Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets

Stark Protectionism

The markets of the ancient world were often sewn up by kings and courts and priesthoods. In Egypt or Assyria or Rome, you had to pay off a guild to practice a trade, at least if yours was a common craft, and even ask permission of the sovereign.

Closed entry was the norm, and it certainly contributed to the age’s forbidding pyramid of wealth (which overshadows present One Percenter concerns): Vast hordes of the very poor and the “just scraping by”; tradesmen; slaves to the landed and wealthy; and then the very few rich and powerful. In Europe, this system opened up, in fits and starts, after the fall of Rome, but the basic idea was retained in the policy of mercantilism, against which Anders Chydenius, Adam Smith, and the exponents of laissez faire argued so persuasively. The social advantages of competition for customers and laborers and capital became widely recognized.

And yet free trade never won full sway anywhere.

Cut to today. Dateline: St. Louis, Missouri.

Michael Munie

Michael Munie wanted to go into the moving business, but needed the permission of … his competitors.

This, the very opposite of “free enterprise,” is the living embodiment of mercantilist “public-​private” collusion, where the state secures existing businesses from “upstart” competitors in what Timothy Sandefur calls “an especially stark example of legislative protectionism.”

So, best wishes to Mr. Munie’s lawsuit, Munie v. Skouby, and the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has helped him bring it. Freedom requires the breaking down of barriers to business entry. Always has. Always will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Ronald Reagan

“Politics is supposed to be the second-​oldest profession.  I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

A Right, Yet Wrong

Wisconsin Democrats turned in more than a million signatures yesterday to force a recall election for Republican Gov. Scott Walker. That’s far more than the 540,000 signatures required by law.

State officials will now check the signatures and, barring tremendous irregularities, will set an election six to ten weeks after that, depending on whether a primary is needed to determine the Democrats’ candidate. Some recall processes require an up-​or-​down vote on the official being recalled, but Wisconsin simply holds a new election.

Only two state governors have been successfully recalled in the nation’s entire history: California’s Gray Davis (2003) and North Dakota’s Lynn Frazier (1921). Both deserved it.

Yet, while I applaud the recall as a good process and a fundamental right of citizens — not only did I personally work on the recall of the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, in 2010, I wholeheartedly cheered the recall of Davis — I hope the people of Badger Nation will vote to keep their gutsy governor.

Walker’s reform, making public employees pay more toward their hefty healthcare and pension benefits and restricting collective bargaining by public employee unions, understandably angered the state’s labor unions. But the reform has already saved overburdened taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, a report released by the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators shows that districts across the state are financially more secure and have been able to hire more teachers.

The right to recall is essential, but replacing Gov. Walker would punish him for doing what’s right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Today

Georgia’s royal governor arrested; Mayor Barry arrested

On Jan. 18, 1776, the Council of Safety in Savannah, Georgia, placed the colony’s royal governor, James Wright, under house arrest. In February 1776, Wright escaped to the British man-​of-​war, HMS Scarborough. After failing to negotiate a settlement with the revolutionary congress, he sailed for London. On December 29, 1778, Wright returned with troops and was able to retake Savannah.

On Jan. 18, 1990, Mayor Marion Barry was arrested by FBI agents and District of Columbia police at the Vista International Hotel in downtown Washington and charged with drug possession and the use of crack cocaine. In September 1991, he was sentenced to six months in prison. After serving his sentence, Barry reentered D.C. politics, winning a seat on the city council and then being elected mayor in 1994 for an unprecedented fourth term. Apparently, voters wanted to give Barry another crack.

 

Categories
Thought

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

Categories
Today

Eisenhower warns of military-​industrial complex; Battle of Cowpens

On Jan. 17, 1961, in his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the American people to keep a careful eye on what he called the “military-​industrial complex” that has developed in the post-​World War II years. Eisenhower asked Americans to guard against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-​technological elite,” which could weaken or destroy the very institutions and principles it was designed to protect.

On Jan. 17, 1781, Brigadier General Daniel Morgan and a mixed Patriot force of militiamen and Continental riflemen rout British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton and a group of Redcoats and Loyalists at the Battle of Cowpens. The strategy of the battle was recreated in the movie “The Patriot.”