Tag Archives: Regulation

Poke and Sniff: A Lesson from 1906, by Jeffrey A. Tucker

Posted on July 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

True capitalists, as a rule, don’t kill off their customers, unlike governments. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at brownstoneinstitute.org:

In 1906, Upton Sinclair came out with his book The Jungle, and it shocked the nation by documenting the horror of the meat-packing industry. People were being boiled in vats and sent to larders. Rat waste was mixed with meat. And so on.

As a result, the Federal Meat Inspection Act passed Congress, and consumers were saved from ghastly diseases. The lesson is that government is essential to stop enterprise from poisoning us with its food.

To some extent, this mythology accounts for the wide support for government’s involvement in stopping disease spread today, including Covid and the catastrophic response.

Not only that, but the story is also the basis for the US Department of Agriculture’s food inspection efforts, the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of medical drugs, the central plan that governs food production, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the legions of bureaucrats who inspect and badger us every step of the way. It is the founding template for why government is involved in our food and health at all.

It’s all premised on the implausible idea that people who make and sell us food have no concern as to whether it makes us sick. It only takes a quick second, though, to realize that this idea just isn’t true. So long as there is a functioning, consumer-driven marketplace, customer focus, which presumably includes not killing you, is the best regulator. Producer reputation has been a huge feature of profitability, too. And hygiene was a huge feature of reputation — long before Yelp.

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Regulation First! Proof of Necessity, Later (if Ever), by Eric Peters

Posted on July 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

Markets are the best regulator ever invented, which means proof of necessity is virtually impossible, even when it comes before regulation. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

The legal system has many flaws – the chief one being many of the laws, themselves, which are more accurately described as arbitrary rules one is required to obey, just because. But at least the legal system is founded on the idea that a conviction must precede punishment – and that punishment does not follow upon mere accusation.

Perhaps someone will explain why the same reasonable standard doesn’t apply when it comes to government regulations?

After all, millions of individuals are punished by each new regulation, without any kind of due process. Regulations impose costs (the equivalent of fines) and reduce choices – both of which impinge upon freedom just the same as any court-ordered loss of freedom.

Violating some regulations can entail criminal penalties, too.

Yet there is no requirement that proof of necessity precede the promulgation and enforcement of the regulation. Nothing more is required than the we-say-so of the bureaucrats within the regulatory apparat, in whose interest it is to assert the need for more regulations, ad infinitum.

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Illegalizing AC – Again, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

If there had to be proof that something was harmful before the government passed a regulation against it, the Federal Register would be cut in half. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Remember when they banned the sale of those small cans of Freon – the refrigerant that used to be used in automotive air conditioning systems? You used to be able to buy these at any auto parts store and do-it-yourself recharge your car’s AC system.

Not anymore.

They said it was necessary to ban those cans because Freon leaking into the air was bad for the environment; specifically, that it was carving a hole in the ozone layer. So only “certified” AC technicians could buy Freon – and afford the commercial-grade equipment necessary to service cars with Freon-based AC systems.

The financial burden  of paying these technicians fell upon the owners of cars that had Freon-based AC systems, which they could no longer recharge on their own for about $5 – which was the cost of a small can of Freon refrigerant, when it was still legal for anyone to buy it at any auto parts store.

Then along came the new refrigerant – R134a. It has been the dominant car AC refrigerant since the 1990s-era “phase out” of Freon. It wasn’t a danger to the environment – or so one would assume, since people were once again allowed to buy small cans of it and (once again) recharge their car’s AC system for about $5 rather than pay several hundred dollars to an AC technician, as people who still own older cars with Freon-based AC systems are obliged to do (It’s either that or have their original AC system modified to accept the new refrigerant – and that costs more than $5, too.)

Well, here we go again.

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Empty Christmas stockings? Don’t blame COVID; blame California, by Andrea Widburg

Posted on October 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

Behind every shortage worthy of the name lurks government. From Andrea Widburg at americanthinker.com:

The conventional wisdom from the left is that COVID is the reason that shipping containers are in the waters off California with no stevedores or truckers available to take care of them.  The implication is that if people would stop being selfish and take the vaccines, the whole problem would magically vanish.  That’s nonsense.  As a couple of astute articles explain, the problem is that California has passed two laws — one for “climate change” and the other as a sop to the unions — that destroyed much of California’s trucking industry.  Add in woes unique to the industry and COVID payments that discourage people from working and…voilà!…empty Christmas stockings.

Stephen Green, at PJ Media, explains some of what’s going on.  As a preliminary matter, truckers are aging out of the job, and new ones aren’t coming along.  Because federal law requires that truckers be at least 21, kids who leave school at 17 or 18 get involved in other careers, leaving trucker shortfalls.  Women don’t offset this problem because, as is typical for most physically difficult jobs, it’s not their thing.  Those are long-term problems.

The short-term problem, though, is that California has passed laws taking trucks off the road:

Twitter user Jerry Oakley reminds us that “Carriers domiciled in California with trucks older than 2011 model, or using engines manufactured before 2010, will need to meet the Board’s new Truck and Bus Regulation beginning in 2020.” Otherwise, “Their vehicles will be blocked from registration with the state’s DMV,” according to California law.

“The requirement is to purchase electric trucks which do not exist.”

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The problem with climate change politics, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on August 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

Allowing governments to “solve” the climate change problem is allowing people with only a tenuous connection to reality to propagate their solutions unchecked by feedback from the people who must live under those solutions and bear their cost. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

Climate change bears all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored crisis, useful to shift attention from other political failures. But the absence of financial accountability which characterises government actions also introduces behavioural errors.

The absence of a profit motive in any state action exposes the relationship between governments and their electors to psychological factors. We all know that governments use propaganda and other tools to manage crowd psychology and influence their electorates. What is less understood is that governments themselves are misled by a crowd psychology in its own ranks which contributes to policy failure.

This article does not question the climate change debate itself. Instead, it examines the debate in the context of the psychology driving it. The release of government-sponsored propaganda on climate change in the form of a unanimous IPCC report predicting the end of the world as we know it is the latest example of a political and bureaucratic phenomenon, making the timing of this article apposite.

Introduction

Western economies have moved on from free markets to the point where they hardly exist in the true meaning of the phrase. Yet the state continually claims that it is free markets that fail, not government.

The reason governments fail in economic terms is that economic calculation is never part of their brief, and nor can it be. By economic calculation, we mean taking positive actions aimed at a profitable outcome. To survive and prosper, businesses and individuals must do this all the time — the only exception being when they can rely on the state to underwrite their failures, which is why established businesses encourage statist regulation to place hurdles in the way of upstart competitors. And why at an individual level there is a ready demand for state welfare.

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economics, Economy, Energy, Environment, Governments, Law, Politics, Propaganda

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Fixing the Game, by Eric Peters

Posted on June 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

The government deals and the government holds all the cards. Should you play a rigged game? From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Does it make sense to play by the rules when the rules no longer apply? Well, when they only apply to you?

If you own a car, you are forced to “cover” it with an insurance policy that costs what you’d never freely pay – and what the insurance mafia could never get away with charging – if you were free to say no this “coverage.”

Many people do say no to it. They are too poor to afford it and just drive, sans the “coverage.”

And they “get away” with it.

Bully!

Nothing is done to them because they have nothing more for the government – which promulgates the rules – to take. Perhaps their car, but if they are poor (or smart) it is probably a beater and they can just go out and buy another car – with the money they didn’t spend on a piece of paper (i.e., the “policy”). 

Some aren’t here legally and have also said no to the driver’s license – the government ID card, really – that rule-abiders are also forced to get and carry (as well as pay for) according to the rules of the game.

The system doesn’t care much about such people because there is no money in them. It is rare for them to be kept in jail because that would be a liability rather than an asset. And the government – despite what is said about its book-keeping competence – knows all about profit and loss.

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ECB Head Christine Lagarde Calls For Global Regulation of “Reprehensible” Bitcoin, by Paul Joseph Watson

Posted on January 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

Central bankers hate alternative, private mediums of exchange. Don’t take Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies freedom from regulation for granted. From Paul Joseph Watson at summit.news:

“Bitcoin has conducted some funny business.”

Getty Images News

Head of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde has called for global regulations on Bitcoin, labeling the cryptocurrency “reprehensible.”

Lagarde made the comments during a Reuters Next conference earlier today, during which she asserted that Bitcoin was not a currency.

“When you look at the most recent developments upward, and now the recent downward trend … for those who have assumed that it might turn into a currency, terribly sorry but this is an asset and it is a highly speculative asset,” she said.

The former head of the IMF, who was previously found guilty of financial negligence by a French court over a €403 million arbitration deal in favor of businessman Bernard Tapie, went on to accuse Bitcoin of being heavily embroiled in criminal activity.

“(Bitcoin) has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible money laundering activity,” said Lagarde.

The ECB head went on to call for Bitcoin to be regulated by financial authorities.

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Doug Casey on the COVID Thanksgiving Restrictions and the “Great Reset”

Posted on November 25, 2020 | Leave a comment

It’s pretty clear that we’re heading toward a totalitarianism that’s even more total than what we have now. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

COVID Thanksgiving

International Man: Thanksgiving and the holiday season are here. The COVID hysteria has justified a new wave of government restrictions.

Many governors and mayors are ordering citizens to “stay at home” and cancel their traditional plans.

Is this a “new normal” in which local officials feel emboldened to dictate more and more of what people can do in their own homes?

Doug Casey: There’s not much question about it. First, let me draw your attention to an important fundamental: the type of people who go into government. It doesn’t matter if it’s national, state, county, or city government.

They’re the kind of people who think they know what’s best for others and like bossing them around. They see the virus as a great opportunity to make themselves important and to cement themselves in power. They want to deconstruct America. The phrase “build back better” is being used not just by people in the new Biden regime but by people all over the world.

These people see the COVID hysteria as an excuse for a “Great Reset.” They don’t describe exactly what the elements of the Great Reset might be, but they’re hitting the same notes sung by the people that go to the World Economic Forum in Davos. They’re promoting a great change in the world at large and America in particular.

It appears the world is ready for it; however, it’s for the same reasons that Biden won the election. I listed six factors why I thought Biden would win in our interview a couple of months ago: the virus hysteria, a pending economic collapse, negative demographics, the moral collapse of the old order, and the Deep State, and, of course, cheating—which was critical in the short term. There’s no question that stormy times are ahead.

We’re headed for a great leap forward—to borrow a phrase from Mao—in State power. Much higher taxes, much higher inflation, much more regulation, a big drop in the general standard of living, and a fair measure of social chaos.

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California’s Odd Desire to Suffocate the ‘Gig Economy’, by Gerard Scimeca

Posted on September 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

California is trying to kill the gig economy of which it is arguably the birthplace. From Gerard Scimeca at realclearmarkets.com:

If our current economy were a swimmer paddling furiously against a surging tide, then California is determined to hand it an anchor. Millions of Americans who work to make ends meet through freelance work in the ‘gig’ economy were recently handed virtual pink slips through AB5, legislation signed into law last year by Governor Gavin Newsome forcing independent contractors to be treated as employees.

With other states now looking to follow suit, it’s time Congress address this atrocious assault on worker freedoms and economic innovation by enacting federal standards on independent contract work. It would be a shallow victory for our economy to rebound from Covid only to have workers tossed out of their freelance jobs by clueless politicians seeking to “protect” their rights.

It should surprise no one that AB5 set in motion a massive economic wrecking ball that already has rideshare giants Uber and Lyft packing their bags to leave the state. Requiring contract workers to be treated as full-fledged employees in California or any state will of course make dozens of similar gig platforms unprofitable, in effect deleting apps right off our phones. A court’s temporary pause of AB5 last week is now holding worker jobs by a thread, causing Uber and Lyft to temporarily suspend plans to leave the state. If the ruling doesn’t hold, over 200,000 freelance workers will be driven out of work and millions of consumers will be left on the side of the road.

It is startling that in today’s modern economy California would even attempt such a clampdown. The one-size-fits-all model of employee-employer relationship is a relic of the distant past. More than a third of the U.S. workforce is currently employed as either full or part-time freelancers. This is no longer an employment niche but a pillar of our current economy. Freelancers earn good money, often sizably more than their employee counterparts. And despite the complaints of some interventionist lawmakers, workers themselves are quite content with the freedom their work offers. In one recent survey, 71 percent claimed increased work opportunities over the previous year.

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Could Wall Street Lose the Election? by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on August 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

Popular anger with Wall Street is rising, perhaps because Wall Street is filled with grifters and crooks. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Two simple regulations would drive a stake through Wall Street’s corrupt, evil heart.

While the corporate media is focused on the presidential election, perhaps the more interesting question is: could Wall Street Lose the election? That is, could Wall Street face potentially fatal restrictions regardless of who wins?

If this seems farfetched, consider the history of abrupt social-political-financial turn-arounds that surprised the mainstream. Off the top of my head I would point to Big Tobacco and environmental controls on Big Industry.

For decades, Big Tobacco was politically invulnerable. Big Tobacco greased the political machinery with huge contributions to politicos and massive lobbying campaigns to deny the self-evident reality that smoking was hazardous to human health.

Every effort to change this political dominance was thwarted with ease–and then suddenly, Big Tobacco fell out of favor. Politicians who had collected millions of dollars in Big Tobacco bribes–oops, I mean campaign contributions–without any blowback were suddenly in the spotlight as enablers of an industry that had remorselessly killed millions of its customers while claiming that tobacco’s health effects were still a matter of debate and/or choice.

Practically overnight the political walls protecting Big Tobacco crumbled as all the lies and political complicity that had long been accepted as “normal” were denormalized.

Big Industry encountered little political resistance to its decades-long dumping of industrial waste into the nation’s waterways and air until 1970. Images of American rivers catching fire changed public perceptions and eventually even Big-Business-friendly Republicans supported environmental regulations that cost Big Industry tens of billions of dollars in new costs.

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