Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Zoned Out

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 3, 2020
1 Comment on Zoned Out

There are ways of cultivating community standards without resorting to zoning and similar regulatory regimens by state and local governments. They have been studied, written about, and they can be found here and there around the country, though most famously in Houston, Texas.

But zoning’s the norm in urban and suburban communities.

Ask Marietta Grundlehner.

She had been running an online clothing boutique from her home in Fairfax County, Virginia, and has been forced to shut it down.

Well, a court has ruled that she must remove all her inventory from her home. You can have a home business in Fairfax, but not inventory of goods for sale.

Ms. Grundlehner had been earning, she said, about $30,000 a year as a “LulaRoe Fashion Retailer” in an industry billed by its online organizer as “social retail.” The ecommerce hub, lularoe.com, makes an enticing pitch for its business model: “Find your joy and fulfillment by creating a positive impact in your community.”

But it was a neighbor who turned her in and sicced the local government on her.

That Fairfax resident sure did not think she was having a “positive impact” in their community.

Grundlehner hopes for a regulatory change to save her business, but Christian Britschgi of Reason has a word for that battle: “uphill.”

Still, online businesses are on the ascendency. Too many run afoul of zoning laws. And online entrepreneurship being the wave of the future, local governments might want to forget their old gentrification utopianism and meet the real world, the place where people actually live.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags community standards, regulations, small business, zoning

Today

Nations and National Isms

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 3, 2020
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On March 3, 1924, the 407-year-old Islamic caliphate collapsed when Caliph Abdülmecid II of the Ottoman Caliphate was deposed. The last remnant of the old regime gives way to the reformed ofKemal Atatürk.

On the same day, the Free State of Fiume was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy.

On March 3 of 1931, the United States adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem.

Mohandas K. Gandhi began his hunger strike in Bombay to protest at the autocratic rule in British India on this day in 1939.

Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari (pictured above) was born on March 3, 1819. Associated with French laissez-faire economists Frédéric Bastiat and Yves Guyot, he was the longest-serving editor of Guillamin’s Journal des économistes. Today chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his authorship of one article, “The Production of Security” (1849), he was, as Ludwig von Mises described, the most productive economist in his school. Despite this, and his worldwide recognition, only one of his many books was translated from the French into English during his lifetime, The Society of To-morrow (1904), his final book.

In the book he advanced the idea of “the free constitution of nationality.”

Molinari died on January 28, 1912.

Thought

Gustave de Molinari

Every association which carries on an industrial business must devise an administrative system to direct its various services. The State was no exception to this rule. Like all other businesses, the State acknowledged no end but interest, and it identified this with the conservation and enlargement of its profits. But profits can only be increased in two ways. The yield of imposts, whether of labour, of kind, or in money, may be increased; or the area of production may be enlarged. The latter method was preferred by the associations which owned political “businesses,” for the former required capacities for good government of which they were seldom possessed. But, since a community can only extend its domain at the cost of a neighbour, war naturally ensued, and while those communities which excelled in war enlarged their territory and their holdings in subjects, they increased their income at the same time. A merchant or manufacturer cares nothing for the race, language, or individual customs of his customers, and the States had no more regard for those of the persons who lived in the territories which they acquired. Their sole motive was interest, and all their actions were exclusively directed to obtaining those territories of which the conquest and maintenance seemed the most easy, and which promised the highest possibilities for lucrative exploitation. Entire populations, opposed in race, in language, and in customs, were thus drawn, whether they would or no, into the domain of the victorious association, to leave it only in accordance with the arbitrament of a new war, or according to family dispositions when a single house chanced to acquire complete sovereign control within the State.
To-day we consider such a method of constituting a nation, a nationality, or a “country,” to be barbarous.
Gustave de Molinari, The Society of To-morrow (1899)

responsibility

Don’t Panic, Prepare

The other day, on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show, Democrat Tulsi Gabbard — my favorite of the “blue” party’s blues-inducing candidates — suggested, inartfully, that the coronavirus is “something that requires all of us as Americans coming together, standing together . . . just as we would in wartime.”

The best way to fight contagion is to “come together”?

Maybe not so much.

What should we do? I mean, separately.

Although there’s a flood of information about the scary new coronavirus (COVID-19), that information is fragmentary.

Reliable tests for the virus are not easily available. It’s unclear how many people are really infected. But the fatality rate is apparently much higher than that of regular flu. The elderly and those with other medical problems are especially vulnerable.

The virus is spreading fast despite (and because of) efforts to contain it. Cases have now been reported in 45 countries.

COVID-19 may not yet be where you are or where I am. But what should we do now to be ready if and when things around us change drastically?

One, stay informed.

Two, follow advice about reducing the risk of infection, including such simple measures as carefully and frequently washing your hands.

Three, stock up — on food, water, medicines, other emergency supplies — in case you must hunker down at home for a long time. When panic strikes, grocery shelves can empty out fast. You may not want to go where many people are congregating anyway.

Some vendors specialize in providing bulk supplies of food at a discount: Wellness Meats, Bargain Wholesale, markets in your neighborhood. There’s also Walmart and Amazon, offering a wide variety of staples. You can trade advice and information at sites like emergency-preps.com.

Such preparation won’t be wasted. If we’re lucky and the coronavirus threat fades as flu season wanes, we’ll be ready for some other emergency that comes along.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags coronavirus, covid, epidemic

Today

Rothbard and Houston

On March 2, 1793, Sam Houston was born.

On March 2, 1926, American economist and political theorist Murray N. Rothbard was born.

As President of the Republic of Texas, Houston (pictured above) cut the size of the Republic’s budget by a whopping amount, including selling the navy for scrap. Rothbard theorized about even more daring — and more permanent — cuts to (and limits upon) government.

On March 2, 1781, the Second Continental Congress convened as the new Congress of the Confederation, under the Articles of Confederation, ratified the day before. The congress elected no new president upon adoption of the Articles. This Confederation Congress oversaw the conclusion of the American Revolution.

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Listen: All the Something in China

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 1, 2020

Biden, crayons, China, and more!

This Week in Common Sense, February 24 – 28, 2020.

Today

March First Firsts

March 1st Firsts (and a 17th and a 37th):

| The first United States census was authorized, in 1790.

| Ohio was admitted as the 17th U.S. state, in 1803.

| President John Tyler [pictured above] signed a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas, in 1845.

| The state of Michigan formally abolished capital punishment, 1847.

| Nebraska became the 37th of the United States, in 1867.

On March 1, 1781, the Continental Congress of the United States adopted the Articles of Confederation. With this, the governing body became known, officially, as United States of America in Congress Assembled, more commonly as the Congress of the Confederation. The first session of this newly styled Confederation Congress took over without a break from the Second Continental Congress, adjourning on November 3. Samuel Huntington and Thomas McKean served as presidents during this first session.

Thought

Bolesław Prus

Let people be happy according to their own lights.

by Paul Jacob video

All the . . . in China

Tiananmen Square, China, Goddess of Democracy, term limits, freedom,

The big stories just got bigger:

This Week in Common Sense, February 24 – 28, 2020.

Thought

A. J. Wilson

[T]he progress of the human race must be measured by the progress of the individuals composing it. Manly independence, the true spirit of freedom, cannot be drilled into men and women, as a squad of recruits can be taught to march and shoot, at the word of command. When, therefore, a nation deserts its birthright, and, instead of cultivating manliness in the individual, flies to what it calls the “State,” or to combinations, leagues, unions, to do for it this and that, it is, generally speaking, making progress backwards, and putting its future in peril. The honeyed sentimentality of much of our modern Socialism is, no doubt, sweet to the taste, but its effects are deadly. Close at the heels of the Socialist stalks Anarchy, and Anarchy has never yet in the history of the world been crushed save by the heel of the despot.
A. J. Wilson, introduction to Yves Guyot, Labour, Socialism and Strikes (1896).