Property rights are not the rights of property; they are the rights of humans with regard to property. They are a particular kind of human right.
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Virginia state government has banned Web-based/app-based car-ride services Uber and Lyft from operating in the state. After applying heavy fines. After demanding the services follow rules originally devised for taxis and limo and bus services.
It seems tantamount to banning the automobile a century ago because the horse-and-buggy regulations on the books didn’t fit.
Uber and Lyft call what they provide “ride-sharing” services, allowing people with smart-phone and tablet apps to “hail” rides they need, from almost anywhere to almost anywhere. The folks providing the rides have signed up and even taken classes, and both parties rate each other after the transaction. Riders can “steer clear” of low-rated drivers if they want. And drivers can not offer rides to low-rated riders, as well.
It’s quite a service.
I first heard about this idea from economist David Friedman, a generation ago. He called it a “jitney” system, and offered it as an alternative to mass transit systems that are just too capital intensive to make a profit while still servicing diverse needs.
Now, the idea is off to a good start with two excellent services. Technology has allowed for safe, low-transaction-cost contracting between strangers. This sort of person-to-person (P2P) revolution could change everything.
Including government patronage. Or the need for much government regulation. Taxicab services are heavily regulated in most places. The excuse is usually safety and traffic considerations, but let’s be frank: it’s mostly a government power grab. Horning in on territory. Collecting a fee.
Uber and Lyft leverage the capital car-owners invest, and such P2P services are probably the most efficient contracting systems possible. If free market principles should apply to anything, it is jitney services.
So, Virginia, lay off. Free the P2P.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Nat Hentoff born
Apple shipped the first Apple II computer on June 10, 1977.
Born on this day: historian, jazz critic and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff (1925); children’s writer Maurice Sendak (1929); scientist and pioneer of “sociobiology” E. O. Wilson (1929).
June 10 deaths include military leader Alexander the Great (323 BC), playwright and poet Angelina Weld Grimké (1958); and novelist Louis L’Amour (1988).
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David D. Friedman
Legal rules are to be judged by the structure of incentives they establish and the consequences of people altering their behavior in response to those incentive.
If you run a company that buys oil from Venezuela, stop.
If you purchase fuel from a company getting its product from Venezuela, stop.
If you run a government that imposes lots of arbitrary restrictions on the exploration, development, and/or transport of oil, stop that also.
But don’t wait for the last to happen if you can do the first. Or second.
And the second means: Don’t buy gas from Citgo.
We have long had more than sufficient cause to refrain from financially empowering Venezuela’s autocratic regime, and to make it a lot easier for domestic buyers and sellers to shun dealings with dictators who happen to be sitting on a lot of oil. These reasons didn’t fade after the death last year of Hugo Chavez.
News from the communist country underscores the viciousness of the Venezuelan tyranny. Organizations like the Human Rights Foundation have called attention to the plight of all those detained and abused for peacefully protesting the regime by formally declaring opposition leader Leopoldo López, detained since February, to be a prisoner of conscience of the Maduro government; and by vocally condemning the government’s torture of student protestors Marco Aurelio Coello and Christian Holdack, also detained since February.
Communist governments steal everyone’s stuff; that is the pain that everybody who works for a living sees and feels. They also tend to resort to repression and torture of any who dare object to their repressive policies. Persons free to boycott such tyranny should boycott it. Now. In order to do so, we need not wait for a government or even have the support of our own government.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Isaiah Berlin
If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict — and of tragedy — can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social. The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition. This gives its value to freedom as Acton conceived of it — as an end in itself, and not as a temporary need, arising out of our confused notions and irrational and disordered lives, a predicament which a panacea could one day put right.
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Townhall: There They Go, Again
Politicians tend to chafe at constitutions. So much so that they ignore it wherever they can, whenever they can get away with it. This process takes its toll. As discussed on Townhall this weekend.
- Reason: 7 Libertarian Arguments about Bowe Bergdahl
- Common Sense: Legal, Shmegal
- Daily Caller: Law Professor Turley: ‘I Don’t Think There’s Much Debate’ That Obama Broke Law With Prisoner Swap
- Breitbart: Bill Richardson — Prisoner Swap Broke ‘Impractical’ Law
- New York Times: Legal Group Says Bush Undermines Law by Ignoring Select Parts of Bills
- Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens
- Wikipedia: Jose Padilla
- Common Sense (2003): Bad Men & Bad Law
If we learn from history, we might be able to avoid some mistakes:
When a professional academic economist and poverty specialist like Prof. Robert Plotnick defends a radically higher minimum wage law, as has been put in place in SeaTac, Washington, and was just enacted (with elaborate postponement/implementation periods) in Seattle, I raise an eyebrow. What am I missing?
But then I read what he actually said: “People aren’t going to stop flying out of Sea Tac [airport] because it costs a little more to buy a hamburger or a beer,” he says.
No. They won’t.
But that’s irrelevant. With prices higher for fast food, there’s certainly going to be no increase in fast food purchases. People will still go to the airport, but more often avoid the fast food joints, in SeaTac or Seattle.
And, over time, as businesses struggle with reduced revenue, or at least reduced profits, fewer of those businesses will survive. And folks with better qualifications — say, better language skills, better people skills, or a higher work ethic — will move in to the forced higher-wage area (the $15/hour minimum in both Sea Tac and Seattle is the highest city rate in the nation) and will replace less skilled workers.
Increasing poverty, not decreasing it: stultifying progress, both personal and in general.
Already the horror stories are piling up: check out the stories in the Seattle Times. (See economist David Henderson’s discussion on EconLog.)
One of the problems was inadvertently suggested by our president, who recently intoned, “Let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty.”
Great. We’ll have fewer low-income workers working full time.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Isaiah Berlin
Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.