Unquantifiable Benefits of Regulation to Small Business Owners (Essay Sample)

Unquantifiable Benefits of Regulation to Small Business Owners
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Unquantifiable Benefits of Regulation to Small Business Owners
Regulations play a critical role in enhancing the welfare of society. While the endeavor by the federal government in enacting these policies aims to benefit the people and businesses, poorly designed regulations achieve the opposite effect. However, even good laws can be interpreted wrongly and perceived negatively, more especially if they are unquantifiable. Small businesses, in particular, are more prone to this assessment. Regardless, there are many unquantifiable gains of regulation that from a critical evaluation, a small business owner can realize.
In a 2001 report to the Congress on Making Sense of Regulation, some examples of un-quantified benefits of regulations were enlisted. They included environmental protection, consumer protection, and safe workplace assurance policies. I believe these profit small businesses. Nevertheless, for small entrepreneurs, the short-coming of these unquantifiable benefits is that they are blinded on the positives, and settle on the negatives especially the costs associated with them. Therefore, the question is how to tackle the quantification of the benefits to small businesses.
According to Revesz (2014), break-even analysis is one of the ways used to quantify regulatory advantages. In situations where quantifying or monetizing the benefits in the regulations is difficult, federal administrative agencies engage in breakeven analysis. Further, Revesz explains that a break-even analysis also determines the minimum value of the unquantifiable benefit that would produce positive results for regulatory intervention (2014). In essence, break-even analysis provides a useful structure to regulatory decisions that otherwise would appear manipulable and arbitrary.
Not every regulation by the government is harmful to small business owners, even when un-quantifiable. As discussed, regul...