Tag: regulations

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too much government

Unnatural Disaster

California, gig, economy, regulations, freelancing, labor, employment,

Just get rid of it.

The “it” is AB‑5, the absurd new law attacking California freelancers. 

And those articulating the good riddance are the “151 Ph.D. Economists and Political Scientists in California” who have signed an open letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom and the state legislature.

The lawmakers who last year foisted the measure on Californians pretended that they were doing gig workers a big favor by making it impossible, in many cases, for companies to hire them for regular short-​term jobs.

After the legislation passed, many independent contractors quickly lost work — lots of work. For example, Rev, which produces transcripts and captions, said goodbye to all of its freelancers based in California. Many other companies — reluctant to be prosecuted for the crime of engaging in voluntary economic relationships between consenting adults — also ended relationships with freelancers.

Apparently, the anti-​gig lawmakers did not realize that losing one’s means of paying for food and rent is not that helpful. 

Tornadoes, hurricanes, and pandemics have a way of highlighting the importance of the economic and other institutions that make human survival and civilization possible. 

AB‑5 is like a natural disaster in its effects … but not natural.

“By prohibiting the use of independent contractor drivers, health care professionals, and workers in other critical areas,” the open letter explains, “AB‑5 is doing substantial, and avoidable, harm to the very people who now have the fewest resources and the worst alternatives available to them.” 

The solution is “suspend AB‑5.” 

It was always the solution, the obvious solution. 

But now it is even more obvious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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California, gig, economy, regulations, freelancing, labor, employment,

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national politics & policies too much government

The Ratchet Racket

ratchet, coronavirus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic, law, regulations, government,

Various models and curves and soothsayers predict that the coronavirus will lay off as the summer sun waxes. And then rush back in the autumn.

So we should not look at just near-​term threats, but also look at cycles of contagion month-​to-​month, year-to-year. 

Yet, it is not just the dreaded coronavirus that must be seen over time. “Crisis measures are often ineffective,” writes Matthew Feeney, at Cato Institute, “and can survive the crisis they are implemented to counter.”

Because government power and interference tend to ratchet up with each crisis, there is a whole lot of reason to suspect that we will not go back to normal. Indeed, “the new normal” is now a catchphrase.

The quarantine shutdown has been, if not total, totalistic. Feeney acknowledges such extremist (he didn’t use that word) measures may sometimes be justifiable. But warns of that ratchet, of new powers given to government not devolving after the crisis.

Ted Galen Carpenter, also at Cato​.org, draws a “fundamental lesson” from the panic: “Americans need to resist the casual expansion of arbitrary governmental power in response to the current coronavirus crisis.”

The extreme measures of the shutdown — called by economist Gene Epstein “The Great Suppression” — should have been widely discussed before the contagion hit. Instead, they were discussed in meetings behind closed doors.

But most of us were already up to our necks in the political muck fighting off the everyday kludge of the old normal level of too-much-government.

You know, from the previous turn of the ratchet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ratchet, coronavirus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic, law, regulations, government,

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free trade & free markets too much government

The Exceptions Disprove the Rules

freedom, prohibition, rules, regulations, red tape, bureaucracy,

“I’ve instructed my prosecutors not to charge certain low-​level nonviolent offenses to avoid people being held in jail unnecessarily,” Maryland’s Attorney General Marilyn Mosby informed the state’s Republican governor. She also urged the governor “to release all inmates in state prisons who are over 60,” explains The Washington Times, “approved for parole or scheduled to complete their sentences within the next year.”

This is all to avoid a prison pandemic. Meanwhile, the “Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Monday that it would permit states to create laboratories for designing COVID-​19 tests,” Reason magazine tells us, adding that the FDA “has also decided to permit pharmacists to make their own alcohol-​based hand sanitizers.”

Reason’s Robby Soave asks the obvious question: “Why do the people who are working hardest to fight the coronavirus have to ask a slow federal bureaucracy for permission to save lives?”

The New York Times reports that Dr. Helen Y. Chu, an infectious disease expert in Seattle, tried mightily to perform tests on subjects, early in the epidemic, to track how the virus was spreading. She was stymied every which way.

By bureaucracies.

The kludge of bad regulations and laws merely adds cost and annoyance during normal times; during emergencies they present major stumbling blocks to public health.

So, when our leaders make special exceptions, they demonstrate that the regulations were always bad — now just worse.

Real leadership would nix these rules, permanently.

And, for that matter, end the war on drugs — and prostitution and other victimless crimes.

One of the infractions Maryland’s AG decided to go lax on, however, is public urination. That crime has victims and ought to remain a public health violation.

Though perhaps not worth imprisonment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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freedom, prohibition, rules, regulations, red tape, bureaucracy,

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property rights too much government

Zoned Out

zoning, regulations,

There are ways of cultivating community standards without resorting to zoning and similar regulatory regimens by state and local governments. They have been studied, written about, and they can be found here and there around the country, though most famously in Houston, Texas.

But zoning’s the norm in urban and suburban communities.

Ask Marietta Grundlehner.

She had been running an online clothing boutique from her home in Fairfax County, Virginia, and has been forced to shut it down.

Well, a court has ruled that she must remove all her inventory from her home. You can have a home business in Fairfax, but not inventory of goods for sale.

Ms. Grundlehner had been earning, she said, about $30,000 a year as a “LulaRoe Fashion Retailer” in an industry billed by its online organizer as “social retail.” The ecommerce hub, lularoe​.com, makes an enticing pitch for its business model: “Find your joy and fulfillment by creating a positive impact in your community.”

But it was a neighbor who turned her in and sicced the local government on her.

That Fairfax resident sure did not think she was having a “positive impact” in their community.

Grundlehner hopes for a regulatory change to save her business, but Christian Britschgi of Reason has a word for that battle: “uphill.”

Still, online businesses are on the ascendency. Too many run afoul of zoning laws. And online entrepreneurship being the wave of the future, local governments might want to forget their old gentrification utopianism and meet the real world, the place where people actually live. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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zoning, regulations,

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paternalism too much government

Save Me, Good and Hard

SEC, Security and Exchange Commission,

The problem with making my own decisions? I might make a mistake.

That’s not good for me, is it?

So what you government boys ought to do is make me scrape and bow and beg for permission. Make me fill out more forms, struggle with invasive new privacy-​invading requirements. Make it super-​hard to comply — so I give up before I do anything … ill-considered.

That way, you prevent me from taking actions that might just possibly go badly — like investing my own hard-​earned money the way I want to.

The SEC is seriously considering meeting this demand. 

Give it to me good and hard, SEC! 

But let me clarify. By “me” I mean every small independent investor. By “give it to me” I mean “don’t give it to me.”

Don’t do what Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton and other SEC commissioners are considering: imposing a regulation to “effectively ban many middle-​class investors from buying mutual funds and exchange-​traded funds.”

Don’t make it lots harder to use the Robinhood app to make certain low-​fee or no-​fee purchases. Don’t prevent investors from buying funds through discount brokerages and apps like Robinhood unless they first fill out an intrusive questionnaire about their personal finances and pray for permission.

Don’t make us beg to invest.

Don’t. 

Stop mulling whether to further harass Americans who want to be free to make their own choices and live their own lives. 

Don’t enslave. 

Liberate. Laissez nous faire, you condescending thugs.

This Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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SEC, Security and Exchange Commission,

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too much government

Nixed Ski Trek App Flap

Tread Share, regulations, Colorado, environmentalism,

In Colorado, like other states, the people’s ingenuity often surprises. And in the Rocky Mountain State, like elsewhere, governments are known to worry about what free people do — and, unsurprisingly, often get in the way.

A popular new ride-​sharing app, called TreadShare, hit the market last month, designed to alleviate traffic on I‑70, the route from Denver to popular skiing destinations. The app makes the trip to the mountain slopes far cheaper than Uber of Lyft — not to mention easier on the environment.

So, of course, the State of Colorado has superciliously suppressed this innovation. Over safety worries, allegedly.

“The idea behind the app is for carpoolers to share the cost of gas and mileage, incentivizing the drivers to bring additional passengers and the passengers to get a cheap ride up to the mountains,” writes Taylor Sienkiewicz in Summit Daily. “Shortly following the launch, TreadShare received a ‘cease and desist’ letter from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. This caused TreadShare to shut down operations and another similar app, Gondola, not to launch.”

Not receiving an apparently required $111,250 annual license, nor proof the company performs background checks on all drivers, the state government has “helpfully” squelched these two ride-​sharing services.

What about safety? The Colorado State Patrol, whose job is ostensibly to maximize highway traffic safety, might wish to work with the app-​makers to provide any useful security features.

But preventing organized carpooling through pricey up-​front licensing requirements and ridiculous red tape doesn’t seem like promoting safety, but more like typical high-​handed government regulatory overreach.

Thankfully, citizen activists have formed a group and are petitioning the legislature to join the rest of the Centennial State in the modern world. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tread Share, regulations, Colorado, environmentalism,

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