Tag: regulation

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Bailout Follies

Economic news, these days, seems to be driving home some very old economic wisdom — about foolishness.

In an essay on banking from the 19th century, a writer quipped, “The ultimate result of shielding men from folly, is to fill the world with fools.” This basic lesson — that it is dangerous to shore up bad practices with bailouts and specially tuned central banking policies — is being borne out, once again, in the American economy. Thank the L.A. Times’s sad, sad article “Forget too big too fail: some banks now too small to succeed.” The article’s blurb nicely synopsizes smaller, non-​bailed-​out banks’ plight: “Small banks are finding it increasingly tough to survive, in part because of the cost of complying with regulations stemming from the financial crisis.”

Remember that 2008’s financial implosion led to a double whammy of governmental overkill:

  1. Bailouts for the biggest fools and
  2. Regulations for everybody, including the wisest players.

The former kept the fools in place and ready to do more damage, since their folly had basically been rewarded. The latter burdens all players, but the costs are hardest for smaller outfits to bear, while bigger outfits can easily jump those regulatory hurdles.

The details of all this constitute “news,” but the principles are old (I’ve discussed them here many times). Bailouts reward the biggest fools, and regulations protect the biggest players from competition from smaller ones.

Yes, indeed, the ultimate result of shielding bankers from the effects of their folly is to fill the world with foolish bankers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Prosecution Magnet

Buckyballs are little round magnets that can be sculpted into intricate geometrical patterns, providing responsible adults good clean fun.

Though marketed to adults, and despite the company’s extensive informational systems to discourage their use by unsupervised children, Buckyballs were indeed ingested by a few kids, alas. The ultimate misuse.

Even if you haven’t read those few horror stories — thankfully, no deaths have been reported, something you can’t say for drape drawstrings, tricycles, and bathtubs — you can probably imagine the huge havoc little magnets can wreak in little intestines.

Perhaps you might think it is up to parents to keep such adult playthings out of reach of toddlers and ultra-​foolish older children, but this is America — and this is the age of regulation and loose liability lawyering.

So of course they were banned, and the company that made them, Maxfield and Oberton, folded.

There is a long story behind the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban on Buckyballs. One could use it to limn the strange world of modern American product liability and business regulation. But it’s not the only story. As Ari Armstrong put it,

Now, not satisfied with destroying Maxfield and Oberton, the CPSC is seeking to destroy the company’s former CEO, Craig Zucker — who led a spirited although ultimately unsuccessful public campaign against the CPSC’s actions.

Zucker’s “Save Our Balls” campaign was, he said, a success, “but not successful enough to save the company.” Apparently it really ticked off folks at the CPSC, for the agency, against its own legal authorization, continues to prosecute Zucker personally.

Zucker fears this personal vendetta “is just the beginning.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Work, Shirk, or Bug Out?

Which is better: helping the working poor through regulations on business, mandating employee benefits, and cushy hire-​and-​fire terms … or through higher unemployment benefits, assistance to families, or other direct aid?

Both yield unfortunate consequences.

Italy’s employment policies protect workers, on paper. Whatever the ostensible worker salary is in the country, the mandated benefits cost the employer more than twice as much.

This proved a problem for businessman Fabrizio Pedroni, whose factory near Medona hasn’t made a profit in five years. He blames high taxes, heavy regulatory burden, and low worker productivity. So, while his employees were off on holiday, he packed up his factory and shipped it to Poland.

Actually, the tail end of his move was stymied, for a while, by a hasty union blockade. Pedroni cited this as evidence for his need to bug out in secret. Had he announced the plan, the government would have just taken the property for the benefit of his employees. “I had three options — either close, move the factory, as many other businesses have done, or shoot myself in the head.”

Meanwhile, a new Cato study shows that in 16 of our United States, a “combination of food stamps, temporary cash grants, WIC, and housing assistance is worth a pre-​tax value more than $30,000” to families that qualify. For some, it’s much easier to live well unemployed than employed.

No wonder unemployment persists. And economic recovery is so slow.

In both cases, programs to help everyday folks hurt them in the long run, undermining productivity, increasing dependence, and scuttling the source of progress: business enterprise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights free trade & free markets government transparency national politics & policies

Your Taxes, in Small Type

The business of business is to profit by helping others. The business of government is to make sure that businesses don’t profit by cheating others.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s the governments that cheat.

Take the airline industry. Though substantially deregulated by the early 1980s, government has not treated it in an exactly laissez faire manner since. First there are the taxes, quite heavy. And recently the Department of Transportation decided that it must regulate the way in which airlines may advertise their prices … and the taxes. That is, the DOT insists that the “total price” — by which it means the price-​plus-​tax — must be shown prominently, with the tax portion “presented in significantly smaller type than the listing of the total price.”

Talk about regulatory micromanagement!

Now, this rule isn’t something Congress cooked up. It’s the result of a bureaucracy gone wild.

And the rule has one obvious effect: It shields government from consumer criticism, showing bureaucrats at their most self-​serving. About one fifth of every airline ticket goes to the government, and folks in government don’t want you to know that.

This being the case, you might think — as George Will does — that the First Amendment would apply, especially since the First Amendment is now routinely held as protecting political speech more strictly than commercial speech. But, so far, courts have ruled for the taxing and regulating bureaucrats, not the competitive airlines. Or consumers.

Frequent fliers (I’m one) should hope the Supreme Court justices take up the case, which shows why economic and political freedom go best together.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom

Backwoods Growers Still Outlawed?

One way marijuana legalization was pushed, politically, in Colorado and Washington, was with the “let’s tax this weed!” agenda. Indeed, the “tax and regulate” approach proved a convenient way for marijuana users to get non-​marijuana users “on board” the legalization bandwagon, basically buying off those who were most sympathetic to the prohibitionist status quo.

And it’s the dominant way of thinking, today.

This frustrates many who wanted to return marijuana growth, distribution and usage to its pre-​1937 legality, for they saw the prohibitionist program as inherently illiberal, nasty, inhumane. To these legalizers, “taxing and regulating” appears as just a ramped-​down version of today’s policy.

Think Genghis Khan, who wanted to kill all Manchurians and turn northern China into a vast grazing land for horses. He was convinced not to do so for reasons of the “Laffer Curve”: he’d get more revenue by taxing Manchurians than killing them.

While taxing and regulating Manchurians was certainly better than genocide, it was still a tyrant’s prerogative.

Apply the same logic to cannabis.

Marijuana has been grown and used for eons. Trying to control or eradicate it as a noxious weed rather than tolerate it as a plant with many uses, seems unjust, not merely inadvisable. The whole “tax and regulate” notion rubs up against the home growing of the plant. Marijuana is easy to grow, but many folks want to prohibit people from growing it out-​of-​doors — the better to keep it out of the hands of thieving youngsters.

Call me old-​fashioned, but it seems to me that thieving youngsters should be nabbed and dealt with in Andy Griffith-​style justice.

But then, I missed the marijuana episode of the Andy Griffith Show.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom U.S. Constitution

Equally Unequal

Two court cases come to our attention, courtesy of Cato’s Ilya Shapiro. Both involve the favoring of members of one group over another.

The Sixth Circuit ruled that a voter-​approved amendment to the Michigan state constitution outlawing racial preferences in college admissions would violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause. The amendment states in part that Michigan public colleges and universities shall “not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.…”

In his dissent, Judge Richard Griffin writes: “The post-​Civil War amendment that guarantees equal protection to persons of all races has now been construed as barring a state from prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race.” Shapiro calls the decision Orwellian.

The other case involves California law banning sellers of eyewear who are not state-​licensed optometrists and ophthalmologists from conducting eye exams and selling glasses at the same place of business. The law prevents national eyewear chains from competing effectively in California (since customers prefer to get their glasses and eye exams in one shop).

Cato joins an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take up the California case. Shapiro also says that because there are two conflicting lower-​court decisions on the Michigan question, the Supreme Court is likely to add that case to its docket.

Let’s hope all further rulings are based on a clear-​sighted respect for equal rights under the law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.