How do bureaucrats behave as regulators?

Answer 1

Bureaucrats work as regulators in two general ways:

Decrease of Efficiency: As anyone who has worked with or worked in a bureaucracy will tell you, the creation of a bureaucracy decreases efficiency because it puts more people between a person and his objective. This increases the requisite "desire" level necessary for the benefit to be sought and therefore limits the amount of requests put into the system. This serves as a form of regulation without actually needing to create a law.

For example, it costs a few hundred dollars to sue somebody in small claims court. Therefore, nobody will sue another individual for $10 in court since the very costs of engaging the system make it a greater loss than the bureaucratic cost to obtain justice. (Of course, this does not prevent $10 suits when the real motivation is not the money but some intangible benefit).

Uniformity of Law: Bureaucracy is also very effective at enforcing standardization in how the law is applied. Bureaucracies can create complicated but replicable systems for dealing with various issues. It (theoretically) prevents individuals who are wealthier from just getting their way.

For example, if a rich foreign national comes to the United States, he cannot just pay the governor of Arizona to become an American citizen. There is an Immigration bureaucracy that he must deal with that determines whether or not he can become a United States citizen.