How they do it in Europe

Economist:

The Council of the European Union had employed scores of bored-looking security guards to organise the badge office. As a flinty-hearted northern European, the waste in the system was always slightly annoying. Each journalist gets their own security escort , who takes your passport and press pass, plus a deeply pointless four page form authorising the Belgian government to keep your name and address on some database, and escorts you all of two metres to a desk manned by three more guards. They look on a computer and discover (in my case) that this is something like my 20th EU summit and my details have not changed, at which point they intone "normal", and the escort takes back the passes, walks you to a pair of officials who check your passport is not a fake, then walks you a crucial last metre and a half to a desk manned by still more guards who give you your... Anyway, you get the picture.

Yes, "normal". Score one for waste in socialist democracies. As bad as things may get in the US, I hope we're not headed for this level of government-run buffoonery.

But it did give another Economist blogger excuse to again mention an especially ridiculous innovation stifler, the British Locomotive Act:

The Locomotive Act [was] introduced by the British parliament as one of a series of measures to control the use of mechanically propelled vehicles on British public highways during the latter part of the 19th century. This act required any motorised vehicle to be preceded by a man with a red flag.

Back in the US, the Obama administration ain't doing so hot either:

One effect of huge deficits is the rational expectation of higher future taxes. So, one effect of stimulus is likely to be fewer start-ups.

During the campaign, presumably thinking of his Silicon Valley support, Obama proposed the elimination of capital gains taxes on start-ups in order to partially offset some of the impact of his tax proposals on company formation. This idea was always make-believe. As I predicted last July, this proposal has been "delayed" until 2014 in the budget that the President has just released (i.e., it isn't going to happen).

Like the college students who stayed up late to be inspired by his campaign rallies only to find Obama's first significant action to be a stimulus program that will transfer about a trillion dollars from them to the Baby Boomers, Silicon Valley Obama supporters are likely to find that a government-dominated economic era will not a great one in which to start companies that threaten big incumbent corporations that have juice with the government. I hope they appreciate the irony.

Yeppers.  I was interested in this tax break when Obama announced it during the campaign, because it seemed like a gimmick to offset his plans for increased taxes on businesses. Now we know it wasn't even a real commitment.