Category: nannyism

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

Law in the Tooth

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Why did Dr. Ben Burris give up his orthodontic license? Where did he go wrong?

Dr. Burris broke the law. He flagrantly violated the hallowed precepts of the Arkansas Dental Practices Act. Let me rinse and spit out the truth: This dentist illegally cleaned people’s teeth.

Not just once — he did it again and again. Often twice a year per patient — or victim, depending on your viewpoint.

Plus, brace yourself, he didn’t merely scrub their choppers, he did so — get this — at very low cost.

We need strong laws to stop such scoundrels.

That bastion of wisdom, the State of Arkansas, has no qualms about Dr. Burris’s qualifications to remove plaque from our incisors, canines and molars, having licensed him to practice dentistry. The problem is actually that Dr. Burris is over-qualified.

Especially to charge low prices!

Burris got licensed in a specialty: Orthodontia. You see, according to state law, a dentist so licensed “must limit his or her practice to the specialty in which he or she is licensed except in an emergency situation.”

Only after terrorist attacks or earthquakes can society risk allowing Orthodontists to daringly and brazenly polish people’s teeth. For less.

This particular statutory tyranny aims to close healthcare markets, minimize patient choice and keep dental costs artificially high. Luckily, beyond being maliciously wrongheaded, Arkansas’s dental law is absurdly foolish.

Dr. Burris dropped the federal court challenge being litigated by the Institute for Justice. Why? He discovered that by simply relinquishing his orthodontic license, he could legally practice orthodontics and clean people’s teeth at low cost.

He just can’t call himself an Orthodontist — but can call the law an ass.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies too much government

“Unacceptable,” He Sputtered

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The King Canute Memorial Award for Clueless Legislation (Winter 2015-16) goes to Senator Bernie Sanders. He had stiff competition from ocean-lowering President Barack Obama, this season, but surely earned it these past few months.

Canute famously warned his advisors that he was no miracle worker. Standing by the sea and commanding the tide to turn only works on a regular schedule — set by natural forces, knowable in advance only after years of careful observation. All the hand-waving, incantations and official edicts cannot change the tide.

The award goes to those most in need of the Full Canute Object Lesson. Sanders’s latest ninnyism begs for just such a lesson: He wants to establish maximum fees for ATMs, down to $2 per transaction.

As everyone knows, some ATMs charge more than others. Why? It is not costless to provide electronic bank inquiries and withdrawals around the country . . . and the world. And profitability varies.

Supply and demand. Entrepreneurs do not offer these services out of charity. Close off profits in some areas, there will be corresponding effects.

From my experience, transaction fees range from about five bucks down to . . . Zero.

I usually pay nothing.

Outlawing fees above some arbitrary maximum will almost certainly ensure there will be fewer ATMs — particularly in low-use areas — and might even raise those zero-priced transactions to one- or two-buck fees.

Prices aren’t arbitrary, so no matter how loudly Bernie Sanders sputters “Unacceptable,” price ceilings aren’t magically going to produce the same service at less cost.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability Common Sense First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

re: Solutions

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Today’s the traditional day for New Year’s “Resolutions,” but instead of resolutions, how about some solutions?

Sure, Thomas Sowell has sagely reminded: there are no solutions in social life, only trade-offs.

But, utopian perfection aside, let’s agree that some changes would be better than others, and, let us resolve to solve some nagging problems — or at least trade up. And since the really nagging problems are political . . .

For Republicans: this could be the year to give up on government as society’s chief moral agent, empowered to regulate everybody’s medicine cabinets and bloodstreams. End the failed War on Drugs, with legalizing marijuana the simplest first step. Vice will continue, as it always has. But it’s another kind of vice to think that force, policing and imprisoning folks, will “solve” the problem. Much less even reduce the availability of drugs.

For Democrats: this could be the year to give up on government as micromanager of markets — and people’s marketplace choices. Face it: folks will make decisions that liberals don’t like. They’ll eat at McDonalds and buy large sodas — and the wrong stocks. And guns! But adding to the mass of regulations doesn’t make consumers choose better, it makes stuff more expensive and business less open to competition. Indeed, almost all the regulations designed to help “the little guy” backfire, helping big business by hobbling their upstart competitors.

Our leaders, at present, cannot even balance budgets. They are addicted to debt. To pretend we must have more and more government to prevent our addictions or save us from personal debt is ludicrous.

Can we resolve to stop pretending that bigger government is always the solution?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Anti-Gun Barrage

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America’s would-be gun-grabbers, chiefly in the media and “on the left,” don’t know much about guns.

But they know what they hate.

After the horrific terrorist shooting spree in San Bernardino, MSNBC and CNN went on a shooting-their-mouths-off spree, relentlessly pushing the need for stricter gun control. President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats echoed the theme.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks went full accelerando, unleashing a foul rant about how “we” are the terrorists and “we” are letting “us” get away with mass murder “every week,” ignoring the statistics that murder rates have gone down, are still going down, and that the rest of the world is being hit with mass shootings too, mainly from Muslim radicals.

When the news came out that the perps were, indeed, Muslim, the barrage of anti-gun talk didn’t stop, though their intellectual ammunition had fizzled.

The president went further off his rocker, calling the guns he wanted to ban “powerful” — though they are of lower caliber than many handguns — while Hillary Clinton talked about the need to ban “assault rifles.”

As has been noted by others, “assault rifle” only means what anti-gun folks say it means, and what they designate as assault weapons are not (contrary to their constant implications) the equivalent of machine guns (which have been illegal for citizen ownership for a long, long time).

Being scared of scary-looking guns is no excuse not to be able to define them. While it would be good to reduce incentives for folks to “go postal” or to commit terroristic acts, we aren’t going to prevent mass shootings by a simple prohibitionary or mere regulatory regime.

That’s for scare-mongers to push. And us to resist.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture nannyism too much government

A Handle on Global Warming?

Global Warming, Vancouver, gas, sticker, climate change, common sense

Folks in government are prone to overstepping their bounds.

Take, for example, the North Vancouver, British Columbia, City Council, which has instituted a mandatory sticker program for gas pumps. Starting in 2016, public service announcements will appear on North Vancouver gas pump nozzle handles.

What for?

To warn us of the danger of global warming.

Though the city government hasn’t accepted any particular message, Autoblog reports that the policy is clear: “The idea behind the warnings isn’t to shame people for filling up an internal combustion engine but instead to suggest that there could be more eco-friendly alternatives.”

Autoblog calls this new move a “small step to help fight the planet’s rising temperatures,” and that North Vancouver “will likely be the first city in the world” to enact such a mandate.

I am sure city pols are proud of themselves.

The ordinance was pushed by a not-for-profit Canadian group called Our Horizon. The goal? Make a “positive impact on the environment” with this “relatively low cost but highly visible strategy.”

The official estimate on costs? Between C$3,000 and C$5,000. Costs to businesses? “Gas station owners must display [the stickers] as a condition of their business license.”

Meanwhile, the unsettled science of climate change teeters ahead, as The Rebel Media reports: increased carbon dioxide may not cause extra warming (chlorofluorocarbons do that), but does induce greening, helping plant life to flourish.

When the truth finally emerges, out of the fog blown over the issues by groupthink, the findings of legitimate science probably won’t fit on a sticker.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility

Climate Changelings

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Worried that the world is going to sacrifice progress for the mess of pottage that is “global climate change”?

Don’t. Years ago, economists specializing in game theory recognized that the governments of the world would be extremely unlikely to agree to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The incentives are all wrong for that.

Last month, the great debunker of junk climate science, Patrick Michaels, reporting on the recent Paris talks, concurred. The international agreement going forward is so worded as to be “free to be meaningless.” Countries can claim to be “doing something,” but effectively accomplish nothing. Which allows “the world’s largest emitter (China) and the third-largest one (India)” to balk.

But the ole USA? It is doing something . . .

and it’s going to cost. Here’s one reason: Under Obama’s Clean Power Plan, substitution of natural gas for coal in electrical generation isn’t going to increase, even though it produces only half the carbon dioxide per kilowatt of electricity as coal. Instead, his EPA says power companies have to substitute unreliable, expensive “renewables,” mainly solar energy and wind. These are mighty expensive compared with new natural-gas power. And even the Clean Power Plan won’t meet our Paris target.

Obviously, what we have to worry about are our martyrdom-prone environmental zealots and their power-hungry (political power-hungry) friends ensconced in government.

They just can’t leave well enough alone, for, as Michaels notes, even CO2 emissions improve with industrial progress — when markets are free and property rights established.

But anti-capitalists in and out of government don’t want improvements to come naturally. Apparently, they would rather make things worse even by their own standards than let markets work.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Enumerated Wrongs

Bill of Rights, Ten Amendments, Freedom of Speech, Bear Arms, Common Sense

Will the government soon quarter troops in your home?

The Third Amendment prohibits that, sure — but if prominent and powerful Democrats are so anxious to toss out the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution, who’s to say they wouldn’t jettison the Third?

Last year, every Democratic U.S. Senator voted to repeal the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and replace it with new, broad powers for them to regulate campaign spending, thereby speech.

Luckily, those 54 senators lacked the two-thirds margin needed for their amendment.

Now, in the face of “gun violence” and (pssst) terrorism, President Obama, presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton, and true-blue MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, want to scrap the Second Amendment. How? By first scrapping the Fifth, which guarantees that “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” They demand that Americans on the so-called “terrorist no-fly list” be denied the Second Amendment right to a firearm, despite the fact that the bureaucratically created no-fly list offers not a scintilla of due process: no charge, jury, trial.

Would this new regulation have prevented the San Bernardino murderers from getting guns? No — they had recently flown across the world.

The frequent-flying Boston Marathon bombers didn’t make the list, either.

But the list did label an 18-month-old girl a terrorist, snatching her rights like taking candy from a . . . toddler.

“Just what will it take for Congress to overcome the intimidation of the gun lobby and do something as sensible as making sure people on the terrorist watch list can’t buy weapons?” Mrs. Clinton asked rhetorically at a campaign event.

Answer: an illegal abrogation of the most fundamental and cherished rights in human history.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism responsibility

The Uber-Huge Mistake

Uber, car, ride, London, taxi, regulation, waiting, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Uber’s challenge to old-fashioned ride service — to the taxi industry — is at least twofold.

One, it shows government regulation to be counterproductive and kind of witless.

Two, it shows that innovation — particularly by decreasing transaction costs — can rapidly transform a market for the good of consumers.

Recently, politicians who play to special interests — in this case, to taxicab companies and taxi drivers — have made some spectacular blunders. Perhaps the best-known is Bernie Sanders, who claims to see severe “problems” with Uber’s online ride-sharing service, but whose campaign staff uses Uber for ride-sharing . . . and nothing else. Hah!

But the London transit regulators have made the biggest splash.

Their latest proposal? To require Uber drivers to wait five minutes before picking somebody up.

Evens the playing field, you see.

Uber is so much quicker to respond to the paying riders’ needs that taxicabs apparently cannot compete in Old London Town.

The folks at Uber publicized the expected company reaction: the regulation would be a “huge mistake.”

But really, it’s a HUGE ADMISSION.

It shows that Uber’s service is superior, and that government regulators are more interested in protecting providers (taxicabs) than customers (pedestrians seeking rides).

It also shows these regulations for what they really are: protectionism for special interests, not protection for the safety of consumers.

Remember what Frédéric Bastiat said about protectionism: it’s always about placing obstacles in front of some producers (and the market in general) to aid a select (literally privileged) group of producers, regardless of consumer wants and needs.

Hobbling Uber to save taxicabs! What’ll they think of next?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism porkbarrel politics term limits

Cheaters Never Prosper

Arkansas State Senator, Jon Woods, term limits, Arkansas, pay raise, disgrace, election, illustration

“I want to go home,” Arkansas State Senator Jon Woods whimpered.

The poor, pitiful politician — announcing he would not seek election to another legislative term — cried that he had not “been fishing with [his] brother in a year.”

“I have friends in my district who I miss,” he further lamented.

Before reaching for a tissue, realize that the legislator lives a little over three hours from the capitol in Little Rock and the legislature has only been in session for about 100 days in the last two years.

Certainly, that Senator Woods has any friends left is news — at least, non-lobbyist, non-legislator friends.

Woods infamously authored Issue 3, which narrowly passed last year and is now Amendment 94 to the state constitution.

Woods tricked voters by wording the ballot title to claim it was “PROHIBITING MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY . . . FROM ACCEPTING GIFTS FROM LOBBYISTS.” But now, lobbyists buy legislators lunch pretty much every day.

He misleadingly told voters the amendment was “ESTABLISHING TERM LIMITS FOR MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY,” when in reality term limits were weakened, allowing pols like Woods to stay a whopping 16 years in a single seat.

The slippery solon’s amendment also created a so-called Independent Citizens Commission — a majority appointed by legislative leaders — that has since rewarded legislators with a whopping 150 percent pay raise.

The Arkansas Times’s Max Brantley called it “strange” that the “full-time legislator . . . would drop out of the race at this point.” Now that it’s time to face the voters with all his mighty “accomplishments,” the senator decides “to start a new chapter in [his] life.”

Dejected, befuddled, limping home as a martyr to crony politics, Woods knows he can’t win.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom nannyism privacy

One, Two or Free?

one child policy, china, family planning, communist, five year plan

The vast majority of Chinese people are celebrating. Last week, the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party decreed that it will cease enforcing the one-child-only policy this coming March — after 35 years — as part of its 13th Five Year Plan.

Just speaking for myself, infanticide, coerced abortions and forced sterilizations seem . . . well, not good. Bad, even. Really bad. Or more precisely, evil, tyrannical and totalitarian . . . you know, if we want to use such “extreme” language.

But not everyone sees it my way.

Back in 1990, Molly Yard claimed that “[t]he Chinese government doesn’t coerce people.” Why, according to this former head of the National Organization of Women, “the only responsible policy [China] can have is to control family planning.” She went all the way: “I consider the Chinese government’s policy among the most intelligent in the world.”

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2012 that China’s “population control efforts have helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and contributed to China’s spectacular economic growth.”

That has not only been disputed — many economists point to policy changes that allowed entrepreneurship and private property — but overturned by reality. The one-child policy has been a disaster. There are now 117 young men for every 100 young women in China, and an aging population without enough youngsters to provide for them.

Alas, the one child policy is not being replaced with reproductive freedom. The government will still limit couples to two kids. That’s better than one, sure. But I have three children. If I were Chinese, I wouldn’t want to give up one of them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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