Interesting news in this WaPo story: thereâ??s a site in the works, to be housed at regulation.gov, where anyone will be able to submit comments on pending federal regulations. Now, I am most assuredly not one of those people who finds appealing a vision of government as some godawful interminable PTA meeting â?? the kind of thing that makes people use adjectives like â??participatoryâ? and â??deliberativeâ? and think erotic thoughts about Benjamin Barber. Still, this is one more way to get around transaction costs of a certain kind â?? you donâ??t have to trek out to a hearing in order to voice an opinion, which could make the process more representative. In principle, thatâ??s good. On the other hand, no doubt there are any number of regulations which sound very nice to the average person but impose grotesque burdens on industry that are now nipped in the bud because the hearings are dominated by paid flaks. Nevertheless, it should be an interesting experiment. Maybe they can structure it like a massive group blog, with the whole of the citizenry as its bloggers.