Category: free trade & free markets

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free trade & free markets regulation too much government

The AB5 Agenda

nanny state, freelancers, independent contractor, licensing, labor unions, regulations, general freedom

AB5 is the code name for legislation passed in California a few years ago to kill freelance work. 

Ex-freelancers hate AB5; employers who can’t afford to convert contractors into regular employees hate AB5. 

Unions, on the other hand, love AB5; lawmakers also love AB5.

A California citizen initiative partly reversed it. Then the Ninth Circuit at least temporarily reversed the reversal.

Though Democrats have made several attempts to bring it to the federal level, Congress has not passed a federal version of AB5. But now the Department of Labor is acting to impose a rule to challenge the status of many independent contractors, scheduled to take effect March 11. This AB5-like rule enunciates six criteria determining whether contract work may still be called contract work.

This affects what I do. One of my dozen jobs is citizen-initiative work. Various state governments have done all they can apart from comprehensive AB5-like rules to impede my ability to collaborate with petitioners to get citizen initiatives on the ballot. It is most efficient to pay these contractors per thing they do instead of earning a fixed salary or getting paid an hourly wage. 

Politicians and bureaucrats know this.

If the Labor Department’s new rule takes effect, will contractors working with me pass the test? Or will we all be thrown into chaos and confusion?

It is being challenged in court. 

Many voters — who are, after all, wage-earners or salaried employees — may not care very much; it may seem irrelevant to them. But it is time for them to inquire why some politicians and union bosses want to destroy the ability of freelancers to freely work for outfits short of becoming full-time employees.

For the ramifications will reach far beyond my niche “industry.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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SAD Regulators

nanny state, regulations, food, safety, health

Americans are getting sicker and fatter on government-approved, corporate-made foodstuffs, yet government continues to crack down on the sale of natural and home-made foods.

The classic case is raw, whole milk. I’ve talked about this before. The most recent case is from Amish country, where the State of Pennsylvania raided a farm “on suspicion of selling ‘illegal milk,’ among other products,” explains The Epoch Times, and the farm “is being sued by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General and Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.” 

The Amish farm “has been ordered to halt all sales of its dairy products, inspiring widespread anger over what critics have called a blatant example of government overreach.”

At issue is government interference in farmers and customers freely choosing to skip the major grocery outlets multinational companies and dealing with each other on a local, free-market basis. “Capitalist acts between consenting adults,” as Robert Nozick put it.

But it’s especially galling when placed in the wider context of the FDA’s and USDA’s obvious failure to produce a healthier populace. Though the state’s attorney general insists that “we cannot ignore the illnesses and further potential harm posed by [the] distribution of these unregulated products,” the illnesses caused by what many call the Standard America Diet (SAD) go unnoticed and unregistered as such. 

One standard for “the market,” another for the regulators.

Meanwhile, the State of Wisconsin is pushing a new bill to impose a $20,000 annual sales cap on participants in the state’s cottage food industry, “one of the most restrictive in the nation,” explains Suranjan Sen, an attorney at the Institute for Justice — a legal aid outfit often mentioned in these pages.

The very point of the law is to protect brick-and-mortar grocery and baked-goods stores — not the health of consumers. It has the backing of powerful lobbyists.

Looking for healthier foods and healthier economies? Don’t look to government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture

Milei Defends Capitalism

Argentina, Javier Milei, Capitalism, WEF

Capitalism is better than socialism.

The new libertarian president of Argentina, Javier Milei, recently explained the virtues of the free market to attendees of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Milei said that capitalism generates “an explosion of wealth,” that capitalism and the industrial revolution “lifted 90 percent of the world’s population out of poverty,” that a free market society is both practical and just.

“Far from being the cause of our problems, free enterprise capitalism as an economic system is the only tool we have to end hunger, poverty, and destitution across the planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable.”

As its answer to the practicality and justice of a capitalist social system, the left proposes the injustice of “social justice,” according to which “capitalism is bad because it is individualistic” and “collectivism is good because it is altruistic.”

Collectivism hobbles the entrepreneur and “makes it impossible for him to produce better goods and offer better services at a better price.” Which only impoverishes us. This is neither practical nor moral.

The West is in danger because it is allowing capitalism to be destroyed. We need to remember why we need it.

Will any of the dignitaries who heard Milei’s talk learn its lessons? Maybe not if they’re like WEF’s founder, Klaus Schwab, who looks at the international predations of the Chinese Communist Party and sees a “responsible, responsive” state.

But maybe a few others will. And then a few more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Market Rents Work in Argentina

Argentina, housing, flag, freedom

Markets work and markets for housing work.

This is what the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, has sought to confirm by means of radically free-market economic policies. He is going as far as he can as fast as he can to make Argentina a freer and more prosperous country.

Can he succeed in the long run?

Many exploiters of the socialist status quo ante are bitterly opposed to his reforms and hope to undo them. We’ve seen before how quickly a relatively anticapitalist administration can kill the freedom-expanding reforms of a relatively procapitalist one.

But at least for now, Milei is proving his point, as witness the market for apartments in Buenos Aires.

The Buenos Aires newspaper El Cronista reports (with the help of Google Translate) that with the end of rent controls, the supply of rental units in Buenos Aires has doubled and prices for units have fallen by around 20%. The paper cites data by the Argentine Real Estate Chamber and the reports of brokers.

Under rent control, by 2023 the supply of rentals had shrunk to just 400 units. “Today we have a stock of more than 800 apartments, and it is growing day by day,” says Alejandro Bennazar, a director at the Chamber.

Eight hundred units is still low given the size of the capital city, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Getting rid of the controls caused supply to double instantly. An excellent start.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets media and media people political economy

Dollar Store Plague

dollar store, cheap food

Tucker Carlson said harsh things about “Dollar Stores” and “libertarian economics” on Glenn Greenwald’s System Update for December 16, as summarized in the show’s tweet:

“Libertarian economics was a scam perpetrated by the beneficiaries of the economic system that they were defending . . .

I think you need to ask: ‘Does this economic system produce a lot of Dollar Stores?’

And if it does, it’s not a system that you want, because it degrades people — and it makes their lives worse and it increases exponentially the amount of ugliness in your society.

And anything that increases ugliness is evil.

So if it’s such a good system, why do we have all these Dollar Stores?”

At Reason, Liz Wolfe fell for the same trap that has apparently ensnared Mr. Carlson. She defended progress in the U.S. since the time he was born. What? 

Contra Liz Wolfe, and in defense of Tucker, I’d say we are indeed living in tough times. Inflation’s way up, the birth rate is down, life-expectancy’s dropping, and a whole lot of Americans struggle to pay bills and keep even, financially, much less “get ahead.” The proliferation of dollar stores shows that the upscale stores are too expensive for too many.

They are a refuge for the poor.

But are they evilly uglifying, though? 

Perhaps not as pretty as Safeway or Target, but they’re clean and you can buy a can of soup for four bits, a dollar less than at an upscale market.

Are the rise of discount consumer goods stores, like Dollar Tree and Dollar General, especially hideous and indicative of a blow to . . . the American spirit? 

Seems more revelatory of a weird elitist streak in Tucker.

And what does libertarian — free-market — economics have to do with it? Libertarian economists have opposed all the major drivers of the current system: central banking, deficit spending, sovereign debt accumulation, taxation for redistribution, subsidy. The policies that have truly “hollowed out” the last semblance of progress.

But Tucker blames libertarian economists’ defense of equity markets for not only social decline but Dollar Stores.

He’s fallen for the progressives’ perennial scam: see a problem in our mixed economy and blame the freer part . . . not the role of elitist schemers with political power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

dollar store, decadence

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The Crime of Mowing the Lawn

gas powered lawn mower

As war rages in the Middle East, Ukraine, and elsewhere, some U.S. politicians struggle to devastate the American landscape. One of their targets is American landscaping equipment.

In Washington state, lawmakers hope to put an end to gas-powered landscaping. If they succeed, the ordinary activities of humble homeowners and businessmen — humble but determined to keep using Yardmax lawn mowers and Echo leaf blowers — would be criminalized.

Regulations instead of bombs will be the way. If you don’t follow the regulations, then you’ll be “bombed” with fines. Or jail time.

State Representative Amy Walen is pushing legislation, HB 1868, that would “prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new outdoor power equipment,” a prohibition to take effect as early as January 1, 2026.

Persons using gas-powered equipment bought before the ban takes effect would presumably not be subject to fines or jail time. They might still be subject to investigation, though, if one of their grandfathered gas-powered tools looks too shiny.

And they might be at risk if they ignore the prohibition and buy post-January-2026-produced gas-powered mowers from out of state.

Exactly how the legislation would play out is hard to predict. But it does not look good for the average guy who just wants to keep his plot in shape.

Government agencies dealing with “natural or human-caused emergency events” would be exempt, at least initially. They wouldn’t have to worry about spending a year in jail for efficiently cutting the lawn. 

Just everybody else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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