Is Learning to Regulate Like Learning to Cook?

By Scott Hempling

Pages: 1 2

Culinary Competitions: Converting a Nation of Cooks into an Audience of Consumers

8. The Food Network has “shifted [its] target audience from people who love to cook to people who love to eat,” says Pollan.

Do we consume the arguments of others more than we create thoughts of our own?

9. Consider Iron Chef, where famous restaurant chefs wage gladiatorial combat. These culinary contests focus more on competition than communication. The contestants make miracles that home cooks could never replicate.

Do our hearing rooms host battles for position, or opportunities for erudition?

10. Pollan: “(If you ask me, the key to victory on any of these shows comes down to one factor: bacon.)”

Is there, in every advocacy argument, some not-so-secret ingredient—some theme, phrase, or flourish—that, being both soothing and filling, seems so inarguable as to sway the psyche? Do phrases like customer “harm,” financial “integrity,” “reliability,” “global competition,” “light-handed regulation,” and “green” induce us to swallow dishes that, exposed, we might send back?

We Need a Dose of Julia’s Mastery

Julia Child “filled the air with common sense and uncommon scent,” says the Harvard University citation accompanying her honorary doctorate. She succeeded the hard way: through technique, analysis, and practice. As can regulators. So what will be our goal—finding “The Next Food Network Star” or “Mastering the Art”?

—Scott Hempling is executive director of the National Regulation Research Institute (NRRI), a project of the Washington-based National Association of Regulation Utility Commissioners. He’s a frequent contributor to MANAGING POWER and POWER magazines. A version of this column previously appeared on the NRRI site.

Pages: 1 2