Category: free trade & free markets

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets too much government

Jonesing for Disaster

Puerto Rico, Jones Act, protectionism, hurricane, unintended consequences, folly

First, do no harm. Second, stop harming.

You might think that these would be the Two Commandments of Government.

But no.

Politicians make a good show of saving us, sure. Sadly, appearance alone suffices. For them. Much easier to announce a new program than get rid of a harmful old one.

Latest case? Courtesy of a storm and a new president, we now get to witness hurricane recovery mismanagement all over again, but this time outside the continental United States.

“The administration announced some bad news for Puerto Rico,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason. It will not, Mr. Shackford explains, “be waiving the Jones Act, which significantly restricts the ability of foreign or foreign-owned ships from bringing goods to Puerto Rico.”

The “unincorporated U.S. territory” that is the island must take its lumps.

The Jones Act* limits foreign ships port access . . . down to one. The mandate allowing port-to-port commerce only to American-manned ships is designed to save a few jobs and grease a few union wheels in the mainland.

And now, especially, that old, ongoing “centralized government planning for the benefit of a small group of powerful U.S. shipping interests” amounts to a real kick to a people already devastated by Hurricane Maria.

Closing ports to much needed help doesn’t help. An emergency order could suspend the ongoing harm of throwing roadblocks in the way of a swift recovery and rebuilding.

Or Congress could repeal the Jones Act entirely.

Neither is likely.

So the wounded Puerto Ricans — prior to the storm hobbled by years of territorial misgovernance — can expect more fake government help.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Not to be confused with the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917, which set up territorial  governance of the island.

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Common Sense folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Evil Capitalists Hook Brazil On Eating

Brazil, junk food, capitalism, free markets, New York Times, folly

Have you heard the latest?

More and more peoples around the world these days have the unfortunate misfortune of having adequate food — not merely vegetables either!! — thanks to the ruthlessly profit-seeking food producers and their unconscionable engagement in the division of labor, capital accumulation, and international trade.

It’s right there in The New York Times, which is, as you know, the paper of record.

“DealBook: How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food.”

Dastardly! Those Big American Businessmen must have kidnapped the Brazilians, strapped them into chairs, and pumped Doritos into those poor souls with a syringe. Heaven knows, the fecklessly irresponsible Brazilians can’t be held responsible for their own diets.

How bad is it?

This bad: “As growth slows in wealthy countries, Western food companies are aggressively expanding in developing nations, contributing to obesity and health problems.”

One expert quoted in the story (no hungry people consulted) says, “Part of the problem . . . is a natural tendency for people to overeat as they can afford more food.”

Worse than Hurricane Irma!

Thanks to the Times’s aggressive investigative journalism, we know that these brazenly food-selling companies do not even nag their international customers to be careful about their diets. Ergo, it’s chips and other indiscriminately convenient snacks for everybody, no strings attached.

It’s become all too easy to be well-fed and overfed and mis-fed.

Thanks a lot, capitalism.

Oh for the good old hunting-and-gathering days when human beings spent much of their time starving, and the world had the human population of Binghamton. No problem with anyone gorging on Twinkies and Doritos back then. No problem of epidemics of corpulence.

We’ve lost that swell paradise . . . perhaps forever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration based on original photo by David Goehring on Flickr.

 

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Wabbit Season — or Duck Responsibility Season?

Venezuela, socialism, rabbit, embargo, free trade

Venezuelans are starving. The country’s children are malnourished and — if something is not done soon — “it will be very difficult for these children ever to get back onto their nutritional growth curve.”

That is the testimony of the director of Caritas Venezuela.

Clearly, “Bolivarian” socialism has failed.

And yet, dictator Nicolas Maduro blames American “sanctions” for “exacerbating” the situation.

And offers up a “Rabbit Plan” to feed the people.

Yes, Maduro has called upon his countrymen to raise rabbits . . . and eat them.

But the source of the dark comedy isn’t just a dictator waxing eloquent on bunnies. “There is a cultural problem because we have been taught that rabbits are cute pets,” said the agriculture czar . . . whose first name is “Freddy.”

Holding a televised press conference with Maduro himself, last week, he insisted that “a rabbit is not a pet; it’s two-and-a-half kilos of meat that is high in protein, with no cholesterol.”

The funny part — the gallows humor, here — is this is what the grand planning of socialism has come to: not mass collaboration and an extended division of labor, but the people feeding themselves on small plots of land.

The Inca had developed a more effective mode of socialism.*

Just as humiliating for Bolivarians must be the trade embargo charge. Socialism is all about how superior government control is to the “anarchy in production” of market life. To blame their problems even a little on a capitalist country >not trading with them doesn’t merely admit defeat, it evades the last shred of responsibility.

I have a better “Rabbit Plan”: the tyrants should hop on down the bunny trail . . . freeing Venezuelans to recover.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It depended upon radical inegalitarianism, subordination, drudgery, servility, and lack of any meaningful freedom.

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free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Free the Truck Drivers

truck drivers, regulation, over regulation, rules, overreach, Matthew Garnett

Should our government liberate truck drivers from the country-wide prison in which they’re incarcerated?

You say I’m exaggerating. Being metaphorical.

Yes. Maybe metaphors and hyperbole are not to your taste, but suggesting an analogy, at least, is more than justified. The government does treat truck drivers like inmates . . . with no right to plan their own schedules.

In an article for The Federalist (“‘Overregulation’ Means Government Literally Deciding When I Work, Eat, Sleep”), Matthew Garnett attests to what the regulations mean in practice. He must obey five deadlines, only one — showing up on time — related to the objective requirements of the job. Also: He may work only so many hours before taking a break, only so many hours on the job and driving, only so many hours on the job and not driving, only so many hours per week.

“There’s no way I can decide for myself when I’m going to sleep or rest or drive,” Garnett “concedes.” “After all, I’m just a stupid truck driver. What would I know about such things?”

The mandatory pacing means that drivers often rush to meet a bureaucratic deadline even if they’d rather travel more slowly and safely. And rushing can be “a very, very bad thing to do when you’re operating an 80-foot, 80,000-pound vehicle that will go 70 miles an hour downhill,” Garnett observes.

What to do? Repeal it all.

Of course, hold the truck driver, like every other driver, responsible for conducting himself safely.

But don’t force him to obey continuous and arbitrary edicts about when to stop and go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest

Union Dues, Don’ts

labor unions, Membership Renewal, Supreme Court, force, coercion, signing, scab, membership

You may soon be able to shred your union card — if you are careful.

By “you” I mean You, the reluctant union member.

If you’re not one, though, perhaps you know somebody who is, someone who’d be happy to learn that the Supreme Court is on the verge of dealing a huge setback to coercive unionism.

John Hinderaker explains at Power Line. The Supreme Court is expected to soon decide a major case in a way that “bar[s] public employees from being forced into unions, or from being required to support unions via the fiction of ‘fair share contributions.’ ” (Much of that money goes straight to Democratic Party coffers.) With Neil Gorsuch now on the bench, a 4-4 holding pattern is expected to become a 5-4 decision in favor of plaintiffs suing for freedom from mandatory union membership.

Sounds good.

Problem is, though, that union officials are working to trick members into paying dues in perpetuity. For example, Education Minnesota is trying to con its 86,000 teachers into signing “Membership Renewal” forms assenting to automatic renewal of fees – unless the signatory makes a special effort to opt out.

The union hopes members will sign the cards and forget about them, continuing to fund the unions, and Democratic politics, indefinitely — even if the high court rescues everyone from mandatory membership.

So, if you happen to be trapped in a union at the moment — watch what you sign. And watch the news.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Workers’ Days

May Day, Labor Day, labor, communism, socialism, employment

Today is Labor Day. But it is worth remembering, “Labor Day” in most other countries is May 1 — also called “International Workers’ Day.”

One thing to be thankful for on our American Labor Day is that we can celebrate labor — perhaps, like me, you will celebrate it by working! — and not have it serve as a celebration of communism.

For yes, it was the socialists and communists who cooked up the original May Day labor celebration, in part to commemorate 1886’s workers’ protest gone horribly wrong, the Haymarket debacle. In the 19th century, much of the impetus for collectivism came from workers themselves, under the impression that they could do better if they rebelled and expropriated the capitalists’ holdings and “worked for themselves.”

For some reason these activists rarely struck out on their own, becoming entrepreneurs.

Nowadays, alas, many top-level entrepreneurs lean toward socialism, and it is the non-government working people who resist more government, and thereby the socialist program. Indeed, the most enthusiastic clade of socialists in America today seem to be in the ranks of the unemployed.*

Oregon was the first of these United States to make an early September celebration an official Labor holiday, in 1887. Seven years later, the federal government got on board. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law soon after the disastrous Pullman strike, to promote a more rule-of-law friendly celebration of workers, and avoid thinking about rioting and murder and police violence.

So, even folks like me, who labor in the vineyards of the people’s politics while still supporting private property and freedom of contract, can celebrate.

Or take a last summer nap.

Without any communists hiding under the hammock.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* In less than two centuries, socialism went from proletarian to Lumpenproletarian. Karl Marx? Rolling over in his grave.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Political Regroupings

Democratic Party, Democrats, strategy, principles, big government, leftism, donkey

What’s true for hurricanes is true for the Democratic Party.

After a disaster, it takes a while to regroup, really get a handle on what went wrong. Men and women take some time to absorb new realities.

A few interesting think pieces have come out of the left and center-left, recently, trying to digest what is wrong with the Democrats that they lost so much ground last year — even to someone like Donald Trump. To serious people, the “Russians did it” and “the Deplorables!” are not exactly winners.

Hillary Clinton may be stuck in that mode, but the Democratic Party needn’t be.

The more radical response came from John B. Judis, whose name was big in lefty magazines when I was young. His article “The Socialism America Needs Now,” in his old stomping grounds, The New Republic, tried to make the case for a vague leftism that could be called socialism, if you stretch the term, emphasizing bigger government without seeming too . . . Marxist.

Meanwhile, Mark Lilla has a new book of a somewhat more perceptive nature. Interviewed in Salon, Lilla makes much of the fact that while “smack in the middle” of the GOP’s website “is a list of 11 principles” . . . the Democratic Party could sport “no such statement.” Just a bunch of interest groups.

Interesting. Because, today, I went to GOP.com and saw no such principles list. But I did find a lot of Trump stuff . . . and a bunch of links to “identity groups.”

Talk about regrouping!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets local leaders nannyism property rights responsibility too much government

How to Ruin a Thoroughfare

city planner, city planning, Portland, Oregon, Better Naito, business

Cities require some planning. But the further beyond a certain minimum, the greater the ease with which a central planning authority can be captured — by zealots with more stars in their eyes than brains in their heads.

Portland, Oregon, is a case in point. Students from Portland State University had this brainchild: “Better Naito,” a project to transform SW Naito Parkway to “enhance the lives of pedestrians and bikers along the Waterfront,” as Jessica Miller of Cascade Policy Institute explains. Their notion was to reduce “car capacity from two lanes to one” during the peak season (actually more than half the year), opening up the cordoned-off lane to folks walking and riding bicycles.

I’m not kidding.

Though proponents of the program enthuse about the “positive feedback” from the public, they tend not to deal with complaints from adjacent business owners, who now “see fewer shoppers” and must accommodate “employees who experience longer commutes.”

Opponents are organizing. The Portland Business Alliance promotes its petition with a simple question: “How Exactly Is ‘Better Naito’ Better?”

Portland is a prime example of the New Urbanism in action, which seems set on creating cramped places for people to live and discouraging folks from using their own cars. I’ve talked about this before, focusing on planning critic and Cato Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole. He has long been fighting the city planning cranks who appear dubious about their very job: providing roads and sewers and waterways that serve the all a city’s citizens, native, newcomer, and traveler alike.

My advice? Sign that petition, if you vote in Portland.

The rest of us better plan to take a hard look at our city planners.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability education and schooling free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders national politics & policies responsibility too much government

SEZ Ed

education, free trade zone, Shenzhen, Chicago, Detroit, regulations, reform

The great barrier to educational advance in our time is the federal government. The second great barrier? Your state government. The third great barrier? Your local government.

Proposals to break up government-subsidized and -enforced school monopolies have ranged from tax credit proposals and voucher programs to charter schools and (the biggest success so far) home schooling.

But it may be time to advance something a little . . . more daring. Break the stranglehold of government on dysfunctional schooling.

How?

Apply the “free trade zone” (FTZ) idea to education.

We remember the FTZ proposal because of its rise in popularity amongst academics and policy wonks in the 1980s and 1990s. But the notion is an old one. And in China, where they are called “special economic zones” (SEZs) — and it is this term that is catching on — they have been amazingly successful, the former fishing village of Shenzhen being the most obvious example.

What about America? Take a devastated region, like inner-city Chicago or Detroit,* and simply nullify the regulations and rules. (This probably would require federal enabling legislation on top of state leadership.) With the ensuing freedom and opportunity, entrepreneurs, established businesses and schools, teachers, community groups and activists could cook up new solutions to the oldest schooling problem there is:

actual education.

I’ve heard whispers of this Educational SEZ idea for some time now.

It is time for rational and quite public discussion.

And then the shouting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Of course, any area could work. The reason to focus on demonstrably failed educational regions is that such areas have lost hope, and thus the politically resistant are likely to give in and allow it.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

ObamaCare’s Casualties

healthcare, Obamacare, TrumpCare, ACA, Affordable Care Act, Healthcare reform, government, socialism

We all know the truth: Partisan “warfare” yields the usual war casualty, truth itself. Now, because of the increasing weight of federal government presence in healthcare markets, partisan untruth incurs medical costs.

Take the goofy Republican plan(s) to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare — pushed with so many half-truths and downright lies that one wonders where to begin. But before die-hard Republicans get too incensed about this judgment, let’s note that the supporters of the mis-named “Affordable Care Act” are no better.

Probably worse.

“Fact-checking,” writes David Harsanyi on the media mishandling of ObamaCare, “has evolved from an occasionally useful medium to an exercise in revisionism and diversion.” Journalists now seem more like spin doctors.

And their patient? The reputation of ObamaCare’s namesake.

One journalist, for example, insists that “Obama didn’t lie or ‘mangle facts’ or mislead anyone,” Harsanyi writes.

What does this journalist claim Obama did in repeatedly promising “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”?

Well, “he gave a ‘misguided . . . pledge.’ The word ‘misguided’ intimates that Obama wasn’t misleading anyone on purpose.”

It helps the former president save face if he accidentally got us in this fix. He had the best intentions, you know.

Worse yet, as both sides snipe about these little untruths, they lose sight of the biggest truth, which I wrote about this weekend: that “government-run” means “government-decided,” and that, in turn, means

government deciding matters of your life and your death.

It would be helpful if our leaders took this all a bit more seriously, daring to speak truth . . . to us . . . as well as to themselves and each other.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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