has an add-on cost for taxes and the salaries of government workers who oversee its manufacture.

Each chapter contains examples of government incursion into different areas of our lives, delineating the restrictions and explaining how they play out to our detriment. As he repeatedly expresses his conviction that most of us can handle our own affairs without being overprotected or over-regulated by federal governance, his personal struggles with these issues infuse the narrative. One such experience involved what occurred when the author and his wife undertook the improvement of a 49-acre piece of land. This required oversight by the federal Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, which contravened what he was told by local experts, even though no one from DENR ever visited the site.

Frequently, his perspective is not measured enough, and so has the feeling of preaching to the converted, rather than trying to convince “believers” in regulation. For example, he states that no sensible business person would want to run a sloppy operation or create dangerous products that negatively affect consumers of its products. However, there are obvious examples of businesses adversely affecting consumers, such as the tobacco industry, or companies polluting the environment. Without more of an emphasis on the possible benefits of regulation, his argument is too black and white for such a complex subject. That said, he provides a large number of examples about the pitfalls of regulation that should be eye-opening to just about anyone.

For those who do agree with his perspective, this book will be a rallying cry. Cox’s prose is straightforward, almost as if he were having an impassioned conversation, sincerely wishing to impress upon the reader or listener his strong conviction of the correctness of his position. He has constructed his thesis with care, using graphs to show how government involvement in business has grown, how government salaries compare to private sector, and numerous pie charts demonstrating unnecessary interventions by government.

In the end, the book is very much a call to arms, so for those with a laissez-faire approach to the economy, Get the Heck Out of Our Way! will be inspiring and informative, as it provides a comprehensive examination of government overreach.