Category: general freedom

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

Signature Nonsense

nanny state, too much government, books, authentication, California, busybody, Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism, Jerry Brown

Did anyone really need this?

Last year, California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill No. 1570, which concerns collectibles, particularly signed-by-author or artist books. But it doesn’t mention books, and is confusingly written. What a mess.

Who asked for it?

It certainly wasn’t the struggling booksellers who have come to depend on signed authors’ copies. In the Age of Amazon.com, book vendors need to add value to stay afloat.* Author-signed copies help.

The law says that for signed-by-creator collectibles sold for more than $5 — yes, a mere five smackers — sellers must provide customers a Certificate of Authentication. The law specifies nine “helpful” directions for said certificates. So imagine an edition of Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism, signed by the author at, say, a non-profit dinner, or at a bookstore signing, or even a late-night bar —discounted to not much over five bucks.** The bookseller must not only provide a certificate, but list the book’s provenance. Talk about an added cost of doing business.

I mention Mr. Doherty not merely because of his excellent book, but because he has not unreasonably confessed that “my own interests could be harmed by any attempt to actually enforce the letter of this law.”

This week on EconTalk, economist Mike Munger mentioned the market’s built-in regulatory features — reputation being the most obvious — for helping consumers avoid getting ripped off buying books . . . and paintings . . . and anything else improved by creator signature.

But, really, can’t we make do with a little caveat emptor as well as caveat lector? Better than regulations this dense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The number of independent bookstores plummeted (down a thousand) around the country between 2000 and 2007. But there seems to be an increase since then, despite (or because of?) Abebooks and Alibris and other dot coms.

** I found a signed copy of Doherty’s history at Abebooks for $10.

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First Amendment rights folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Legal Not to Lie About Your Milk

milk, Institute for Justice, regulations, Ocheesee Creamery, Department of Agriculture, too much government

Mary Lou Wesselhoeft doesn’t have to lie about the milk she’s selling. The Florida Department of Agriculture has lost in court. Mary Lou has won.

Ocheesee Creamery sells pasteurized milk without any additives. One of her products is skim milk. Ocheesee sells skim milk without vitamin additives, which is perfectly legal to do. But the Florida government claims that only skim milk with the additives counts as real “skim milk,” the kind you can call skim milk in speech to customers. (Kafka, did you write this horror story? Fess up!)

Give credit to the judge who asked: “Can the state, consistent with the First Amendment, take two words out of the English language and compel its citizens to use those words only as the government says?” The reply of the government’s lawyer? “Yes.”

Creepy.

Mary Lou’s victory is also a victory for all Americans who want to exercise their right to tell the truth about what they’re selling. And it’s a victory for the Institute for Justice, which took up the case on her behalf. At its website, IJ points out how easy it would be to annihilate freedom of speech by letting the government redefine words at will. We’re not free if our freedoms can be arbitrarily defined away by the people in power.

The Institute specializes in defending our rights against senseless government intrusions. Until such laws and regulations are repealed, it seems that the Institute will always have much to do — unfortunately. But, fortunately, it keeps on doing it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

Citizens Triumphant

Ohio, initiative, legislature, Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission,

Last week, the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission considered whether to recommend a constitutional change to create an obvious double standard: requiring citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to obtain a 55 percent supermajority vote, while the very same amendments proposed by legislators would only need 50-percent-plus-one for passage.

I traveled to the capitol in Columbus, joining a room full of Ohio citizens and organizations testifying in opposition. As I explained at Townhall yesterday, after hearing from the people, the Commission tabled the idea.*

For more than four years, the Constitutional Revision and Updating Committee deliberated over how to improve the constitution and came to a consensus in favor of the aforementioned double standard (sent to the full Commission). And yet, at a well-attended public hearing, no one defended the proposal.

While bias favoring the legislature seemed obvious, commissioners bristled at the suggestion that — established and funded by the legislature — they lacked independence. “If there were one or two legislative members on our committee, that was it,” offered non-legislator Janet Abaray.

Actually, four of the nine members on Abaray’s committee are currently state legislators — not one or two. Plus, two more previously served in the legislature. That’s two-thirds of the committee comprised of current or former legislators.

Moreover, the published minutes provide a peek into the thinking behind the proposed double standard. For instance, “what have emerged lately are initiated amendments to the constitution that are inconsistent with the purpose of the constitution.”

It is the people who will decide what belongs in the people’s constitution — not the legislature.

And not the legislature’s commission.

That’s the truth that Ohioans spoke to power.

And power listened.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The commission came to this conclusion with only one dissenting vote.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Sin, Soda and Say

Seattle , soda tax, nanny state, tax, socialist, social engineering

Government policy in Seattle, Washington, is being driven by an outright socialist on the city council. The mayor, apparently starving for attention, proposed a goofy new sin tax last year.

Now, writes Reason’s Baylen Linnekin, “Seattle lawmakers are expected to vote early next week on a citywide soda tax that would add more than $2.50 to the cost of a twelve-pack of soda.”

The tax’s proponents’ rationale is too familiar: sugary sodas are bad for us, so we must be discouraged from drinking them.

Besides, politicians want to spend our money.

The problem, of course, is that the more successful they are at the first task, discouraging the ‘sin’ itself, the less revenue for them to throw at voters to prove their ‘caring’ nature . . . and buy votes.

But it is not as if those are the only competing factors involved. “The tax would undoubtedly drive consumers,” writes Linnekin, “to buy more groceries in the city’s suburbs.” Bellevue and Kirkland are nice towns. And nearby.

Arguing for a tax like this — as a social engineering mechanism — is not only crude, but flies in the face of the very best wisdom, that of Jean-Baptiste Say:

A tax can never be favorable to the public welfare, except by the good use that is made of its proceeds.

But elitist nannyism corrupts politicians, who make it their job to steer our consumption.* And they tend to be resistant to the “best scheme of finance,” which is, as J.-B. Say put it, “to spend as little as possible; and the best tax is always the lightest.”

If the tax goes in, Seattleites, drive to out-of-town Costco or Walmart.

Then drive your greedy nannies out of office.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Considering the mayor’s push to include diet sodas in the sin tax, how competent at this are they? It’s the sugary drinks that are known killers, but the diet drinks are mainly imbibed by wealthier folks. The mayor wants to appease the socialist on the council, and pointedly not favor the “privileged.”

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Another Push for Censorship

Great Britain, Tory, Prime Minister, PM, censorship, terrorism, internet, web

It’s almost as if politicians are hell-bent on expanding government at the expense of our freedoms . . . and grandstanding to ‘look like they are doing something.’

The two proclivities are not unrelated.

Take Theresa May, Great Britain’s Tory Prime Minister. After yet another terrorist attack in her country, this time on the London Bridge, she re-iterated her party’s intent to censor the Internet.

“We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said on Sunday. But this “safe space,” she went on, “is precisely what the Internet, and the big companies that provide Internet-based services, provide.”

Now, blaming ISPs and social platforms is a crude form of business scapegoating—something I would expect from her opponent in the upcoming elections, Jeremy Corbyn, the much-loathed (but inching ahead in the polls) top banana of Labour.

As a conservative, May should understand markets and the limitations of government interventionism a bit better than a near–communist. She might recall that previous attempts to regulate the means of communication almost never to work, and, in those few cases when they do, never stay scaled to the original target issue.

They expand. To cover more than just terrorism, as in this case.

What’s more, Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group makes the case that such a move would likely “push these vile networks into even darker corners of the web, where they will be even harder to observe” — scuttling the alleged purpose of the Conservative Party’s longed-for censorship.

May knows this. But she is a politician. She has power, and she wants to keep it.

It’s almost as if power corrupts or something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism political challengers Regulating Protest

Delivering a Double Standard

Ohio, initiative, voting, election, ballot, legislature, democracy, amendment, constitution

Former State Representative Matt Lynch got right to the point in his Cleveland Plain Dealer op-ed: “The people’s right to amend the Ohio Constitution through the ballot initiative is under attack.”

Created by the Ohio Legislature to consider constitutional amendments, the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission (OCMC) has a hidden purpose: provide cover for that same legislative body. As Lynch aptly notes, the OCMC “is filled with politicians and lobbyists. Thus, commission recommendations must be scrutinized for fidelity to the public good versus the special interests of political insiders.”

This Thursday at the capitol in Columbus, OCMC will consider whether to recommend that state legislators propose an amendment to the state constitution to make future amendments more difficult. That’s an awfully bad idea in itself. But, bizarrely, the greater difficulty would depend entirely on who proposes the amendment.

The working OCMC recommendation makes no change to the legislature’s ability to propose and pass constitutional amendments. What it would do is make it tougher for citizen-initiated amendments. Most unhelpfully, the recommendation would require only citizen-proposed amendments to garner a supermajority of 55 percent of the vote.

Consequence? Suppose a measure proposed by citizens — term limits, ethics reform, government transparency — was massively outspent by powerful interests, and yet still won 54.9 percent of the vote. It would lose.

Yes, the 45.1 percent of voters would defeat the 54.9 percent of voters.

Call it “New Math.”

The very same issue proposed by legislators would win . . . and be added to the state constitution.

“The double standards are breathtaking,” writes Lynch,* adding, “and no other state has such unfair rules.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Sunday at Townhall, I also discussed this double standard. And the word may be getting out. Townhall always adorns my column with a photograph — this time featuring Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, also a Republican candidate for governor in 2018. DeWine’s campaign objected to being pictured, arguing they have no involvement with the OCMC. DeWine’s picture has been removed.

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general freedom moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

The $659,000 Non-Question

driver's license, voting, registration, paternalism, nanny state, voters, democracy, choice, freedom

The so-called “Motor Voter” law of 1993 created a national mandate: when people obtain their drivers’ licenses at the Department of Motor Vehicles, ask them if they’d also like to register to vote.

The federal mandate is perhaps heavy-handed, but the underlying idea has merit.

Now a new idea is gaining ground, taking the notion (nudge, nudge) a step further. Let’s not bother asking people if they want to sign up to vote, the proposal runs. Government should simply register them. Without asking.

It is a form of paternalism.

“It flips the presumption, where right now they ask you if want to be registered,” argues D.C. Council member Charles Allen. “Instead of that, we’re just going to go ahead and get you registered, and that absolutely helps enfranchise voters.”

“Lawmakers in 32 states have introduced measures in the last year to automatically register drivers to vote,” reports the Washington Post.

Some folks contend there isn’t much difference between asking if someone wants to register and registering them without asking. Well, if there isn’t much difference, why spend the $659,000 that Washington, D.C. officials estimate it will cost over the next four years for their new “don’t-ask” program.

Of course, there is a difference in the two policies: sort of like between offering people something to eat and force-feeding them.

Some Americans have no desire to vote or be registered. It is surely no business of any state or local government to act as if their preferences don’t count.

And what good are a bunch of names on a voter list if they aren’t interested? Is someone going to vote for them?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability education and schooling folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism responsibility

Quanta of Nonsense

academics, universities, college, paper, The Skeptic, western civilization, racism, sexism, prank, joke

Last month, two academics wrote a hoax paper. Their preferred journal didn’t accept it, but did suggest an alternative publication. They sent the paper to the recommended outlet, and it was published.

The paper? “The conceptual penis as a social construct.” The Skeptic provided an overview; Professor Gad Saad chortled over its sheer genius. Though a brilliant parody, as a send-up of postmodern academic insanity it fell a tad flat: it was merely published online, and probably not peer-reviewed.

But before you could say “Western civilization is in the toilet and circling the drain,” an equally idiotic paper came to light, published in The Minnesota Review, and apparently offered in earnest by an academic working in “women’s and gender studies.” Entitled “Assembled Bodies: Reconfiguring Quantum Identities,” the abstract (worth reading in full*) does not mention truth, predictive power, or evidence to advance knowledge of physics. Instead, it pushes the “combining” of “intersectionality and quantum physics” to “provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people,” etcetera. Basically, the problem of physics is not that it is hard, but that it is “oppressive.”

Meanwhile, historian Tom Woods** discovered a University of Hawaii math teacher who admits to not finding math interesting. She blogged her confession about wanting white cis-male mathematicians to quit their jobs “or at least take a demotion” and — if in a “position of power” — resign.

None of this is about the advancement of learning. What we see here is

  1. a new racism — from non-whites directed against white people — and
  2. a new sexism — from women and others who are not heterosexual males directed against, you guessed it, heterosexual males

. . . all packaged in cryptic, pretentious, prolix nonsense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* I found it quoted on the Powerline blog: “In this semimanifesto, I approach how understandings of quantum physics and cyborgian bodies can (or always already do) ally with feminist anti-oppression practices long in use. The idea of the body (whether biological, social, or of work) is not stagnant, and new materialist feminisms help to recognize how multiple phenomena work together to behave in what can become legible at any given moment as a body. By utilizing the materiality of conceptions about connectivity often thought to be merely theoretical, by taking a critical look at the noncentralized and multiple movements of quantum physics, and by dehierarchizing the necessity of linear bodies through time, it becomes possible to reconfigure structures of value, longevity, and subjectivity in ways explicitly aligned with anti-oppression practices and identity politics. Combining intersectionality and quantum physics can provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people, for enabling apparatuses that allow for new possibilities of safer spaces, and for practices of accountability.”

** In his daily email for Tuesday this week.

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Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

A Threat We Can’t Refuse

NATO, Angela Merkel, Germany, Europe, Trump, Donald Trump, Russia, defense, war

“Recent days have shown me that the times when we could rely completely on others are over to a certain extent,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told folks in a Munich beer hall last Sunday. “We also know that we Europeans must really take our destiny,” she said, on the heels of the NATO and G7 meetings, “into our own hands.”

Merkel may have designed her comments to elicit shock and dismay among the inhabitants of America. But my shock is that anyone would find anything shocking, at all.*

Merkel’s responding, of course, to President Donald Trump’s censure of European NATO members for not ponying up to their treaty obligations.** This is widely whispered as . . . rude. Mustn’t upset Germany and other allies, even if only five of NATO’s 28 nations have reached the agreed-upon two-percent of GDP goal.

The received wisdom seems to be: don’t embarrass the freeloaders.

I’m often not copacetic with Mr. Trump’s demeanor. But the “threat” that U.S. soldiers might somehow not be permitted to shed their blood to defend deadbeat countries against a feared Russian attack is . . . just not all that threatening.

What’s so scary about self-reliance?

It was also announced that German security agencies won’t share intelligence with the U.S. regarding alleged Russian interference in their upcoming election.

This, too, we can survive.

But, gee whiz, I hope we aren’t banned from the cool countries’ lunch table at the cafeteria in the brand new $1.23 billion NATO headquarters — for which the U.S. pays a disproportionately high 22 percent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* In my judgment, Merkel should have jettisoned “to a certain extent” and put a period after “over.”
** It’s worth noting that Trump is not the first president to marshal this complaint.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Minimum Shock

minimum wage, closure, restaurant, business, prohibition, wages, pay, Berkeley, San Francisco

“Three restaurants vacated the Bay this week, with Berkeley’s Bistro Liaison getting the most attention,” the San Francisco edition of Eater informs us. “It’s a bittersweet exit for the owners, who plan to start new careers.”

The week in question was in February. But this was not an isolated event. Sixty-four Bay-area restaurants and fast food joints closed their doors this last winter.

That is a lot of closures.

Why?

Every eatery has a different story, but the entry December 17* provides a big clue: minimum wage hikes.

Citizens should hardly be surprised. They got what they asked for. The minimum wage went up to $13.00 per hour last July, and will go up another two bucks next year. And this was the result of a citizen initiative. “On November 4, 2014, San Francisco voters passed Proposition J, raising the minimum wage to $15.00 by 2018,” the City Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement tells us.

And the thing about minimum wage laws is that they do not — either by magic or by law — directly raise any wages. They, by law and quite directly, prohibit wage contracts below the minimum established.

Businesses then react, struggling to accommodate the newly imposed costs. Sometimes they keep all their employees and economize on other inputs, but often they must re-arrange hours and workers and whole production schemes.

If hemmed in elsewhere, they just go out of business.

Just as one should expect, according to the law of supply and demand.**

Citizens might wish to reconsider. That is, initiate a measure to repeal a previously successful initiative . . . that gave us this unsuccessful policy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The entry reads thusly: “OAKLAND — alaMar Kitchen and Bar as you know it is shuttering on December 17, but will reopen in the new year with a fast casual format. The owner points to minimum wage raises and the cost of doing business in the Bay Area as the reasons cited for the closure/change.”

** It is often said that businesses just “raise prices” and “pass along the costs” to consumers in general, but, for reasons of supply and demand, they cannot do this without decreasing sales and thus revenue.

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