The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on June 13th was home to many basket-flowers (Plectocephalus americanus), one of which you saw in a photograph several posts ago. Now from that same session here's a twin portrait looking down at a bud above an open flower head. Nearby I also noticed that something had apparently broken off a flower head or seed head, leaving a hollow stalk open at one end. A couple of silk strands in the "chasm" show that a spider had taken advantage of the deep opening, just as I then took advantage of it to make a minimally focused, minimally colored, and minimally composed portrait.
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I call your attention to Dominic Pino's August 2024 article "What Washington Should Learn from Tech Companies." He explains that those companies have done so fabulously not merely from the creative abilities of the people in them, but also because for the most part the tech sector hasn't been dragged down by the burdensome regulations that a convoluted and ever-growing conglomerate of government agencies has inflicted on sectors of the economy that are more physical, like manufacturing:
The bias against physical capital also shows in the regulatory apparatus. At the local, state, and federal levels, there are environmental regulations that make it difficult to build stuff. Major projects require environmental-impact statements that can take years to complete. Any project can be subject to costly lawsuits from activist groups that seek to block it.
The number of veto points for a project multiplies when one also includes land-use and zoning regulations. Businesses may have to request exemptions from these regulations to build, an often costly political process. The strength of political connections can become more important than the soundness of the investment idea in deciding whether to go forward with the project.
U.S. labor unions are productivity-killers, in part because U.S. labor-relations law sets them up in perpetual opposition to employers. It also prevents most forms of competition between unions by granting a monopoly on representation privileges to a particular union in the workplace.
You can read plenty more about such burdens in Dominic Pino's full National Review article.
© 2024 Steven Schwartzman
