Tag: regulations

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free trade & free markets property rights too much government

First, Stop Doing That

zoning, regulations, buildings, permits

If a government’s taxes and regulations are making shelter ever more expensive, what should that government do instead?

Stop pushing the disastrous policies, perhaps?

Unlike some other governors who shall remain nameless (one of them rhymes with “DeSantis”), Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin understands that you don’t make things better by making them worse.

In August, Youngkin bluntly told a state senate committee that Virginia homes are too expensive and that a major cause is government interference with the market: “unnecessary regulations, over-burdensome and inefficient local governments, restrictive zoning policies, and an ideology of fighting tooth and nail against any new development.”

The many bottlenecks include low-density zoning rules that permit only a single house per property. Arlington County, Virginia, is one local government working to reform zoning so that more houses can be built on a property.

In November, Youngkin proposed a Make Virginia Home plan to unravel many regulations. City Journal notes that although the plan is “short on details,” it’s a good start.

Under the governor’s plan, the state would streamline environmental reviews, investigate how to liberalize the state’s building codes and land-use and zoning laws, impose deadlines on local governments to speed up approvals of development, and give local governments incentives to adopt their own market-liberating reforms.

This agenda is indeed only a beginning. But it does recognize a major cause of sky-rocketing housing costs and what must be done to begin to reduce those costs.

That’s just Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets

Allowed to Make a Living

Bureau of Occupational Affairs

In 2014, Sally Ladd started a service to help clients in the Poconos rent out their vacation homes. She posted notices on Airbnb, arranged for cleaning, and performed other chores.

But then, in 2017, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs — one of the many government agencies in the world that should not exist — told her that she was operating in Pennsylvania as a real estate broker without a license and must get one or shut down.

The obstacle was senseless. Ladd was already satisfying her customers. And getting the license would have entailed more than 300 hours of schooling, two exams, three years of apprenticeship, and opening an office in Pennsylvania. (Ladd lives in New Jersey.)

She had to shut down.

But she didn’t give up. 

She teamed up with Institute for Justice, which filed suit, arguing, in IJ’s words, that “forcing her to get a full-blown real-estate license violated her right to earn an honest living under the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

At first, a lower court would not even consider the case, a decision overruled by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2020. Finally, on October 31, 2022, a trial court affirmed that the “licensing requirements are unreasonable, unduly oppressive, and patently beyond the necessities of the case,” and therefore unconstitutional.

Once again, it’s IJ to the rescue! 

In a world filled with government agencies that shouldn’t exist, the Institute for Justice exists to check them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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tax policy too much government

For a Thousand Years

government, monster, politics

Time for a gas-tax holiday. 

When the people lie prostrate, when the people groan under heavy burdens, when the people just can’t take it anymore — and when an election is coming up — that is the time for politicians to relieve everyone’s burden.

A bit.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen favors considering a temporary gas-tax holiday to emulate some of the states. Reviving the Keystone oil pipeline — no, not something to consider, she says. But she’s okay with a brief gas-tax break.

Let’s do better.

I propose a millennium-long gas-tax holiday, government-barriers-to-drilling holiday, regulation-of-all-industries holiday. Under my plan, government gets all the way out of the way of all markets so we can all be as prosperous as possible, whether or not a big economic crisis is underway.

But would there be any such crises — long-term and intractable economy-wide crises, I mean — if my plan were enacted?

When government does everything possible to injure the economy and prevent recovery, it takes a long time for markets to bounce back from shocks. If ever.

Un-fetter the markets, though, and economic actors would be able more rapidly to adjust to major jolts. If gas imported from overseas plummets, producers could then quickly adapt by expanding production. They cannot readily do so now because government imposes so many barriers.

The politicians’ preference for modest, namby-pamby reprieves are not only substantially weak, they send the wrong signals. They get doled out as if government were doing us a special favor . . . by not beating us up so badly for a very little while.

We need freedom. On an ongoing basis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Do More Than Baby Steps

baby formula, inflation, economics

Major disruptions such as pandemic policy in China and the Russian invasion of Ukraine obviously crimp trade and supply chains. But given such impacts, should governments here in the United States be making things better or making things worse?

Oil is one example of a good that would be more abundant and cheaper had the government left it alone — stopped blocking domestic production and the flow of oil from Canada.

Now parents are having trouble getting baby food.

A proximate cause of the shortage is the closure of a single major factory producing baby formula. But Kevin Ketels, a professor who studies the global supply chain, argues that restrictions on production had set things up so that a blow like this would be crippling.

For one thing, only a few companies, Abbott, Reckitt, and Nestlé, are allowed to participate in a government program to provide baby formula to low-income families. This is not a minor program. The federal government provides substantial grants to the states to fund it.

More importantly, only a few manufacturing facilities are allowed to produce baby formula, and “startups don’t have the volume required to produce in these facilities.”

High tariffs on baby-food imports have also reduced supply.

You would think, then, that the first thing to do would be to remove governmental barriers to production and imports.

And all, not just some.

So why isn’t that what we are hearing about now?

Well, politicians do not gain their power, prestige, and insider trading advantages by leaving well enough alone. Admitting that their stock in trade — regulation and tariffs and the like — is the cause of this problem might suggest to distracted minds that it is the cause of most, if not all, our problems.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense free trade & free markets general freedom property rights responsibility

Farming Is Fundamental

garden, food, freedom

If you live in Maine, you may now grow your own food. The right to do so has been safeguarded in the state constitution.

If you have the right to life and to sustain your life, surely you have a right to farm. As we all know, though, governments regularly find excuses to interfere with all kinds of peaceful activities.

So this past November, Maine voters passed a constitutional amendment authored by Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham (whose energetic campaigns for freedom have previously caught Common Sense notice) and proposed by the legislature. 

Maine’s Right to Food Amendment makes clear that “All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable . . . right to save and exchange seeds and the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume . . . as long as an individual does not commit trespassing, theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights public lands or natural resources in the harvesting, production or acquisition of food.” (So there’s no California-style de facto “right” to loot.)

Foes of the amendment worry that it will enable people to bypass regulations.

Let’s hope so. 

Don’t we want the new law to ban governments in Maine from banning agriculture for the sake of “esthetics,” protecting Big Milk, or any other rationalization for foiling farming on a person’s own property?

And for the idea to spread to the other states, where far too often the scales of justice don’t properly consider the citizen’s right to produce food against the bureaucrat’s regulations frustrating same. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Doubling Down on Time Jiggering

daylight savings time, astronomical clock

Daylight Saving Time was designed to trick us into spending more free time in daylight during summer. The trick? Set our clocks forward in the spring, meaning — if we keep to our old-clocked schedules — waking up and going to work earlier, leaving more recreational and home life (and shopping time) in sunnier late afternoons and evenings.

Kind of cheating.

Most folks find it a bother.* Switching one’s clocks back and forth means upsetting sleep rhythms, which can trigger negative health outcomes. 

Commonsensical people prefer to chuck the program — and several states have opted out, having no Daylight Saving Time at all. The program’s benefits — and negatives — often prove hard to find in actual statistics.

Enter Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). They want to get rid of all the Spring-Forward/Fall-Back nonsense.

And there’s a bill in the House to push the policy forward.

But they want to do it the Nixonian way, making Daylight Savings Time universal and year-long. This effectively shifts time zones permanently east by one hour. And ensures that no one will experience 12:00 at solar noon, with the Sun directly above.

Surely we can change our schedules to fit whatever sunlight we want and we don’t need Washington to tell us when to get up . . . even as they manipulate time.

Regardless, you can check out Murray’s and Rubio’s arguments in USA Today.

The switching has got to go. But the permanent evasion of astronomical timekeeping sure smacks of . . . the opposite of . . . 

Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Daylight Saving Time was first instituted in wartime by Woodrow Wilson, but repealed by popular demand during peacetime; this was repeated under FDR for WWII. Richard M. Nixon pushed it in during the Seventies as an energy conservation program. It still exists federally, with 16 state exceptions.

Note: corrections made in the text after initial publication, with thanks to Thomas Knapp, below.

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Fourth Amendment rights general freedom

Evicting Unjust Evictions

Good news: New York City businessmen can no longer be threatened with eviction and forced to forfeit their rights for the crime of . . . well, for no crime at all.

Sung Cho, owner of a Manhattan laundromat, is one of many victims of an eviction-and-extortion racket perpetrated by the city.

For years, business owners have faced eviction because of offenses that occurred on the premises of their business — even if the owner was ignorant of the alleged offenses before they were committed.

In 2013, police entered Cho’s laundromat to sell supposedly stolen goods. After a couple of people unconnected to the business accepted the offer, the NYPD threatened Cho with eviction. Even though neither Cho nor his employees were accused of doing anything illegal.

Cho felt he had no alternative but to waive his right not to be subjected to warrantless searches, and grant police access to his security cameras, and forfeit his right to a hearing if ever penalized for alleged criminal offenses in the future. To avoid eviction, he accepted those obnoxious terms.

But he didn’t leave it there. In 2016, Sung Cho teamed up with the Institute for Justice to sue the city.

After many ups and downs, the final result is that the law so often used as a club against innocent business owners has been changed. Also, the NYPD must obey a binding order that it “shall not enforce or seek to enforce” the terms of agreements imposed under the old law.

A big win for lots of small businesses against tyrannical actions by government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

The Price of Freelancing Is Eternal Vigilance

California, freelance, work, regulations

Californian voters have largely reversed an assault on “gig” workers in that state by passing Proposition 22.

Prop 22 is a response to Assembly Bill 5, enacted in California in 2019. The idea was to reclassify many freelancers so that companies could no longer treat them as independent contractors. Instead, to keep giving them work, companies would have to convert erstwhile freelancers to regular employees.

Doing so would mean paying additional costs. Instead, many companies simply stopped working with California-based freelancers. Freelancers of all ideological stripes protested the new law.

Rideshare firms Uber and Lyft were a major target of the legislation. Cabbies who work with them are contractors, not employees. Because of AB5, Uber and Lyft have been on the verge of leaving California — meaning a “victory” only for unions and others who hate market competition. 

Now these firms, and many freelancers, can apparently keep operating in the state.

Mission accomplished?

Not so fast. A national version of AB5 sits in Congress, lying in wait. It has been endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 215 Democratic co-sponsors, and Joe Biden, who may or may not be the next president of these not-so-United States. (Recounts are being conducted and allegations of election fraud are being investigated.)

If we end up with a President Biden, he may well push for a national version of AB5. Especially if the Democrats get at least 50 U.S. Senators after runoffs in Georgia are decided.

Stay vigilant. Protect our right to work.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Sweet Grape Victory of 2020

grapes, regulation, law

Raise a long-stemmed glass to the wineries of Minnesota. And to the Institute for Justice, which fought for their rights in court.

Minnesota wine makers may now make wine with whatever grapes they like! They may make wines that were illegal for them to make before.

Early in September, a federal judge struck down a 1980 Minnesota law which prevented Minnesota wineries from crushing grapes into wine unless most of the grapes being used had been grown in Minnesota. Winemakers were thus thwarted from producing popular varietals requiring grapes that can’t be grown in the state. Temporary exemptions from the law were possible but could not be counted on.

Judge Wilhelmina Wright’s ruling may well inspire challenges to similar prohibitions in other states. You know you’re a fifth of the way into the twenty-first century when dramatic modernistic advancements like letting wineries buy whatever grapes they wish have become possible.

You may be thinking: “Huh? I had no idea that wine makers in Minnesota were not allowed to buy grapes from other states. That’s painfully stupid!”

Of course, that is probably not the opinion of the proponents of the law. At least some Minnesota grape growers no doubt believe that persuading lawmakers to block out-of-state grapes was a smart move. 

But is it really so very wise to hobble business competitors for the sake of short-term advantages regardless of the long-term costs to the freedom — not to mention the palates — of all?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Regs to the Chopping Block

chopping block, regulations,

Donald J. Trump started his presidency with a flurry of activity. One of the things he did was sign an executive order to reduce Americans’ regulatory load.

This move may have been the most important initiative the new president advanced. It led to an economic boom that was not all just smoke and mirrors and “stimulus.” Real factors were involved in the resulting progress.

Now, however, the economy is in tatters. Massive unemployment, rising real poverty. 

But this is not a normal depression. It was the result of the reaction to the coronavirus — largely by the states, but at the recommendation of Trump himself, as advised by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Trump now wants what increasing numbers of Americans want: a return to business and normal life. But “re-opening the economy,” as it is called, is not going quickly or smoothly.

On Tuesday Trump signed an executive order to give his Cabinet secretaries broad permission to cut regulations, “instructing federal agencies to use any and all authority to waive, suspend and eliminate unnecessary regulations that impede economic recovery.”

“And we want to leave it that way.” 

Which is the most promising part of this. 

“Mr. Trump has made nixing regulations,” explains John T. Bennett in The Independent, “especially ones put in place by the Obama administration, a top priority during his over three years in office.”

We could call the nixing of the lockdown orders themselves a “freeing up” of the economy. To help ease over all the damage, also “freeing up” business from regulatory kludge could not hurt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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chopping block, regulations,

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