Bounded By the Limits of Regulations
A few months ago, we wrote a post here about the controversial high-tech swimsuits that permeate swimming competitions. Recently, FINA (the International Swimming Federation) issued a ban [New York Times] on these high-tech racing swimsuits in official competitions. Basically, this decision stems from the fact that these suits have become more of a “doping” mechanism, putting less value on swimmers’ skill and talent. As a result of FINA’s decision, racing suits will be restricted in the amount of a swimmer’s body that they cover, as well as the types of material that they can be made of. Through all this, I can’t help but imagine that swimsuit manufacturers are having a fit about this new rule that effectively pulls their product from the markets that they’re intended for.
We can generalize the impact of regulations on companies to include engineering firms. If you spend resources to develop a product that does not meet requirements stated by government regulations, then in the capitalist point of view, your product is essentially useless because you cannot sell it to consumers and profit from it. Government regulations are especially burdensome to pharmaceutical and medical device companies that make devices such as artery stents and valves, because virtually all their products must receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before hitting the markets. Such government bureaucracy exists with good intentions in mind. In this case, the purpose of FDA regulations is to protect the end consumer from potentially harmful products. In the case of FINA’s ban of high-tech swimsuits, the purpose is to protect the integrity of the sport of swimming.
Swimming might be transformed into a purer form of the past.
Going back to the story of swimming, I have a personal interest in the issue of high-tech suits because I was a swimmer throughout middle school and high school. So-called “full-body suits” emerged at the 2000 Olympic Games around the time when I started swimming. During the seven years that I spent swimming, I never went further than wearing a Speedo Fastskin 2 “jammer” (suit that covers from waist to knees) in competitions. Some may say that I didn’t care enough to drop a few hundred bucks on a full-body suit used in a few major competitions each year, but in the end I believe that it’s the swimmer that makes the swimmer, not the suit that makes the swimmer (and yes, I love the sport of swimming). Skill and experience in the water can only be acquired through putting in the effort during training, but even swimmers who hold steadfastly to this belief will feel at a disadvantage in competition if they don’t follow suit (no pun intended) and invest in high-tech racing gear like their peers. Hopefully the FINA regulation will remedy this.
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