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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government

Working to Boost Unemployment

occupational licensing, hair braiding, permission, law, crime, employment, unemployment, control, health

Some government officials work overtime to throw people out of work.

What I’m referring to differs from losing your job or business because of slack performance or slackening sales. Instead, you lose the right to earn your living a certain way so that the government can benefit competitors at your expense.

Occupational licensing is great at dis-employing people. The regulations are especially galling when the work being regulated obviously requires no formal training in order to be done well and safely.

Hair braiding, for example.

The Institute for Justice — which has done incredible work over the years representing victims of destructive government mandates — just won a victory for hair braiders in Iowa. Thanks to IJ’s efforts, a new law there exempts braiders from having to waste time and money getting a cosmetology license in order to practice their craft.

Such battles are never won permanently, of course. Washington, D.C., recently started requiring day care providers to get a college degree or lose their job. (As I have argued in a Townhall column, the same “logic” would justify forcing people to get college degrees to become parents.) IJ is helping affected parties to challenge the absurd law.

It is time for a new licensing requirement. Nobody gets to become a local, state or federal lawmaker unless he first writes a million times in a row, “I will never help violate the rights of any man or woman to earn an honest living.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Thought

Adam Smith

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

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Today

Auberon Herbert

On June 18, 1838, Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert was born.

Auberon Herbert was a Liberal Member of Parliament who, after reading the writings of Herbert Spencer, became a radical individualist and author of essays such as “The Ethics of Dynamite,” “A Politician in Trouble About His Soul,” and “The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State.”

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links

Townhall: A Birthday Present for the Deep State

This weekend on Townhall.com, we celebrate a birthday — and an apt homage to a patriot. A possible homage. A proposal. For the President.

Click on over, then come back here.

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Today

The Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885. On the same day in 1930, progressive Republican President Herbert Hoover — eager to please agricultural states, and confident that protectionism would yield greater wealth — signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The Great Depression deepened, ratcheting up as each provision of the bill took effect.

Three years later, investment author and two-time Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne was born.

On June 17, 1944, Iceland declared independence from Denmark.

On this day in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs,” which steadily decreased civil liberty and the rule of law in America.

Exactly one year later, five men were arrested for attempted burglary on the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., igniting the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon more than two years later.

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Snowden video

Mr. Snowden: Five Years a Fugitive

Free the People: Five Years After

Citizenfour — Movie Trailer

CNN: Greenwald Defends Snowden

CNN: Ron Paul on Snowden

CNN: Trump on Snowden

NBC: Clinton on Snowden

WSJ: Snowden on Trump & Clinton

Al Jezeera: More Snowden on Trump & Clinton

Bernie Sanders on Snowden

Learn Liberty: Snowden: Democracy Under Surveillance

ACLU: Edward Snowden statement at the Pardon Snowden launch event

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Thought

Adam Smith

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.

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Today

Ballet & Political Economy

On June 16, 1961, dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union.

The great Scottish moral philosopher, political economy pioneer, and Enlightenment intelectual Adam Smith (1723-1790), best known for authoring the 1776 masterwork The Wealth of Nations, was born on June 16.

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Accountability education and schooling folly general freedom ideological culture local leaders moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Degrading Expectations

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, race, racism, low expectations, condescension, Stuyvesant High, quota, affirmative action

Expect racism to come from the Right . . . we are told by the Left.

On Wednesday, I considered the sad case of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, pushing racial resentment in a black church, asking for an “amen” after telling the parishioners that there was something very wrong with Asian students dominating that most meritocratic of institutions, Stuyvesant High.

Giving up on meritocracy is quite bracing, as is de Blasio’s lack of commitment to the culture of individual achievement.

His assumption? Black and Hispanic Americans just cannot compete on merit alone.

They don’t need to work harder, and we mustn’t expect them to. They needn’t change their values or encourage their children to be more academically ambitious. What’s the point in troubling to emulate successful cultures, like that of many Asians (many of them quite poor) who have been advancing so effectively? For de Blasio there’s no hope for blacks and Hispanics.

Except through him.

Note the two pillars of de Blasio’s vision:

  1. racial determinism, where individuals cannot hope to succeed outside the stereotyped behavior of their racial background, their skin color and physical features determining their performance,
  2. except when Government steps in to save them (this is statist messianism).

And yes, by “government” he really means “de Blasio” — or “progressivise politics.”

The first assumption has been called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

The second is idolatry of the State and overbearing pride in one’s own ideological tribe.

You individuals have no chance to succeed, the idea runs, but We, the Progressives, will save you. Vote for us!

How insufferable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Today

Pig War!

The Oregon Treaty, signed June 15, 1846, established the boundary between Great Britain’s Canadian territory and the United States of America, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, using the 49th Parallel as the handy marker. However, the treaty was not exactly clear on the territorial status of the San Juan Islands, so exactly 13 years later, to the day, a war erupted . . . over a shot pig.

An American farmer shot a pig rooting through his garden. The pig belonged to an Irishman. The two did not agree upon compensation, and “the authorities” were called in, with infantry mustering from the south and the Governor of Vancouver Island instructing marines to land on San Juan Island — though the rear admiral in charge refused to comply with the order, on the reasonable grounds that war over a pig was not worth it. Local troops from both sides lined up against each other, but under command to defend themselves only and not shoot first. All that was exchanged in this war were insults. It turned out to be a bloodless war, discounting the pig, so it might qualify as the best war in American history.

On June 15, 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle incorrectly added an “e” to the end of a Trenton, N.J., sixth grader’s correctly spelled “potato.”