Category: free trade & free markets

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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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crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets

Allowed to Make a Living

Bureau of Occupational Affairs

In 2014, Sally Ladd started a service to help clients in the Poconos rent out their vacation homes. She posted notices on Airbnb, arranged for cleaning, and performed other chores.

But then, in 2017, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs — one of the many government agencies in the world that should not exist — told her that she was operating in Pennsylvania as a real estate broker without a license and must get one or shut down.

The obstacle was senseless. Ladd was already satisfying her customers. And getting the license would have entailed more than 300 hours of schooling, two exams, three years of apprenticeship, and opening an office in Pennsylvania. (Ladd lives in New Jersey.)

She had to shut down.

But she didn’t give up. 

She teamed up with Institute for Justice, which filed suit, arguing, in IJ’s words, that “forcing her to get a full-blown real-estate license violated her right to earn an honest living under the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

At first, a lower court would not even consider the case, a decision overruled by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2020. Finally, on October 31, 2022, a trial court affirmed that the “licensing requirements are unreasonable, unduly oppressive, and patently beyond the necessities of the case,” and therefore unconstitutional.

Once again, it’s IJ to the rescue! 

In a world filled with government agencies that shouldn’t exist, the Institute for Justice exists to check them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies

The Biden’s War on Independents 

California, contractors, independent, legislature

They know. They aren’t complete idiots. When enemies of the market routinely try to stop people from earning a living through restrictions like minimum wage laws and arbitrary licensing to thwart such dangerous activities as hair-braiding, few are ignorant of the disastrous consequences.

Case in point? 

The Biden administration is on the verge of using a federal version of California’s AB5 law to mass-slaughter the opportunities of millions of gig workers and freelancers. The administration hasn’t managed to do it legislatively. So it’s trying to inflict the damage with a Department of Labor regulation.

The idea is to stop companies from classifying independent contractors as independent contractors. Passed in California a few years ago, AB5 prohibited companies and many contractors from working with each other unless companies took them on as regular employees.

To avoid the costs of doing that, many companies instead simply ended their relationships with hundreds of thousands of gig workers. For example, Rev, a transcription service, stopped working with all freelancers residing in California.

California lawmakers knew how destructive AB5 would be when they passed it — proof-positive being the many exceptions for politically connected groups that were stipulated as part of the law. AB5 has now been repealed and replaced by AB2257, which increases the varieties of worker exempt from the new requirements. But it still leaves many other people, like California-based truckers, in legal limbo.  

It’s okay though, because all truckers do is deliver the stuff that all the rest of us need to survive.

This madness should not be imposed on everybody throughout the country.

And certainly not by back-room bureaucratic machinations.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture

Okay Not to Harm

freedom, slavery, equity, health, trans

A recent appeals court ruling means that (some) doctors and other medical practitioners won’t be forced to violate their ethical principles against doing harm.

The Fifth Circuit ruling affirms a lower-court decision “permanently enjoining [HHS] from requiring Franciscan Alliance to perform gender-reassignment surgeries or abortions in violation of its sincerely held religious beliefs.”

What is troubling about the decision is its apparent incompleteness.

In a truly free society, no private professionals or organizations would be coerced to offer their services to anybody. Everybody would be free to participate or to decline to participate in any transaction with a prospective customer related to any medical procedure. Just as any person is now (mostly) free to patronize or not patronize any provider of a good or service.

We don’t live in that free society. But at least we can hope that no person will be compelled to provide the types of services that violate the person’s moral conscience.

Like services they believe harm others.

That harm children . . . including the unborn.

So the court’s ruling is fine — as far as it goes. But it seems to protect only persons making religious objections, or only members of the Franciscan Alliance, not also non-religious medical practitioners who also morally object to providing abortions or sex-change operations.

Which means that there is more legal work to be done to protect the rights of all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Big Oil, Big Profits — Big Deal?

Joe Biden, oil, inflation

When President Joe Biden accused oil companies of excessive profiteering, and those profits as a cause of inflation, reactions were . . . mixed.

Democrats love that kind of talk. Ronald Reagan, back in his Democrat days, pitched precisely that sort of rhetoric when he campaigned for Truman’s re-election.

Republicans, along with most other Americans, are skeptical. Or just plain incredulous.

Meanwhile, what did Big Oil say?

Chevron’s CEO, Mike Wirth, took special care to complain of the president’s rhetoric, characterizing the administration as having “largely sought to criticize, and at times vilify, our industry.”

Perhaps Biden’s worst vilification was that Exxon had “made more money than God” — as if spending more money than God were his job and that he resented any money he couldn’t spend. 

EXXON responded by noting that the multinational had continued investing in infrastructure even during the pandemic lockdowns when the company “lost more than $20 billion and had to borrow more than $30 billion to maintain investment to increase capacity to be ready for post-pandemic demand.”

In a helpful mode, the company offered that “government can promote investment through clear and consistent policy that supports U.S. resource development, such as regular and predictable lease sales, as well as streamlined regulatory approval and support for infrastructure such as pipelines.”

Biden, who ran on decreasing oil production by regulatory crackdown, received a square hit.

Nonetheless, the Democrats double-down on their worn-out “windfall profits” alarmism. 

After a huge hit to consumption during the lockdowns, the profits are there not as recompense for Big Oil’s regrettable big losses, but as incentives to get out of the Great Suppression. 

We should want profits to entice more investment.

Could it be that Biden wants neither?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Woke Mob’s Capitalism

climate justice, social justice, woke, wokeism

A prominent rating system has gone “woke.”

“Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500,” Elon Musk tweeted a few weeks ago, “while Tesla” — the billionaire’s high-end electric car company — “didn’t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

We could quibble. Is “phony” the right word? “Social justice” has always been slippery. It’s a “mirage,” explained Hayek, really just a stalking horse for power.

What Musk is objecting to, though, is worth thinking about. The ESG standard is supposed to mean something . . . based on objective criteria. The reasons to eject Tesla from its Top Ten and place Exxon at the pinnacle are laughably transparent. It’s a woke power grab. The leftist ideology has taken over another capitalist institution, the better to create . . .

What?

Socialism? Fascism?

Michael Rectenwald, in a fascinating essay, calls it “woke corporatism.” 

The plan is, he writes, to “establish a woke monopolistic cartel.” Musk’s company has been “subjected to the S in ESG — the ‘social’ or ‘social justice’ quotient.”

Musk, Rectenwald argues, “has been deemed a deplorable, and thus his company does not pass ‘social justice’ muster.” In other words, the putatively pro-inclusion folks are excluding him from the ranks of the favored.

And all because he wants free speech on a social media platform!

Laissez-faire grew out of economists’ objections to the grinding inefficiency and over-politicization of business. Adam Smith, back in 1776, called the pre-liberal, insider-based trade system “mercantilism.”

The leftist mob now pushes a neo-neo-mercantalism, mobocracy capitalism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Do More Than Baby Steps

baby formula, inflation, economics

Major disruptions such as pandemic policy in China and the Russian invasion of Ukraine obviously crimp trade and supply chains. But given such impacts, should governments here in the United States be making things better or making things worse?

Oil is one example of a good that would be more abundant and cheaper had the government left it alone — stopped blocking domestic production and the flow of oil from Canada.

Now parents are having trouble getting baby food.

A proximate cause of the shortage is the closure of a single major factory producing baby formula. But Kevin Ketels, a professor who studies the global supply chain, argues that restrictions on production had set things up so that a blow like this would be crippling.

For one thing, only a few companies, Abbott, Reckitt, and Nestlé, are allowed to participate in a government program to provide baby formula to low-income families. This is not a minor program. The federal government provides substantial grants to the states to fund it.

More importantly, only a few manufacturing facilities are allowed to produce baby formula, and “startups don’t have the volume required to produce in these facilities.”

High tariffs on baby-food imports have also reduced supply.

You would think, then, that the first thing to do would be to remove governmental barriers to production and imports.

And all, not just some.

So why isn’t that what we are hearing about now?

Well, politicians do not gain their power, prestige, and insider trading advantages by leaving well enough alone. Admitting that their stock in trade — regulation and tariffs and the like — is the cause of this problem might suggest to distracted minds that it is the cause of most, if not all, our problems.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Quota Requirement Overturned

Jerry Brown, California, racism, quota, colors

In 2018, Jerry Brown, then California governor, signed a bill requiring corporate boards to include a high percentage of women. 

Now a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has determined that the state failed to show that “gender-based classification was necessary to boost California’s economy, improve opportunities for women in the workplace, and protect California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees.”

No news yet on whether the state will appeal.

In 2018, Brown had conceded that the law was probably doomed to be judged unconstitutional. But he apparently regarded questions of legality or constitutionality as irrelevant.

“It’s high time corporate boards include the people who constitute more than half the ‘persons’ in America,” he burbled in his signing message.

Fines for disobedience were to be steep: $100,000 for initial violations, $300,000 for subsequent violations.

Of course, it is neither immoral nor a crime to choose a man instead of a woman for a post. Making specific hires criminal depending upon the complexion of a business’s other hires amounts to the politicization of everything, swapping the goals of business for the goals of ideologues. It is destructive of individual rights and the requirements of conducting business profitably to compel employers choosing personnel to be guided by any considerations other than relevant qualifications. Or by any assessment but their own.

Managers of all non-government organizations should be free to use their own best judgment in hiring and contracting, whether the work involved is that of clerk, CEO, or board member. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Unconscionable Greed!

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, price gouging, inflation

It’s easy to blame others for greed. And when prices rise, I suppose I can imagine being so upset that . . . well, if not my mind, Bernie Sanders’ mind . . . would become unhinged:

“Greed. Greed. Greed. While Americans are struggling at the pump,” the senator tweeted on Friday the 13th, “in the first three months of this year, oil and gas companies made over $41 billion in profits, more than double their profits from last year. The problem is not inflation. The problem is corporate greed.”

That’s Bernie Sanders for you. It’s not government profligacy or Federal Reserve monetary policy or the Biden Administration’s anti-fossil fuels agenda . . . or supply-line problems, persisting COVID-lockdown effects, or anything else.

Just greed.

But is greed somehow cyclical? Why were greedy corporations providing cheap gas a year ago and then able to raise it only under Democrats’ rule?

Alas, Bernie isn’t the only low-brow demagogue in the Senate. There’s Senator Elizabeth Warren pushing a new “price gouging” bill.

So, just as Bernie never answers “why is greed so successful at gouging now?,” how does Liz answer the burning question “how can we objectively define ‘price-gouging’?”

As journalist Catherine Rampell observes on Twitter, the senator’s definition in the bill is less than enlightening: “price-gouging” is “just pricing that is ‘unconscionably excessive.’”

Now that, Senator Warren, is unconscionably vague.

And incidentally, aren’t both senators on the record as demanding higher gas prices to usher in “green energy” to “save the planet”? This all seems unconscionably . . . deceptive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credits: Warren/Bernie/money

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