Tackling the regulatory beast

In my latest column for the ROB’s Economy Lab feature (in the Globe), I regale readers with the story of what happened when a bureaucrat came into the café my wife and I owned in Dartmouth, NS (The Queen of Cups Too) and demanded to know if we lived on the premises. That was the beginning of a regulatory nightmare that is all too typical of relations between business and citizens on the one hand and the regulatory state on the other. Read my prescription for whittling the regulatory state down to size.