Regulation
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Warren’s Legacy Lives on at the Ridiculous “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau”
While Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy is over, her legacy and, more importantly, her politicized vision of rulemaking lives on in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It’s easy to forget but in late November 2018, two government administrators showed up for the same job: to run the most powerful federal agency created in a generation, the Consumer…
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Anti-Gouging Laws Can Kill
Much has been made in the media about the Surgeon General’s recent Twitter exhortation, “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general [sic] public from catching Coronavirus.” But what is usually left out is the rest of his tweet, “…but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick…
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Emancipate the Workers, State by State
The literature has long established that licensing requirements generally restrict the supply of services in the licensed industry by prohibiting some perfectly competent workers from working as providers.
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How to Save California From Itself
Many Western states allow citizens to initiate legislation but California is by far the most important and the ripest for reform.
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Break Up Amazon? There’s No Point
Antitrust of the sort dreamed about by left and right today dates from an era of confidence in scientific management of industrial structure through government power. The record is of unrelenting failure.
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California’s Contractor Law Violates Free Speech
It is becoming increasingly difficult to reject the hypothesis that California lawmakers are trying to solve their state’s notorious housing crisis by driving out everyone who isn’t a lover of earthquakes, fires, to-die-for weather, and arbitrary government. Their latest Constitutional faux pas is AB5, which, among many other things, limits California freelance journalists to 35…
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Reciprocity in Occupational Licensure Might Be a Bad Idea
On April 10, 2019 Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed into law HB 2569, a bill to create “guaranteed recognition” of occupational licenses in other states. This was hailed as a great victory by libertarians and classical liberals who have always argued that (at least most) state occupational licensure laws do nothing but create in-state cartels…
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Is “Sustainable Fish” Real or a Marketing Ploy?
So, yes, I’ve stopped rolling my eyes at the label sustainable. It’s real and it matters. And it shows how markets work even when the odds are against them. What other problems are considered to be insoluble that we need to turn over to the creative forces of society itself?
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Support for Industrial Policy Is Growing
Support for industrial policy is growing. Thankfully, no one is talking yet about the full-blown central planning popular in the 1930s. Instead, what’s now in vogue is a 1970s and ‘80s-era version of industrial policy allegedly meant to improve upon the market. In this incarnation, planning treats government as an actor much like any other…
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Regulations are Bringing Back Dirt, Filth, and Disease
We thought these bad old days of dirt, filth, and disease were gone forever. Now they are coming back, gradually, regulation by regulation.
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•
Warren’s Legacy Lives on at the Ridiculous “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau”
While Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy is over, her legacy and, more importantly, her politicized vision of rulemaking lives on in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It’s easy to forget but in late November 2018, two government administrators showed up for the same job: to run the most powerful federal agency created in a generation, the Consumer…
-
•
Anti-Gouging Laws Can Kill
Much has been made in the media about the Surgeon General’s recent Twitter exhortation, “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general [sic] public from catching Coronavirus.” But what is usually left out is the rest of his tweet, “…but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick…
-
•
Emancipate the Workers, State by State
The literature has long established that licensing requirements generally restrict the supply of services in the licensed industry by prohibiting some perfectly competent workers from working as providers.
-
•
How to Save California From Itself
Many Western states allow citizens to initiate legislation but California is by far the most important and the ripest for reform.
-
•
Break Up Amazon? There’s No Point
Antitrust of the sort dreamed about by left and right today dates from an era of confidence in scientific management of industrial structure through government power. The record is of unrelenting failure.
-
•
California’s Contractor Law Violates Free Speech
It is becoming increasingly difficult to reject the hypothesis that California lawmakers are trying to solve their state’s notorious housing crisis by driving out everyone who isn’t a lover of earthquakes, fires, to-die-for weather, and arbitrary government. Their latest Constitutional faux pas is AB5, which, among many other things, limits California freelance journalists to 35…
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•
Reciprocity in Occupational Licensure Might Be a Bad Idea
On April 10, 2019 Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed into law HB 2569, a bill to create “guaranteed recognition” of occupational licenses in other states. This was hailed as a great victory by libertarians and classical liberals who have always argued that (at least most) state occupational licensure laws do nothing but create in-state cartels…
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•
Is “Sustainable Fish” Real or a Marketing Ploy?
So, yes, I’ve stopped rolling my eyes at the label sustainable. It’s real and it matters. And it shows how markets work even when the odds are against them. What other problems are considered to be insoluble that we need to turn over to the creative forces of society itself?
-
•
Support for Industrial Policy Is Growing
Support for industrial policy is growing. Thankfully, no one is talking yet about the full-blown central planning popular in the 1930s. Instead, what’s now in vogue is a 1970s and ‘80s-era version of industrial policy allegedly meant to improve upon the market. In this incarnation, planning treats government as an actor much like any other…
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•
Regulations are Bringing Back Dirt, Filth, and Disease
We thought these bad old days of dirt, filth, and disease were gone forever. Now they are coming back, gradually, regulation by regulation.