Category: regulation

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies political economy regulation subsidy

Progress Regardless

electric cars, subsidy, markets

There’s an easy way to know when people want various products and services: they pay for them using their money. It’s true! We have markets, and people buy and sell on these markets, even often risky investments as sellers and spending their own money as buyers.

Goods aren’t always procured this way. But market exchanges are common in any country containing even much-hampered markets.

One feels a need to remind the world of such truths whenever one, for example, peruses The New York Times.

According to a recent Times article on how “E.V. Road Trips Went From Impossible to Easy,” this transition to ease happened even despite alleged Trumpian hostility to electric vehicles!

Huh? Yawp! “E.V. fast-charging stations in the United States have soared in number from around 1,000 a decade ago to 12,000 today. . . . And despite the Trump administration’s hostility toward electric vehicles, and its attempts to end federal funding for public chargers, new stations are still going up — around 2,000 so far this year.” [emphasis added]

The correct wording is “despite reversal of federal hostility to gas-powered vehicles.”

Those fast-charging stations may be going up for a variety of private and public reasons. But no industry that emerges to meet persistent consumer demand requires any impetus to succeed beyond the desire and ability of capable producers to earn profits by satisfying that demand. 

In the early days of automobiles, gas stations didn’t spring up by government edict or subsidy.

Let consumers decide which mode of transportation, gas, electric, hybrid, if any, will triumph.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment Eighth Amendment rights regulation too much government

Fly the Cruel and Unusual Skies

Alaska, civil asset forfeiture, property, prohibition

Sometimes, cruel punishment is the usual, as in states like the People’s Republic of China. Everybody is a victim there. But entire ethnic or religious groups of people are routinely subjected to even more cruel tyranny than most Chinese people must put with.

If Americans aren’t yet in this situation — not for lack of trying by various local, state, and federal autocrats — one reason is that instances of cruel and unusual punishment can be fought in court. Which is what Ken Jouppi is doing with the help of the Institute for Justice.

What was Jouppi’s alleged crime? He let a passenger bring “visible” containers of beer on board his Cessna 206. Why is this a problem? The number of beer cans was 72, and the destination was a dry village, so you can imagine the horror involved!

The trial court determined intent as Jouppi being “willfully blind” to the contraband, but it may be that he just failed to leap into action when he noticed the beer . . . assuming he did. 

Jouppi was punished 13 years ago, a year after the “crime,” with three days in jail and a $1,500 fine. But that wasn’t good enough for the Alaska government, which tenaciously enforces local alcohol prohibitions — it demanded that Jouppi forfeit his $95,000 airplane. 

“Although that penalty seemed grossly disproportionate,” says Reason magazine, “the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that it did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines.” 

Yes, this is a case of civil asset forfeiture, covered here for decades now.

Will the U.S. Supreme Court see reason? Regardless of the outcome, the process has also been the punishment, one that is both cruel and all too usual.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created by Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment prohibition regulation

Just Say Uncool

drug war, marijuana, prohibition, culture

Something curious has happened to the young, a new government report suggests: “the number of high school students who use marijuana has decreased by almost half — 44 percent — since states started enacting adult-use legalization.”

I’m quoting an article from September 22. In it, Marijuana Moment editor Tom Angeli repeatedly contrasts the decrease in teen cannabis use with the rise in state legalizations. “The new federal data, released on Monday, shows that 12.9 percent of high school students currently consume cannabis, which is defined as having used it at least once in the past 30 days. That’s down from 23.1 percent in 2011 — the year before the first U.S. states approved recreational marijuana legalization laws.”

Angeli reminds us of a standard argument against marijuana legalization: If marijuana is readily available, kids will increase usage of the ‘pernicious weed.’

Hasn’t happened!

But why?

It may be relevant to note that sexual activity among the young has gone way down. So has testosterone in boys; teen pregnancies are also in decline. 

Meanwhile, teen use of prescription drugs is way up. If your brain function is altered by one or more psychiatric medications, doctor prescribed, perhaps these compete with traditional psychoactive drugs, reducing demand.

Angeli insists, however, that “[p]rior research also suggests that marijuana use by young people has generally fallen in states that legalize it for adults.”

If this turns out to be true, we may have to accept his framing: a significant driver of drug use among young people is The Cool Factor, and legal drugs are not cool; prohibited drugs are. 

For decades, anti-drug activists used celebrities and cartoon characters to convince kids that “drugs aren’t cool.” 

Instead, legalization did the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Grok Imagine

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
free trade & free markets regulation

Bet on Rigging the Games

casino, online gambling, knowledge, certainty

Is the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency’s cronyism really “a little too obvious,” as Reason magazine ironically argues?

Both the casino group’s model letter and the Maryland agency’s nearly identical letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission speak of “our grave concerns regarding the introduction of so-called ‘sport events’ contracts,” how citizens are being put “at risk” by enabling avoidance of state regulations, etc.

Casinos compete with online prediction markets. One way to compete is just to compete. If some of your casino customers are drifting to online betting, find ways to make the in-person experience more appealing. Improve advertising. Jigger the odds ever-so-slightly more in favor of players. Increase the dollar value of wins. Etc. We might call this the economic means of competition.

The other way to compete? Deploy the political means: cajole government to bludgeon competitors. Thus the American Gaming Association, which represents casinos, would like the federal government to do something to impede online prediction markets — the trading of contracts about what’s going to happen in sports and otherwise on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.

Sean Maloney, who heads the competing lobby group Coalition for Prediction Markets, explains how prediction-market betting differs from casino betting.

“[A casino] wins when you lose. A sportsbook will kick you off if you win too much. An exchange has no such incentive. It just takes a small fee, and two equally situated counterparties can trade. That’s why consumers prefer prediction markets.”

My prediction? Industry foes of market competition won’t be persuaded.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
regulation

Gigless in Seattle

Seattle, minimum wage, regulations, bureaucracy, unintended consequences

A few years ago, Seattle imposed what amounted to a $26 an hour minimum wage for persons who deliver food for app-based services like DoorDash. Unfortunately for drivers, they don’t get paid this wage while waiting for the next order they can deliver.

Thanks to the new costs, customers say things like “I ordered a $12 sandwich. $12 grew to $32! I just deleted the app.”

Drivers say things like “Work has become slow because of the new law.” DoorDash reports 1.7 million fewer orders in Seattle in 2024. The new law took effect in January of that year. 

“These are unimaginably complicated markets where the company’s main job is interfacing between restaurants and delivery workers and customers,” explains economist and Manhattan Institute research director Judge Glock. “Then you have an economically illiterate city council or mayor who thinks, basically by looking at an industry through reading the news, they can appropriately regulate the exact wage.”

A former president of Seattle’s city council, Sara Nelson, says politicians caused a problem that must be fixed. By letting the market function? No, by “better” central planning, by fine-tuning the regulatory mechanism: “If we had gotten the minimum pay standard right, we would not see the decline in the revenue.”

The market did get it right. 

People who wanted flexible gig work got the work and got tips. Customers got the deliveries and gave tips. And companies had more freedom to adjust to changing markets. 

If Seattle wants to return to that happy situation, it must repeal the law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture regulation too much government

Air Conditioners — Threat or Menace?

U.K., Great Britain, global warming, climate, regulations

Is it selfish, asks Good Morning Britain, to want air conditioning?

Yes, it’s selfish to want to live and prosper and be comfortable in 90 degree heat. 

And this “selfish” cooling is bad because . . . ?

According to “the experts” queried by the Good Morning Britain presenters — which broadcasts using “non-green” energy — it’s bad because “we know” that the cooling of indoor air will heat up the outdoors — and therefore the planet.

Catastrophically, of course.

But we don’t know.

It’s one of many unproven assertions about the future of weather that get tossed around to make us feel guilty about not wanting to live in caves and eat dandelions. 

We do know that people deal capably with often extremely variable weather and other problems by using manmade food, shelter, clothing, and transportation — as well as cooling and heating. All highly suspect in the minds of Europe’s climate catastrophists. Who even attack farming.

Some climate autocrats in the UK are now actually making Brits take out their air conditioning units. Catastrophically, of course. One North London resident “was forced to ‘permanently remove’ two air-con units from the back of their home.” Council members ordained that there was “no justification” for the units. Another resident ordered to rip out his AC prevailed after appealing to a Planning Inspectorate — because he had solar panels.

“Air-con engineers told The Telegraph that they had been called out to remove perfectly operational units worth thousands of pounds across London.”

It’s a Blitz that the Brits are doing to themselves. Soon we’ll have to airlift the few who are still sane out of there. Think of it as a civilizational Dunkirk.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies regulation

Mandatory Internet IDs

Parents Decide Act, privacy, law, OS

An assault on your freedom to use your computer without having to “verify your age” has migrated from states like California, Colorado, and New York to the United States Congress.

This is the so-called Parents Decide Act, which would “require operating system providers to verify the age of any user of an operating system.”

The honor system, the for-now method of the California law, doesn’t stop ten-year-olds from claiming to be 35. For such laws to “work,” the PC would have to require you to verify your age before you can use it.

That method cannot help but be invasive, like scans of your ID card or your face. Sure, many users of mobile computing devices have private security using their faces or fingerprints, but those users do not intend to share this secret information to third parties — which sure seems like what’s going on here.

PC Gamer observes that, although the method of age verification is crucial “in terms of privacy and data security,” the Energy and Commerce Committee will be deciding such things after passage. 

They’d have to pass the bill for us to see what’s in it.

Whatever the method, many users would obey, conscientiously giving the PC — and the PC or OS maker — ID or facial info that might be linked to purchase info in the company’s database.

Could such databases be hacked and provide criminals with new information with which to commit their crimes? Only if the umpteen stories per day on successful hacks of the databases of major companies are any clue.

“Save the children” is the familiar sales pitch, but if government is in charge of saving the children, our children are in trouble.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
privacy regulation

Driving VPNs South

Canada, VPN, privacy, regulations, Ottawa, government

Public Safety Canada, an agency responsible for safety, security, emergency preparedness and this kind of thing, recently urged Canadians to protect themselves when using public Wi-Fi by also using a VPN. 

“Using a VPN protects your data,” the agency said. 

True.

Unless — unless others in the government succeed in requiring VPN companies to uniformly sabotage the privacy of their customers.

The mechanism for crippling VPN’s? That would be the pending legislation to force VPN providers to retain personal data which users expect them not to retain, in this way killing these companies’ very reason for being as well as Canadian Internet users’ reasons to employ these companies. 

We netizens want some security. A VPN required to track and store information  on customers seeking security is, ipso facto, insecure.

Bill C-22, or the Lawful Access Act, introduced by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in March, would require customers’ data to be retained for a year. Everybody’s data, mind you, not just the data of persons suspected of a crime.

“Oh this is just rich,” says Windscribe, a VPN provider based in Toronto. “Bill C-22 is driving VPN businesses like ours out of Canada because of the required user logging. And in the same breath you tell people to secure their data with VPNs.”

If things go on like this, Ottawa’s impulse to destroy or try to destroy online privacy will override any contrary impulse to help people preserve online privacy. Thereby obliging Canadians who do value it to figure out a way to override the override.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
regulation too much government

Regulating BBQ

Los Angeles, busybody, regulations, busybodies

Los Angeles councilwoman Nithya Raman wants city officials to impose new regulations on backyard grilling when conditions are dry and windy. The mayoral candidate proposed restricting “backyard barbecues, fire pits and other open flames” in residential neighborhoods when such conditions exist.

Cities often prohibit burning leaves on windy days, in part because burning leaves may spread too easily when it’s blustery. But barbecues are more contained.

National Review’s Noah Rothman suggests that the caution would be more plausible if California had ever suffered a “rash of fires — or even just one — attributable to the careless mishandling of charcoal briquettes.”

Accidental causes of conflagrations tend to be things like lightning strikes and faulty power lines. These work in conjunction with poorly managed forests.

Arson, a big danger in recent years, comes in a variety of forms, as Mr. Rothman explains. “The record-breaking 2024 Park Fire was set by an intoxicated motorist who pushed his car into some flammable brush after an accident.”

The Palisades Fire was “first set by an embittered anti-capitalist vigilante” who hated the rich.

Arson and drunk driving are already illegal.

Anybody can try to cook hamburgers by setting a fire in the middle of high vegetation and calling this a “barbecue.” But that’s not the kind of thing Raman had in mind.

Fortunately, another councilwoman, Monica Rodriguez, managed to block Raman’s effort to toss a wet blanket on barbecues.

“The last thing Angelenos need,” Rodriguez says, “is a ban on hosting a carne asada in their own backyard.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Grok Imagine

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
international affairs national politics & policies regulation tax policy

How to Lower Gas Prices

Iran, gas prices, oil, spending, taxes

Gasoline prices have skyrocketed. The Iran War is to blame, but the President has not been able to bring it to an end.

Still, he has offered a small fix. A federal gas tax suspension!

In its favor, this temporary measure would offer some relief. In addition, the federal government shouldn’t be attaching an excise to fuel sales anyway. The states already burden our fuel bills with their own taxes.

As if to seize a political win, Senator Josh Hawley (R.-Mo.) declared he will introduce a bill to enact that suspension.

Cutting off a source of revenue would increase the deficit, of course. But there is a simple solution to that: spend less. For example, the fuel taxes are supposed to fund road repairs. All but two percent of U.S. roads are state roads now. During the emergency, suspend the two percent spending on repairs and let the 98 percent of spending carry on, as it does now, at the state level.

Adam N. Michel at Cato argues that the best way to spend less would not only reduce the deficit but also lower gas prices: end the Iran War. 

And not just rhetorically. 

But Michel and his Cato colleagues offer a more politic plan, too: don’t merely suspend the tax, end the tax forever and end the highway spending burden along with it. “States know what their infrastructure needs are,” he contends, “and they have the fiscal tools — gas taxes, sales taxes, user charges, debt, and privatization — to meet them without a federal middleman.” 

Before October, Congress is supposed to re-authorize the federal highway program. Don’t. Dismantle it all. 

For good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts