ARSA CORNER
FAA BILL IS RISKY BUSINESS FOR MAINTENANCE
BY CHRISTIAN A. KLEIN, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
REGULATORY INTRUSION HAS BECOME A FACT OF LIFE – A COST OF DOING BUSINESS, IF YOU WILL – FOR THE AVIATION INDUSTRY. MY FIRM, WHICH MANAGES THE AERONAUTICAL REPAIR STATION ASSOCIATION (ARSA), FOCUSES ON “MANAGING THE INTERSECTION OF BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT.” THAT THE TWO WILL INTERSECT, THROUGH REGULATION, IS INEVITABLE. OUR JOB IS TO MAKE IT MANAGEABLE.
Is the ever-expanding regulatory
state really such a foregone conclusion? In a year in which the U.S. Congress will (hopefully) reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), it’s worth considering how the regulatory state came out in the first place. I chalk it up to the fact that Americans have gradually been losing their tolerance for risk in all aspects of their lives. The willingness to take risks was once the defining American value. Immigrants took enormous risks arriving on U.S. shores, leaving everything and everyone they knew to go to a place they’d never seen in search of a better life. Many used life savings to start businesses or farms. Some moved to remote and unsettled lands. The risks they took were a down payment on a better future.
Then something changed. Towards the middle of the last century, in the wake of the misery caused by the Great Depression, Americans were offered a Faustian bargain: cede wealth and liberty to the government and it will reduce risk in your lives. President Roosevelt sold America on the notion that government should shield its citizens from want and fear, thereby obligating Congress and the White House to act through legislation and regulation to protect those “freedoms.” Thus was born the modern
American regulatory state, ready to protect its citizens in every aspect of their lives and mitigate a laundry list of hazards from poverty in old age, to dying an in automobile accident, to being sickened by tainted foot, to being injured in the workplace. We’ve
been seduced into trading risk for oversight. Big Brother is keeping a watchful eye as we live and work. Despite what political talking heads
from either side of the aisle would have you believe, big government isn’t the problem, it’s just a symptom. The real problem is why we have big government. It’s because we as Americans have come to demand a government solution to every new risk that emerges, no matter the cost or how small the actual benefit. In the aviation industry that means a constant deluge of new rules and government mandates, many of which make good soundbites but which in actuality undermine efficiency and productivity with little or no impact on safety. The political demand for more and more regulation of every aspect of our
Despite what political talking heads from either side of the aisle would have you believe, big government isn’t the problem, it’s just a symptom. The real problem is why we have big government.
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DOMmagazine.com | march 2016
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