Well this is off topic and a few days old but the board is kinda slow.

At the risk of being a contrarian, it seems to me that in many areas there is less regulation now then there was 30, 40, or 50 years ago, and in those areas where there is more regulation, a lot of it can be explained by things just getting more crowded. Business likes growth, and growth brings more people, which means more chance of friction, and inevitably the rules for getting along get more complicated. And in the case of the CO runoff rules, I think those are like a century old. That's a long long time before the first hippy had his VW microbus break down in Boulder, and since he was broke he decided to stay.

I don't think the country has slipped so much as that it's playing in a much tougher league now. Countries like China, India, have technology and industry and people who are tasting the fruits of that work for the first time and man, are they hungry! Whereas here we've been living a pretty good life since WW2 ended and people lose their edge a little bit. But compared to the Europeans we've still got it going on as a country.