The Origins of Regulations and the First Compliance Management System – Part 1

 

Moses walked down the mountain. He held up the stone tablet and said – “Behold! The Ten Commandments laid out by God. Ye shall follow these absolutely.”

The elders looked at the tablet and one of them whispered to the others. “Great job security. We will be needed for years to come.” And then boldly he shouted, “This is wonderful, O Moses. We will need to help the common man interpret it and follow it carefully.”

“And we will come up with specific rules that will eliminate ambiguity from these commandments,” said another, “for example how do you define ‘neighbor’? Is it okay to covet the possessions of someone living down the street or the next street or the next town?”

Yet another chimed in, “And what is the incentive for following these commandments?”

“And what is the punishment for breaking any one of these?” Said one more.

“But all these rules will cripple business,” came a strong stentorian voice from the back. “If I do not covet what someone else has, why would I work hard to make more shekels”.

“Not work on Sundays?” Came a plaintive cry. “Sunday bring more customers and the highest revenues.”

Moses smiled, “Why don’t we try self-policing and self-control? If everyone follows these commandments,  all your issues will fade into oblivion bringing prosperity to all.”

“No,” said the elder with the longest beard. “That will not work. We will assign regulatory bodies to make the rules and enforce them – Joseph, you will run the NLRB and ensure the Sunday stuff. Abigail, you will run Homeland Security and take care of #6 through #10. Abraham, you will run the FCC and ensure no one takes the Lord’s name in vain.”

“I, Abel, will run OSHA and keep all workplaces safe.”

“And I will run the SEC to keep all trading fair and honest.”

“Me! Me! Me! I will run the EPA.”

“To run all this, we will need shekels, and I will be the IRS,” said Samson flexing his muscles. “Everyone will pay me 10 shekels each year to run his business, else I will bring the house down.”

Meanwhile the business leaders were deep in discussion in a corner. Each had a drink in his hand and was sampling the pita/hummus combination that Isaac had brought. They were lamenting the need to hire more workers to keep audit trails of their business so that they could provide the elders with the relevant reports. A young man sitting separately was listening to all this. Suddenly he got up, and drew from his cloak a multi-colored abacus.

“Wait, don’t panic. We have a solution. We can automate all this activity for just a few shekels. Look at this abacus. We can generate the reports for each of you,” he said.

“But all our businesses are different – he sells olives, while I manufacture clothes and he digs holes. How can one abacus – ? Or does each one of us have to buy an abacus? It’s very expensive, I am sure and – ” said one of the businessmen.

“Sorry for interrupting,” the young man said, “Ours is a cloud-based service model – you all will use our one abacus, but with different areas on it – well secured and private. So – no need to buy an abacus, and we even have a mock audit module so that you can test yourself and be ready for the elders.”

“But these elders keep changing the rules!”

“And we have a change module that keeps track of the changes and alerts you as needed. We have everything you need, for every industry.”

“I don’t believe it. That seems to good to be true.” one of the businessmen started to say, when a big BOOM sounded, and a very loud voice roared, “BELIEVE! And use a simple AUTOMATED system or face my wrath.”

The businessmen looked all around and in a chorus said, “Yes, O Divine presence.”

 

To be continued…