Category: too much government

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

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big government, big tech, big business surveillance, censorship

For well over a century, politicians have pushed Big Government/​Big Business partnerships. The policy, indeed, is as old as politics. While we who like free markets often like [some of] the products of today’s biggest businesses, we must recognize that much of what these corporations sell us comes with strings attached — as we’ve found out to our dismay in the corruption of major social media outfits; as proven by the attacks on our speech and to the undermining of free elections.

Before the #TwitterFiles revelations, Michael Rectenwald, author of The Google Archipelago and other books, wrote a commentary that appeared in the pre-​Christmas edition of The Epoch Times: “Who Really Owns Digital Tech?” In less than a thousand words, Rectenwald makes clear how deep governments have been involved in the tech space — particularly the Internet Space.

“Given the evidence of government start-​up funding,” Rectenwald reasons, “we may have to concede the argument that the internet might have developed differently, more slowly, or not at all if the Defense Department hadn’t been involved at the outset. Likely, what we know as the internet would have become a system of private networks” — and in this dispersed-​power system, free speech would not become a major issue, because not as easy a target.

As it is, however, “Twitter has operated as an instrument of the uniparty-​run state, squelching whatever the regime deems ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’” Rectenwald writes, giving us an ominous list of the topics of xinformation:

  • warfare
  • economics
  • pandemics
  • elections
  • climate change catastrophism
  • the Great Reset

There are big gains for … some. Big Biz/​Big Gov partnerships imply gains for both partners: business people gain access to governmental power and favors, and politicians and functionaries gain leverage to mold the citizenry. 

And that is where we have seen the partnership’s worst.

So far.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

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For well over a century, politicians have pushed Big Government/​Big Business partnerships. The policy, indeed, is as old as politics. While we who like free markets often like [some of] the products of today’s biggest businesses, we must recognize that much of what these corporations sell us comes with strings attached — as we’ve found out to our dismay in the corruption of major social media outfits; as proven by the attacks on our speech and to the undermining of free elections.

Before the #TwitterFiles revelations, Michael Rectenwald, author of The Google Archipelago and other books, wrote a commentary that appeared in the pre-​Christmas edition of The Epoch Times: “Who Really Owns Digital Tech?” In less than a thousand words, Rectenwald makes clear how deep governments have been involved in the tech space — particularly the Internet Space.

“Given the evidence of government start-​up funding,” Rectenwald reasons, “we may have to concede the argument that the internet might have developed differently, more slowly, or not at all if the Defense Department hadn’t been involved at the outset. Likely, what we know as the internet would have become a system of private networks” — and in this dispersed-​power system, free speech would not become a major issue, because not as easy a target.

As it is, however, “Twitter has operated as an instrument of the uniparty-​run state, squelching whatever the regime deems ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’” Rectenwald writes, giving us an ominous list of the topics of xinformation:

  • warfare
  • economics
  • pandemics
  • elections
  • climate change catastrophism
  • the Great Reset

There are big gains for … some. Big Biz/​Big Gov partnerships imply gains for both partners: business people gain access to governmental power and favors, and politicians and functionaries gain leverage to mold the citizenry. 

And that is where we have seen the partnership’s worst.

So far.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with DALL-​E2

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crime and punishment general freedom too much government

Impending Gifts

Santa, New York, regulations

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas, denizens of the Sort-​of-​Great State of New York!

It is certainly a time to be jolly. For some time now, Santa and his legislative elves have been striving to give you and yours an ever more overbearing medical regime. 

Take a gander at some of the goodies that have been proposed in the Empire State’s Legislative Workshop:

  • A416 would let governors or health officials detain persons “afflicted with a communicable disease” as long as a state of health emergency has been declared.
  • A279 would institute a statewide vaccine database. If you’re vaccinated, you’ll be in the database unless you make a point of requesting otherwise (who knows, maybe even then).
  • A8398 would eliminate many religious exemptions from compulsory vaccination and limit the ability of local governments and private organizations to issue medical exemptions.
  • A02240 would mandate flu vaccines for children in daycare.

Santa sure has been working overtime the last couple of years.

Will such bills, lapsed at the moment, soon see the light of day? Let’s hope! You people of the State of New York really need this kind of bounty. Especially if you’ve been suffering any delusions about the propriety of independent judgement and personal discretion in such matters.

Did I say Santa? Maybe I meant the Grinch. Or Krampus. The real Santa would be putting moving-​expense vouchers in everyone’s stockings to help them get the heck out of this beleaguered state.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with DALL‑E2, John Tenniel, JG

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free trade & free markets property rights too much government

First, Stop Doing That

zoning, regulations, buildings, permits

If a government’s taxes and regulations are making shelter ever more expensive, what should that government do instead?

Stop pushing the disastrous policies, perhaps?

Unlike some other governors who shall remain nameless (one of them rhymes with “DeSantis”), Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin understands that you don’t make things better by making them worse.

In August, Youngkin bluntly told a state senate committee that Virginia homes are too expensive and that a major cause is government interference with the market: “unnecessary regulations, over-​burdensome and inefficient local governments, restrictive zoning policies, and an ideology of fighting tooth and nail against any new development.”

The many bottlenecks include low-​density zoning rules that permit only a single house per property. Arlington County, Virginia, is one local government working to reform zoning so that more houses can be built on a property.

In November, Youngkin proposed a Make Virginia Home plan to unravel many regulations. City Journal notes that although the plan is “short on details,” it’s a good start.

Under the governor’s plan, the state would streamline environmental reviews, investigate how to liberalize the state’s building codes and land-​use and zoning laws, impose deadlines on local governments to speed up approvals of development, and give local governments incentives to adopt their own market-​liberating reforms.

This agenda is indeed only a beginning. But it does recognize a major cause of sky-​rocketing housing costs and what must be done to begin to reduce those costs.

That’s just Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets too much government

“m” Is for “Misnamed”

Florida, zoning

What does Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration — more specifically, the state’s misnamed Department of Economic Opportunity (mDEO) — think it’s doing?

The town of Gainesville, Florida, has liberalized its zoning laws to legalize the construction of certain small apartment buildings.

Who knew that building any housing on property owned by developers or by persons letting developers build on their property was illegal to begin with? But better late than never, Gainesville.

Not so fast! says the reputedly pro-​free-​market but apparently also pro-​central-​planning DeSantis administration.

According to an mDEO lawsuit, it’s illogical “for the City to argue that by entirely removing the concept of lower density detached residential dwellings…it is doing anything more than helping provide housing to college students and higher income residents.”

Huh? Providing housing only for people who will use that housing! Via various voluntary market transactions!! Is there no end to human deviltry?

Of course, as Reason writer Christian Britschgi points out, increasing the supply of housing units of any type will tend to reduce the demand for all already-​existing housing, lowering the rents of units, including low-​end units, that developers may not be building at the moment. 

I guess the folks at the mDEO aren’t especially ardent fans of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson.

And anyway, what about the inalienable right of anybody of any income level to make market arrangements to shelter themselves from the elements?

In the last few years, DeSantis has gained a good reputation, daring to resist the Big Government mob. Now he needs to resist that mob in his own administration. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets media and media people too much government

Time & Tide & Race

Daylight Saving Time, racism, race

The big news? Daylight Saving Time may soon be history. “The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the Sleep Research Society and other medical groups have advocated for ending the practice, calling for the adoption of a permanent standard time that would not involve shifting forward each spring and falling back each autumn.”

That’s an important organizational voice for getting rid of Congress’s current jury-​rigging scheme for commerce and recreation in America.

It has costs. Imposed on us. On our sleep patterns.

But the passage quoted from CNN was not the news angle that the “Cable News Network” story, by Jacqueline Howard, emphasized.

The deleterious effects of lurching back and forth twice a year is not what CNN headlined. The fact (and commonsense conjecture) that these bi-​annual shifts are bad for us? Not as interesting as that it could all be racist.

The title of Howard’s piece is “Daylight Saving Time sheds light on lack of sleep’s disproportionate impact in communities of color.”

The key piece of information? “Growing evidence shows that lack of sleep and sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea, remain more prevalent in Black, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino communities, and these inequities can have long-​term detrimental implications for physical health, even raising the risk of certain chronic diseases.”

If true, this is a political reason to get the Social Engineering Class to finally balk at the pseudo-​Saving chronometer-​jiggering laws.

But what does that say about said class? (A class not limited to, but somehow paradigmatically represented by, Democrats?) That they don’t care about the harm they do unless it can be shown to accrue predominantly to racial minorities?

There’s something sick here, oddly racist.

But we can accept this nonsense for the win, if it helps stop our ritual springing forward and falling back.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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