Waiting for Deregulation Is Like ‘Waiting for Godot’

Growth and innovation are back in fashion. This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, awarded to three leading scholars of “creative destruction,” makes it official. No less notably, in the US, the post-neoliberal center-left has lately adopted the neoliberal preference for deregulation in pursuit of progress. Abundance is all the rage.

Philip Howard must be pleased, if a little bewildered. For decades, in a series of excellent and widely praised books, he’s been explaining how a crazy excess of rules and litigation chokes growth. Policymakers have all but ignored him. His latest, Saving Can-Do, takes up the cause yet again. It’s very good: short, to the point and suddenly in tune with the times.