Imagine if the first humans had zoning boards.
You drag home a bundle of sticks to build a bigger shelter. The tribal council frowns. “Sorry, Grog, this violates our Open Space Preservation Ordinance.” You dig a firepit for warmth. “Not permitted,” they say. “It might disturb the migratory patterns of the sacred mammoth.” You plant seeds to feed your family. “Environmental impact review pending.”
Progress would have died before it ever began.
It’s an absurd image—but if you squint, it doesn’t feel too far off from modern reality. Somewhere along the line, the spirit that built farms, towns, factories, and skylines got bogged down in a swamp of permits, fees, and regulations designed less to encourage good stewardship than to throttle initiative itself.
Today, laws like Act 250, local zoning, and building codes are sold as guardians of the public good: clean air, orderly growth, protected habitats. And sometimes, at their best, they do serve that purpose. But in truth, they have morphed into something else—a permission economy where doing anything productive requires paying tribute to a growing class of bureaucrats, consultants, and activists who themselves create nothing.
We used to invent to solve problems. Now we invent new problems to justify the paperwork.
Progress Happens When People Are Free to Build
The human story is one of fearless trial and error. No one needed a climate impact study to invent irrigation, or an engineering stamp to raise the first stone walls. Societies grew because ordinary people were free to build, experiment, fail, and try again.
The modern regulatory state, though, reverses that process. Today, a simple act like building a barn, opening a farm stand, or subdividing a small parcel for a growing family can trigger months—or even years—of procedural slog. Environmental reviews. Traffic studies. Historic preservation hearings. Neighbor objections. Fee after fee after fee.
And if you’re wondering why building homes, starting businesses, or even just fixing a roof is so expensive these days, you don’t have to look far. It’s not just inflation. It’s bureaucracy. It’s government telling the productive class to slow down, pay up, and wait.
There’s a simple formula that explains it:
More rules = More staff = More cost = More delays = Less freedom = Less growth.
It’s the exact opposite of the innovation cycle that pulled humanity out of the caves and into cities, and eventually, into the stars.
Technology Was Supposed to Set Us Free — Not Trap Us Further
When the personal computer arrived, it was heralded as a tool to replace filing cabinets full of forms, to automate tedious calculations, to make government leaner and faster. Instead, government got bigger. Faster computers didn’t simplify rules; they just enabled the creation of more complex ones. Now, with AI, machine learning, and instantaneous modeling at our fingertips, the opportunity to streamline and cut deadweight is bigger than ever. Yet the deadweight has only grown.
Instead of asking, “Do we even need this law anymore?” governments layer on “smart” permitting portals, digital compliance trackers, and AI-driven monitoring systems—turning what should have been liberation into surveillance and micromanagement.
Why? Because the regulatory state, by its nature, doesn’t reward efficiency. It rewards complexity. Each new rule or requirement justifies another position, another grant, another funded department.
Instead of embracing technology to reduce friction, the system embraces it to tighten its grip.
The Rise of the Passive Class
There’s another dynamic at play, too—one that’s less about government and more about human nature.
The people most eager to regulate how others use their land tend to be those least involved in producing anything themselves. They’ve already secured what they want—a home, a view, a way of life—and now their interest shifts from building to preserving. That’s understandable, but when taken too far, it transforms into hostility toward anyone else who wants to build, grow, or innovate.
It’s easier to control than to create. Easier to say “no” than to say “yes” and risk change.
But when societies reward the passive over the productive, they rot from within. What begins as well-meaning stewardship calcifies into economic sclerosis.
Let Builders Build
None of this is to say we should return to the days of burning trash in the backyard and dumping waste in rivers. Reasonable guardrails are necessary in any complex society. But the guardrails should guide—not cage—the innovators, entrepreneurs, farmers, tradesmen, and families who are still willing to dream of something better.
Progress happens when those people are free to act.
It happened when the first huts rose, when the first farms sprouted, when the first factories roared to life.
It can happen again—if we remember that civilization is built by the doers, not by the regulators.
And if the cavemen had zoning boards, we’d all still be huddled in the cold.
Thankfully, they didn’t. And neither should we.
Dave Soulia | FYIVT
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