Tag: regulations

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free trade & free markets general freedom regulation

Leave Us Alone to Do Our Work

contract work, Uber, gig economy, California, regulations

Drearily, an appeals court has dismissed Uber’s challenge to California’s anti-​gig-​work law.

According to the 9th Circuit, the ride-​sharing company couldn’t show that the California anti-​freelancer law AB5, which took effect in 2020, unfairly targeted Uber while allowing other types of contract work to continue unhindered.

In fact, the many exceptions to AB5 — determined by abundance or lack of political pull of various groups — mean that Uber is hardly alone in suffering from uneven application of the law.

But suppose AB5 had in fact been evenly imposed on everybody. Suppose every single gig worker in California, without exception, had been forced to become a regular employee of all of his clients — with all the additional costs for employers that this entails — or else lose all work altogether.

This would be worse, not better. 

Inconsistent tyranny is bad for the victims. Absolutely consistent and uniform tyranny is bad for the victims — which would be greater in number.

Maybe the 9th’s misjudgment won’t stand. If the case makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, maybe the high court will unambiguously affirm our right to contract with each other in order to make a living and get stuff done.

Meanwhile, the fate of Uber also hinges on another court case, one determining the fate of Proposition 22, a 2020 California initiative affirming Uber’s right to contract with drivers.* A labor union says Prop 22 is unconstitutional. The state supreme court is deciding whether this is so. 

It is not so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Citizens in Charge, a pro-​initiative and referendum group, for whom I serve as president, filed an amicus or friend of the court brief with the California Supreme Court in this case.

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judiciary national politics & policies regulation

Regulatory Pressure?

gun control, Supreme Court, regulations, regulators, persuasion

Should government regulators be able to urge financial institutions to cancel clients that regulators dislike for political reasons? Such as oil companies and groups advocating Second Amendment rights?

Although a court of appeals has said Yes, the Supreme Court has just said Maybe No in a case involving the National Rifle Association (NRA v. Vullo).

The NRA hasn’t won final victory. But the court is unanimously letting it proceed with its lawsuit, which argues that by pressuring banks and insurance companies to cancel their business with the NRA, New York regulator Maria Vullo violated its freedom of speech.

The Supreme Court seems to accept an artificial distinction, though, between a regulator’s “persuading” an organization to hurt a client and “forcing” it to do so.

An official with power over a company who seeks as a government official to “persuade” that company to do something is engaging in coercion. The implicit threat is: “I have the power to hurt you if you don’t do this little favor for me.”

Moreover, in sending the case back to the lower court, the Supreme Court has also said that it may consider whether Ms. Vullo is protected by qualified immunity, the get-​away-​with-​anything card that government officials are too often able to rely on when they commit wrongdoing.

So this decision is hardly a final, definitive victory for the NRA and other victims of thug-​regulators. But at least the NRA can keep fighting — for itself and the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture political economy too much government

Sweden’s Electric Sense

Sweden, climate change, nuclear power, energy,regulations, wind power, solar power

Common sense in Sweden! Energy in Sweden!

Under the policy of Sweden’s current government, the Swedish people are to be allowed to illuminate and heat their homes and do all the other things they use electricity for. The Swedish parliament has formally relinquished the government’s former target of somehow reaching “net-​zero” renewable energy by 2045.

Such unreliable means of generating power as erratic wind and erratic sunshine just don’t cut it, says Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson.

“We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity, and we need a stable energy system. In substantial industrialized economies … only a gas-​to-​nuclear pathway is viable to remain industrialized and competitive.”

The new energy policy is an about-​face for Sweden, which decided in the ’80s to nuke nuclear power and pursue 100 percent “renewable” energy.

Sweden is now following the lead of Finland. After Finland’s latest nuclear power plant went on line in April, reports Peta Credlin, “wholesale power prices dropped 75%, almost overnight. The Olkiluoto 3 plant is … delivering 15 percent of the country’s power needs. Nuclear now provides around half of the country’s total electricity generation.”

Nuclear power has gotten a bad rap in many countries, including the United States. But if societies and governments are rightly or wrongly determined to retreat from reliance on fossil fuels while also not pulling the plug on industrial civilization, a steady supply of electricity has to be obtained somehow or other.

Nuclear power is one major way to do the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Exemptions, Not Repeal

If you light the fuse of a bomb, after warnings that this will cause it to explode, you should not be surprised at the explosion.

California’s lawmakers and governor recently imposed super-​high minimum wages for workers in fast-​food restaurants ($20 an hour) and workers in healthcare facilities ($25 an hour). When the legislation was in process, the impact on companies, customers, and job applicants was deemed irrelevant. What mattered was appeasing the labor lobby.

Governor Newsom is suddenly “realizing” (he’d been warned) that these new costs will also burden the state government, currently facing a $45 billion budget deficit.

But this isn’t causing him to seek repeal.

No. Instead, he has signed legislation granting an exception to the new minimum for fast-​food restaurants that are on government land. “Democrats don’t want the mandate interfering with government concession licenses,” The Wall Street Journal observes.

And Newsom also wants to defer the kick-​in of the new minimum wage for workers in healthcare facilities — which he projects would cost the state $4 billion more annually because of the impact on Medicaid and state-​paid health workers — until state revenue is in better shape. He would also permanently exempt state-​owned facilities from having to pay the new minimum.

Carveouts and minor delays are as far as the governor and lawmakers are willing to go. Whatever gets them past the uncomfortable present — the next moment and the one after are things to worry about later. With any luck, with time the voters will have forgotten the issue, and who caused what.

Exemptions are the order of the day for politicians and bureaucrats. Private sector businesses must remain on the rack.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom regulation

Criminal Discrimination?

The Joker, Uncle Sam, racism, business, regulations, quota

It’s okay.

You don’t have to associate with criminals. You don’t have to employ them and worry how they’ll act on the job. It’s not your duty to give criminals or persons with a criminal record access to your life or property and hope for the best.

If only we could leave it at that. 

That’s not our world though. In our world, our government, working hard to rip America apart in every way possible, is suing the Sheetz chain of convenience stores because it doesn’t hire applicants with a criminal record.

The “problem” is that too many such failed applicants are nonwhite.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accuses Sheetz of “disproportionately screening out Black, Native American/​Alaska Native and multiracial applicants.” The agency babbles that “employment practices causing a disparate impact because of race or other protected classifications must be shown by the employer to be necessary to ensure the safe and efficient performance of the particular jobs at issue.”

Of course, the “disparate impact” exists not because of these classifications but because the denied applicants have criminal records. Sheetz didn’t decline these applicants because of their skin colors.

Nevertheless, Sheetz is supposed to have somehow “shown” that refusing to hire applicants with criminal records reduces Sheetz’s own risks and the risks for customers.

Elon Musk, commenting on this story, has it right: “You know The Joker is running things when the law-​abiding are being prosecuted by the government for not hiring criminals!”

These days Uncle Sam and The Joker do look alarmingly similar.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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