Tag: regulations

Categories
folly general freedom regulation

There Ought Not Be a Law

toys, gender neutral, regulations, authoritarianism

Not everything that we dislike should be illegal. Not everything that we like or want should be made mandatory. 

To most of us, this is common sense. 

We lack the totalitarian impulse.

But every day, otherwise-​inclined people, including lawmakers, notice another aspect of our lives that they decide must no longer be free. If they can’t fix our bad thinking — by sending us to reeducation camps for summary brainwashing — they can at least regiment our conduct.

The latest victims of this totalitarian impulse are owners of big stores that sell toys. Often, toys for boys are in one section, toys for girls in another. Barbie dolls are not on the same shelf as firetrucks and water pistols.

It’s a great hardship — supposedly — for a little girl who likes fire trucks or a little boy who likes Barbie dolls to cross the aisle to the opposite-​gender toy section.

Enacted in 2021 and taking effect in 2024, California’s new law says that “keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare the product and incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.”

So the new law compels stores with at least 500 employees to “maintain a gender-​neutral section” that is so labeled. First violation, $250 fine. Further violations, up to $500.

There ought to be a law making such laws illegal. 

A constitution, maybe? 

Meantime, the affected stores should sue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
free trade & free markets regulation too much government

The Crime of Mowing the Lawn

gas powered lawn mower

As war rages in the Middle East, Ukraine, and elsewhere, some U.S. politicians struggle to devastate the American landscape. One of their targets is American landscaping equipment.

In Washington state, lawmakers hope to put an end to gas-​powered landscaping. If they succeed, the ordinary activities of humble homeowners and businessmen — humble but determined to keep using Yardmax lawn mowers and Echo leaf blowers — would be criminalized.

Regulations instead of bombs will be the way. If you don’t follow the regulations, then you’ll be “bombed” with fines. Or jail time.

State Representative Amy Walen is pushing legislation, HB 1868, that would “prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new outdoor power equipment,” a prohibition to take effect as early as January 1, 2026.

Persons using gas-​powered equipment bought before the ban takes effect would presumably not be subject to fines or jail time. They might still be subject to investigation, though, if one of their grandfathered gas-​powered tools looks too shiny.

And they might be at risk if they ignore the prohibition and buy post-​January-​2026-​produced gas-​powered mowers from out of state.

Exactly how the legislation would play out is hard to predict. But it does not look good for the average guy who just wants to keep his plot in shape.

Government agencies dealing with “natural or human-​caused emergency events” would be exempt, at least initially. They wouldn’t have to worry about spending a year in jail for efficiently cutting the lawn. 

Just everybody else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
national politics & policies regulation subsidy

The Great De-Platforming?

Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, AM radio, technology, regulations, mandates

“There is a certain amount of irony in seeing Republicans come to the floor proposing mandates on business,” said Senator Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) in the U.S. Senate, yesterday. Kentucky’s junior senator objected “to Republicans picking winners and losers.”

At issue is a bill pushed by Senator Ted Cruz (R‑Tx.), the AM For Every Vehicle Act. Automobile manufacturers are phasing out amplitude modulation (AM) on radio receivers, and Cruz objects primarily on two rationales: 

  1. emergency roadway communications rely upon AM frequencies, and 
  2. since conservatives dominate AM talk radio, the move looks suspiciously like a sneaky way to decrease conservative and Republican political influence. 

“AM radio is where a lot of talk radio is found,” argues Cruz, “and talk radio is overwhelmingly conservative. And let’s be clear: Big business doesn’t like things that are overwhelmingly conservative.”

Technology and media change all the time, and as ostensible advocates for free markets, it’s no business of Republicans so much as to nudge the market in one direction or the other. Perhaps AM’s days are numbered. 

Shed a tear and move on.

Cruz characterizes the issue as one of free speech. Paul expresses incredulity: “The debate over free speech, as listed in the First Amendment, is that government shall pass no law. It has nothing to do with forcing your manufacturer to have AM radio.”

It gets messier: electric car manufacturers say that the AM band interferes with their batteries, and the technology to shield the batteries is expensive. So Cruz’s law would forbid companies from charging more for this tech.

If you ask me, the batteries being harmed by AM radio indicates a glaring defect not in a radio platform but in the platform of electric cars.

So it’s great that Rand Paul’s amendment to undermine Cruz’s mandate would also nix the electric car tax credit. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights Ninth Amendment rights too much government

Unlisted Help

charity, regulations, rights

Kindness; generosity; aid — even these need defending from government.

In “Performing Charity Is a First Amendment Right,” C. J. Ciaramella writes about the difficulties people have had in feeding the poor in their towns and cities.

The problem is not lack of charity — unless you mean the lack of charity that local governments sport.

In Houston, Texas, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Santa Ana, California — and in many other communities around the country — local governments have fined and prohibited the charitable from doing the good they do, often on grounds of “health and safety.” 

Houston even set up a hyper-​specific charity area — reminiscent of the “free speech zones” set up for political rallies in recent years — in a parking lot near a police station. Just the kind of place that the destitute want to hang around in!

After the usual forms of police harassment came the court cases … and appeals to the First Amendment.

And as I read through Ciaramella’s article, the attempts to defend charity as a right of “religious expression” struck me as odd. Santa Ana politicians, for example, characterized charity as “incidental” to the core religious missions — a bizarre tack to take when dealing with Christian doctrine anyway! — and for once the U.S. Justice Department took the common-​sense position on this. Thankfully.

But charity as “expression” leaves a bad taste. Charity’s more basic than “expression,” isn’t it? Some might see the art of giving as a duty, others as a rite, and others as mere generosity for its own sake. Jesus spoke of charity as something one did without speaking about it.

Could it even be more basic than free exercise of religion? Might it not more accurately be a Ninth Amendment right — one “retained by the people”? 

So fundamental there seemed no need to spell it out specifically. 

Our most basic rights are general rights, and charity is fundamental to being human.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and DALL-E2

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
free trade & free markets media and media people political economy too much government

Incredulity Doesn’t Cut It

dumpster fire, regulations, privatization

One of the objections people often make to the idea of private enterprise as a solution to government inefficiency is The Argument from Incredulity.

It’s not an argument at all, actually, just a harrumph and a guffaw: we cannot have free-​market police, or fire suppression, or … garbage collection!

But of course all those things are successfully managed in the private sector.

No media outfit has a longer history of pointing this out than Reason magazine. So when the editors of Reason brought us Joe Lancaster’s “Government Waste Monopoly Pits Private Dumpster Business Against Garbage Bureaucrats,” yesterday, I hope they took a moment to revel in a little nostalgia. For this is the kind of story that made Reason what it is today, one of the best sources for retail political economy.

The tale tells of Steven Hedrick, an Arkansas man who put together a business renting out dumpsters — like you often see on construction sites, but smaller — which he would haul away after customers filled them. He built the business without ever going into debt, and then … came the government. 

“[I]n April 2022, the City Council in Holiday Island passed Ordinance 2022-​004, which required all residents and businesses within the city to contract with the county sanitation authority, Carroll County Solid Waste (CCSW), for trash pickup and disposal services,” Reason informs us. “Anyone using private companies would have to switch, and anyone who did not have contracted trash service would have to sign up.”

And Hedrick’s little business must be … dumped.

What this is, at base? Sheer bigotry: preferring monopoly government to competitive private services.

For those of us who’ve been reading Reason for decades, it sports a familiar smell.

Just not a good odor, for the drive to monopolize everything stinks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Detonators in Place

rent control, good intentions, government regulations

You must place explosives a certain way when demolishing a building to avoid damaging surrounding structures. But if you just want to destroy, you can forget about such precautions.

Could this be the perspective of those demanding national rent control?

They forget — or ignore — the destruction of living space inflicted by incentive-​incinerating rent controls in places like New York City and Santa Monica.

Rick Moran perceives that President Biden is making a “first move toward a radical national rent control law,” telling agencies to find ways to stop rent increases. Biden is doing so at the behest of 50 congressional communists who have implored him to take executive action to save tenants from rising rents.

According to their letter, “rent is too high and millions of people across this country are struggling to stay stably housed as a result.” Meanwhile, landlords are “increasing the rent for their own profit …”

Profit? In a market economy? 

Rising rents! Caused by … ?

But if you just want to “solve the problem” and have been trained to be heedless of the destruction regulation can cause, you needn’t think about cause and effect — who did what and how and why. In the interventionist mentality, when oil or food or housing prices zoom upwards, only one cause is possible, and it has nothing to do with politics and policies already in place.

Even if the government’s central banks have been zanily pumping up the supply of money and credit while city and state bureaus have been going all-​out to hamper and halt production.

That single cause, they contend, can only be the grasping, grabbing, profit-​seeking capitalists. You know. The bums who make their riches (when they do) by supplying us with what we need.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Midjourney

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts