Tag: regulations

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Supermarket Slavery

grocery store, police

How to sue supermarkets for shutting down:

One. Move to San Francisco.

Two. Support a proposed ordinance “amending the Police Code to require large supermarkets to provide six months notice to their customers and the City before permanently closing, and to explore ways to allow for the continued sale of groceries at the location.”

Three. If the ordinance passes, wait for a large supermarket to go out of business without having known six months in advance that it would need to do so.

Four. Sue.

That the proposed law would amend the police code is perversely apt. The idea is use the state’s police power to penalize ending an activity that as a free man, not a slave, you have no obligation to continue.

Ending any project may inconvenience people who benefit from what you’re doing. But unless you are bound by contract, these other people have no right to your further efforts. 

Not for six months, not for six seconds.

The San Francisco ordinance would exempt supermarkets that must close because of a natural disaster or other circumstance not “reasonable foreseeable.” These exemptions don’t solve the problems that the ordinance could cause for innocent businessmen. As Reason magazine notes, any stores that closes “without providing the proper notice” could still be sued for damages, supposedly exempted or not.

In the 1980s, when this notion was originally proposed (unsuccessfully), supermarket executives argued that making it harder for them to shut down would also discourage them from opening a store to begin with.

True. But that’s just common sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense national politics & policies regulation subsidy

Electric Class Warfare

Star Trek, electric car, gas car, regulations, climate

Star Trek may have adversely affected American politics. Its techno-communist utopian militarism was one thing, its attitude towards engineering? Perhaps worse.

In how many episodes did Captain Kirk demand that Scotty push the warp drives further, or decrease the time required for a task — arbitrarily according to his need, not actual possibility?

And, because television: presto, it was done; just in time for the finale!

We see that in the push for electric vehicles (EVs). 

The EV mandates, explains The Epoch Times, “will likely cause a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of the United States to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them. . . .”

For while Democrats say they’re trying to “save the planet” from an increase in atmospheric carbon, really, analyst Robert Bryce counters, “it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”

How? The EPA’s new “rules are the strictest in history and will effectively force carmakers to have one-third of new car sales be plug-in EVs by 2027 and more than two-thirds by 2032.” But according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “as much as $48,000 of the cost of the average EV sold in the United States is paid not by the owner but in the form of ‘socialized costs’ that are spread out among taxpayers and electricity consumers over a 10-year period.”

So the new rules will reduce the supply of gas-powered vehicles, driving up costs. And the increased number of already-subsidized vehicles will also be paid by taxpayers at large, while the benefits go to . . . mostly Democrats in the bluest counties of the bluest states, as statistics show.

In recent years, Democrats have prided themselves that their “blue states” subsidize “red states,” mocking the “rugged individualist” pretensions of the hapless bubbas in flyover country. But now such boasts ring hollow. 

This is the far-flung future? 

Subsidy and regulation spoil the Star Trek promise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom regulation

Monopoly vs. Monopoly

monopoly octopus, Joe Biden, Apple

The Biden Administration makes much of its pro-consumer actions. President Sleepy Joe never tires of boasting about how his regulations favor consumers over credit card companies. Considering the massive taxation that his administration supports, however, saving a few bucks on overdraft fees looks a bit absurd in context.

As does the administration’s ramped-up anti-trust actions.

The federal government has now attacked Apple. On anti-trust grounds. For being a monopoly.

The humor in this was noted by anti-intellectual property theorist Stephan Kinsella, tweeting on X: “‘U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly’ We grant you patent and copyright monopoly privileges and you use them to build up a monopoly? How dare you!”

Jeffrey A. Tucker of the Brownstone Institute was less amused, and less concerned with Apple’s reliance upon intellectual property, which he claims is secondary to the company’s useful products: “The very notion that the government is trying to protect consumers in this case is preposterous. Apple is a success not because they are exploitative but because they make products that users like, and they like them so much that they buy ever more.”

At issue is how Apple products work so well together but not so well with other manufacturers’ products. “The Justice Department calls this anticompetitive even though competing is exactly the source of Apple’s market strength,” insists Tucker.

Maybe it’s really about this principle: the government giveth; the government taketh away: blessed be the name of the Biden.

In full disclosure, I have an iPhone, which I hate, and a Microsoft Surface Book, which I also hate. I’m open to any of their competitors, which I might hate less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture subsidy

Race-Based Handouts?

collectivism, individualism, race, racism, regulations, welfare

The decision won’t be the end of the matter, but it’s a good sign.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman has ruled that a federal agency established to give subsidies to businesses, in its current form called the Minority Business Development Agency, may no longer use race or ethnicity as a criterion for distributing benefits.

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of three business owners who weren’t allowed to apply for help from the MBDA because they’re white. The plaintiffs argue that the Agency violates the constitutional requirement of equal treatment under the law.

According to Judge Pittman, although “the Agency may intend to serve listed groups, not punish unlisted groups, the very design of its presumption punishes those who are not presumptively entitled to MBDA benefits.”

Supporting rights-based governance, I’m no fan of any welfare programs. As long as we have them, though, why should the handouts or the ability to apply for them be determined by race?

Government-imposed racial discrimination is unjust on its face. It should be extirpated wherever it exists. The Minority Business Development Agency is one of those places.

If Pittman’s ruling is allowed to stand, it may have a salutary effect on many other agencies and programs. 

The MBDA’s name presents a problem, however. 

I guess it won’t be too hard to remove the word “Minority” and call the agency the Business Development Agency. 

Or just shut it down.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets political economy subsidy

When the CHIPS Are Weighed Down

Taiwan, computer chips, regulations, DEI, race, racism

Has DEI “killed the CHIPS Act”?

The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 created a giant package of subsidies that shouldn’t exist to begin with and is made even worse by all the strings attached.

The Act authorizes giving $52 billion of taxpayer money to microchip manufacturers to make chips in the U.S. The boost to domestic production will supposedly help us if China invades Taiwan and disrupts Taiwan’s globe-leading microchip industry.

But chipmakers eligible for the largesse are recoiling from all the embedded DEI mandates. “DEI” means “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It’s a collectivist mantra and ideology designed to make employers fret about racial and gender quotas and DEI indoctrination at the expense of hiring qualified people and making high-quality microchips.

According to Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson, writing for The Hill, nineteen sections of the Act are devoted to DEI. One gives the Department of Commerce a mission that Commerce describes as “strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem” by ensuring “significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities.”

The authors believe that CHIPS is “so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.” Worse, it’s making it hard for chipmakers to move, forced to focus away from making microchips and, instead, onto the wasteful exercise of appeasing regulators.

Now that they are finally about to get CHIPS funding, Intel and others are delaying announced factories and foundries on U.S. sites and instead going ahead with more overseas plants.

I guess they want to get stuff done.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets regulation too much government

The AB5 Agenda

nanny state, freelancers, independent contractor, licensing, labor unions, regulations, general freedom

AB5 is the code name for legislation passed in California a few years ago to kill freelance work. 

Ex-freelancers hate AB5; employers who can’t afford to convert contractors into regular employees hate AB5. 

Unions, on the other hand, love AB5; lawmakers also love AB5.

A California citizen initiative partly reversed it. Then the Ninth Circuit at least temporarily reversed the reversal.

Though Democrats have made several attempts to bring it to the federal level, Congress has not passed a federal version of AB5. But now the Department of Labor is acting to impose a rule to challenge the status of many independent contractors, scheduled to take effect March 11. This AB5-like rule enunciates six criteria determining whether contract work may still be called contract work.

This affects what I do. One of my dozen jobs is citizen-initiative work. Various state governments have done all they can apart from comprehensive AB5-like rules to impede my ability to collaborate with petitioners to get citizen initiatives on the ballot. It is most efficient to pay these contractors per thing they do instead of earning a fixed salary or getting paid an hourly wage. 

Politicians and bureaucrats know this.

If the Labor Department’s new rule takes effect, will contractors working with me pass the test? Or will we all be thrown into chaos and confusion?

It is being challenged in court. 

Many voters — who are, after all, wage-earners or salaried employees — may not care very much; it may seem irrelevant to them. But it is time for them to inquire why some politicians and union bosses want to destroy the ability of freelancers to freely work for outfits short of becoming full-time employees.

For the ramifications will reach far beyond my niche “industry.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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