Tag: regulation

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Kindness of Bureaucrats

When the local government of Washington, D.C., says, “Don’t worry” — people worry.

Matthew Marcou, deputy associate director of the District of Columbia’s Department of Transportation’s Public Space Regulation Administration, told those ruled by his long-​worded administrative agency — the people working the city’s many food trucks, which feed lunch to a great number of Washingtonians and tourists on sidewalks every day — not to worry.

Just because the wording of a new sidewalk regulation would shut down eight of the city’s ten most popular food trucks doesn’t mean the good folks at the Public Space Regulation Administration couldn’t simply — almost magically — grant a waiver.

Be happy.

Still, there are the malcontents, the businesspeople who want some sort of certainty about the rules controlling their enterprise. The Washington Post reports that “Owners of food trucks … are put off by a still-​unknown process that relies on the kindness of bureaucrats to keep their businesses alive.”

Che Ruddell-​Tabisola is the D.C. Food Truck Association’s executive director and also a co-​owner of the BBQ Bus. “[W]hy would you put forward regulations that are only successful when you make an exception to the rule?” asked Che.

The word “regulate” comes from the word “regular”; the goal of regulation being to make things regular. Therefore, regulations that require significant use of waivers fail. They aren’t rules at all. They constitute, instead, a labyrinth of economically suffocating and graft-​inducing red tape.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling free trade & free markets too much government

That Was Fast

Ah, Minnesota. The home of “nice” Big Government. And in keeping with that, last week the state produced a grand example of mindlessly intrusive regulation. That’s the “Big Government” part. The “nice” part is how quickly the government conceded it was wrong.

I read about it first at Reason’s Hit & Run, where Katherine Mangu-​Ward proclaimed “Minnesota Bans Free Online College Courses from Coursera. I Give Up.” She briefly related the burgeoning online industry of offering college course lectures free to the public (minus the accreditation), and how one of them was singled out for prohibition from the state’s Office of Higher Education: “Coursera is unwelcome in the state because it never got permission to operate there.”

Ms. Mangu-Ward’s conclusion was simple:

Idiots.

A day later, however, the story had radically changed. Minnesota’s bureaucrats had rethought their position, as related by this particular bureau’s bigwig, Larry Pogemiller: “Obviously, our office encourages lifelong learning and wants Minnesotans to take advantage of educational materials available on the Internet, particularly if they’re free.”

Obviously.

Pogemiller went on to promise that, when the legislature “convenes in January, my intent is to work with the Governor and Legislature to appropriately update the statute to meet modern-​day circumstances.”

The regulators of Minnesota’s higher education proved that they could learn a new lesson. How well? We’ll see, as online schooling continues to gain its foothold — and accreditation, too.

Gerard Piel famously wrote of the “acceleration of history.” With the Internet, we see the feedback time from bad policy to removal of said policy cut down to a mere day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Hardship

Regulation. It’s a tough job.

Just as regulators think they’ve got it figured out — i.e., this is what folks must do in such-​and-​such circumstance, and this is what they mustn’t do in such-​and-​such other circumstance — somebody invents something that makes things way too easy for buyer and seller alike … despite all the alternative-​strangling regulations.

It’s so frustrating!

This can get out of hand pretty quickly when one industry (say, computer hardware and software and networking) is by historical quirk much freer than another industry (say, New York City taxicabs). You guessed it, this isn’t a hypothetical: A company called Uber has created a smartphone app that lets cabbies and customers find each other more easily. Now Uber is testing its service in New York City.

But — uh oh! — rotten Big Apple taxi regulations prohibit yellow cabs from pre-​arranging rides, that is, by methods other than hailing a cab on the street. Cabbies may not use electronic devices, for example. And cabbies usually aren’t allowed to refuse a fare unless another passenger is already sitting pretty and watching the running meter.

Officials say they are “looking at” Uber’s app, and the New York Times reports that both sides are working to “resolve regulatory concerns.” Well, there are only three ways to resolve them:

  1. Prohibit Uber.
  2. Pretend that the regulations don’t mean what they say. Or
  3. get rid of the stupid regulations.

Solving regulatory problems is so hard!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Businesses Rate Governments

What do small businesses worry about the most? I mean, besides serving their customers?

Regulation — licensing in particular.

At least when rating government, owners of small businesses surveyed by Thumbtack​.com indicated that “licensing requirements were nearly twice as important as tax rates in determining their state or city government’s overall business-friendliness.”Thumbtack.com's state ratings in terms of small business concerns.

Yes, taxes are a burden. But regulations and licensing can be amazingly arcane and costly in many communities. Their burdens often kick in before you’ve made a dime, and, despite that, they can sneak up on you, with the heavy weight of bureaucracy descending like the proverbial brick ton.

Thumbtack’s page allows you to see how your state rates. Idaho and Texas come out on top, and my state, Virginia, is surprisingly good. “Blue states” (horrible term: sorry) tend to come out much worse. California gets a big fat F, scoring abysmally low in most categories.

No surprise: The most politically unrepresentative state in the union over-regulates!

Distrust the survey? Just talk to the owner of a small business — you’ll likely get corroboration. Tim Sutinen, a businessman from southwest Washington State, noted in his campaign for state office a few years ago that there were only a handful of licensed occupations in the Evergreen State during the economic downturn in the early ’80s. Now, a few decades later, there’s over a thousand occupations you need a license to work in.

No wonder the recovery stalls.

That’s not progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling free trade & free markets

Will They Ever Learn?

In which industries do prices and costs rise fastest? Those in which government is most involved.

The process is no mystery. Regulate supply by limiting entry into the business — to “increase quality,” of course — will raise prices, as producers behave oligopolistically. Government does this with health care providers, and have done so increasingly for the last century. If, at the same time, you subsidize the consumption, that amounts to increasing demand, which also puts upward pressure on prices. This has been accelerated in America since the beginning of Medicare, and with each additional healthcare program.

Typical government intervention double whammy.

Higher education is also not exempt from the play of supply and demand. One policy advocate’s explanation of this, which you can read excerpted, online, at National Review’s site, is worth considering. He explains what happens as vendors rake in profits under a regulated-​and-​subsidized system: they

sponsor crowd-​pleasing sports events on weekends, building public goodwill. Other profits are used to hire professional lobbyists to plead for both more subsidies and more freedom to set prices. You also convince the government to allow you and other incumbent … sellers to form a private organization with the authority to decide whether new sellers can become “approved … vendors” for the purposes of receiving public subsidies. Unsurprisingly, few new sellers are approved.

Predictably, the analysis is followed by halfway measures that don’t lead to a free market in education at all. That’s just too radical.

Education policy wonks, like educators themselves, seem never to learn … economics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Creepy Louisiana Law

Sometimes, the proper response to legislation is just “Huh?”

Too often, though, our incredulity reaches the shivering heights of repulsion. In those cases, we should challenge the legislators who proposed, promoted, and voted for the law. The challenge might as well be in the form of a question: “Don’t you feel creepy for sponsoring that kind of thing?”

I would have felt creepy even contemplating a vote on Louisiana’s HB 125, which, in the cause of preventing transfer of stolen property, prohibits people from buying stuff at Goodwill and similar secondhand stores with cash.

Yes, you read that right: CASH. Greenbacks. Federal Reserve Notes. “Legal tender.”

I’ve always associated such kinds of prohibitions — not allowing cash to leave the country, for example — with poor and/​or socialist countries. Real backwaters. The Second or Third World.

But here it is, in Louisiana. A fully recognized state of the union (at least by everyone but FEMA).

The law passed — indeed, in the words of one report, “flew … under the radar” — so quickly that “most businesses don’t even know about it.”

Besides non-​profit resellers like Goodwill, and garage sales, the language of the bill encompasses stores like the Pioneer Trading Post and flea markets.

Lawyer Thad Ackel Jr. feels the passage of this bill begins a slippery slope for economic freedom in the state.

“The government is placing a significant restriction on individuals transacting in their own private property,” says Ackel.

Somewhat inexplicably, pawn shops are exempted from the prohibition.

What a sorry state.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.