By Robert E. Wright
\nfor Porcfest, somewhere in New Hampshire, Community Tent, 1 pm, 23 June 2022<\/h3>\n
\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One big knock against Understand this: all<\/i><\/b> More generally, All those competing Because of such For example, speaking of And now the brainiacs at But higher inflation \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And gun control is only Old timers like myself As a reminder, the Granted $9 was during Technology eventually \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Acela\u2019s Amtrak isn\u2019t One third party site Ever actually ride on Why did America \u2013 Murica Funny story. With a Auto safety regulations Speaking of insurance, Insurers could price But would deregulation Statists protest that Consider, for example, And, again, if you think The same goes for your That same assessment But it isn\u2019t just that Government building Because why? Only Kafka Perhaps the biggest Not that we need law Almost everything wrong Wanna know why healthcare Speaking of health-related Know what else keeps Without CDC and state Another costly Regulations have totally Yeah, the stock market But noooo, Americans But innovators and That is ironic indeed Surely, though, the FDIC Regulations that are Meanwhile, in Washington Rent seeking was behind Economists call such Really? Everything? What Americans used to So state and national A different solution to After you\u2019ve read all my Some government policies To be clear, I don\u2019t Consider three examples Many people released School shootings are When statists hear that Except for the drones A fourth innovation that My version of the The Ministry of Truth\u2019s Gold and\/or Bitcoin will Of course, it is not Speaking of baby But regulations keep ophthalmologists Again, the whole Let\u2019s deregulate everything By Robert E. Wright for Porcfest, somewhere in New Hampshire, Community Tent, 1 pm, 23 June 2022 \u00a0 One big knock against gun control regulations is that criminals don\u2019t obey laws. So to the extent that guns are regulated, law abiding citizens get stripped of a core constitutional right while bad guys kill people with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[44020,10924,3734,11572],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-91326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-deregulate","tag-finance","tag-history","tag-policy"],"yoast_head":"\n
\ngun control regulations is that criminals don\u2019t obey laws. So to the extent
\nthat guns are regulated, law abiding citizens get stripped of a core
\nconstitutional right while bad guys kill people with impunity. And the cops
\nhide behind sovereign immunity, marble columns, and parents.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nregulations are subject to the same critique. Laws do not prevent bad behavior
\nand regulating the means by which, or the tools used to commit, bad behavior
\npunish only the innocent and aid only the bad guys, the bootleggers in Bruce
\nYandle\u2019s parable of the Baptists and the bootleggers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nregulations typically stem from an unholy alliance between paternalist zealots
\nwho think they know what is best for other people, policymakers eager to be
\nseen quote unquote doing something, partisan ideologues, and the bad guys.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ninterests mix in a toxic stew where each party tries to get regulations
\ntailored to match their various, often conflicting, goals, some quite distant
\nfrom the putative problem to be solved. For example, if gasoline or diesel
\nvehicles are used to run over people, as they often are, calls come out to
\nregulate them even more than they already are. Due to their instant torque, EVs
\nare even more efficient at running over people in crowds but they are
\nsubsidized instead of regulated because of the influence of Greens, who just
\nwant to suppress direct fossil fuel consuming vehicles and don\u2019t really care
\nabout babies criss-crossed with tire tracks.<\/span><\/p>\n
\npolitical dynamics, policies rarely efficiently address the problems they
\npurport to address. Instead, they represent a hodgepodge of compromises that
\nusually render them monstrosities that aid special interests but that rarely
\nameliorate the original problem. Worse, one set of regulations often gives rise
\nto the perceived necessity of yet more regulations.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nactual bootleggers, consider the national prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s.
\nRum runners and organized criminal gangs supported it because it drove their
\nlegitimate competitors, the good guys, out of the market. Instead of competing
\non price and quality, the gangs instead competed on the basis of the number of
\nTommy guns \u2013 Thompson machine guns \u2013 they could summon to key locations at key
\ntimes. So, the Feds passed a law making it more difficult to own machine guns.
\nBut Al Capone et al<\/i> kept right at it, until they died or surrendered up
\nto the cops.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe FDA want to ban menthol cigarettes. They don\u2019t believe they have the
\nauthority to ban all cigarettes but they do think they can ban specific
\nsubcategories, like menthols and flavored cigars. Supposedly the ban will
\nprevent some young people from getting hooked on tobacco. Problem is, tobacco
\nwill still be available and menthol is made from mint, which grows naturally
\nover most of the northern hemisphere. So people who want menthol will get kits
\nand make them themselves and organized crime will sell them to kids anyway. And
\nthe government\u2019s cigarette tax revenue will decline but that\u2019s okay because all
\nof us are an endless source of cash. Did you know that? And if we get fussy
\nabout explicit taxes, the Federal Reserve is ready to tax us via inflation.
\nGovernments suck at just about everything except causing chaos, so the
\ninflation tax is perfect for it.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwill mean more organized crime, which will mean more guns, even, gasp! 9 mm pistols
\nand ARs, which does not stand for assault rifle, by the way. So one dumb
\nregulation will lead to another, further restricting your Second Amendment
\nrights. If, for some strange reason, you never aspired to own a machine gun, or
\na bump stock, you might not find their regulation terribly onerous at present, but
\nyou have surely heard of the slippery slope. Next thing you know some president
\nwill assert that BB guns decapitate and de-lung people.<\/span><\/p>\n
\none of numerous unnecessary regulations that do cost you, big time, whether you
\nknow it or not.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nremember when it cost a considerable amount of money to call anyone outside of
\nyour local area code. A map from 1928 that I have here shows that you could
\ncall from NYC to California for only $9! For the first three whole minutes!<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Diagram
Description](\"http:\/\/financehistoryandpolicy.blogspot.com\/2022\/06\/file:\/\/\/C:\/Users\/ROBERT~1\/AppData\/Local\/Temp\/msohtmlclip1\/01\/clip_image001.png\")
<\/span><\/p>\n
\ndollar was worth a lot more then. Nine dollars in 1928 could buy you 27 pounds
\nof top sirloin, or 36 pounds of real buttah! Today you can\u2019t touch a pound of
\ntop sirloin for $9 and probably soon for butter too.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbusiness hours. Like the good monopolist it was, AT&T price discriminated
\nby reducing its rates on nights and weekends when business call volumes
\nsubsided and most calls were between friends and family. But it was still very
\nexpensive and the phones, which Americans had to lease from AT&T, were
\ncumbersome, ugly, and difficult to use. You could get any color, so long as it
\nwas black, and you had to dial by sticking your finger in holes corresponding
\nto numbers, crank it, and then wait until the dial clanked its way back to starting
\nposition. All thanks to regulations that ensured AT&T\u2019s monopoly on long
\ndistance telephone calls.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngot us out of that expensive hole but there were many, many others. Ever take a
\ntrain in France or Japan? They are like horizontal rocket ships: super-fast,
\nmodern, and smooth as the cheek of a baby crying from a lack of formula caused
\nby useless regulations. The record speeds are over\u00a0370 mph:<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Timeline
Description](\"http:\/\/financehistoryandpolicy.blogspot.com\/2022\/06\/file:\/\/\/C:\/Users\/ROBERT~1\/AppData\/Local\/Temp\/msohtmlclip1\/01\/clip_image003.jpg\")
<\/span><\/p>\n
\neven on the top ten fastest chart, even though the comparison run on the
\ninfographic I have here is NYC to Montreal. All the trains on the top ten chart
\ncould easily do that 373 mile run in less than two hours. When I recently tried
\nto book a train from NYC to Albany, NY, I couldn\u2019t even do it, instead
\nreceiving an error message:<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Graphical](\"http:\/\/financehistoryandpolicy.blogspot.com\/2022\/06\/file:\/\/\/C:\/Users\/ROBERT~1\/AppData\/Local\/Temp\/msohtmlclip1\/01\/clip_image005.png\")
<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsays that it takes about 4 hours for the trip on Amtrak. Note that Albany is
\nabout halfway to Montreal.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Text
Description](\"http:\/\/financehistoryandpolicy.blogspot.com\/2022\/06\/file:\/\/\/C:\/Users\/ROBERT~1\/AppData\/Local\/Temp\/msohtmlclip1\/01\/clip_image006.png\")
<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAmtrak? If so, congratulations for not being killed in one of the many recent
\nderailments. But even if you survived, you likely did not have a pleasant
\nexperience as the thing clickety clacked its way along, when it was moving at
\nall. And if you had to eat, or go number two, during the journey, you might
\nhave been praying for a derailment, especially if you were not on one of the
\nnewer, but still painfully slow, Acela trains.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n\u2013 once the world\u2019s leading nation for intercity passenger rail service, become
\nthe laughingstock of the developed world? One word: regulation. Regulators beat
\non the railroads for decades, especially with price controls and labor
\nregulations. At the same time, the government subsidized personal automobiles,
\nbuses, and, eventually, airlines. So, all the smart people and people with
\nmoney moved into those industries and out of intercity passenger rail.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbusiness professor named Jan Traflet, I\u2019ve written a biography of a lovely
\ncorporate activist and financial journalist named Wilma Soss entitled Fearless<\/i>.
\nBorn in 1900, Wilma grew up crisscrossing the nation on commercial passenger
\ntrains. During World War II, she commuted between New York City and Detroit via
\nthe rails. By the mid-1960s, however, she had to chide railroad bigwigs for flying<\/i><\/b>
\n\u2013 flying<\/i><\/b>! to their annual meeting in Chicago. It was a sign of
\nthe end, just like when Wilma noticed that way more than half the cars in the
\nparking lot at the American Motor Company annual meeting were not AMC models.
\nAMC, like private passenger rail service, was soon toast.<\/span><\/p>\n
\neventually doomed AMC, which is now part of Chrysler, because it just didn\u2019t
\nhave sufficient scale to keep up with arbitrary demands. But thank Uncle Sam
\nfor those safety regulations, right? Or we\u2019d all be driving around with metal
\nspikes sticking out of our steering wheels! Or maybe not. Turns out that most
\npeople want to get to their destinations as quickly as safely possible, so they
\nprefer safer vehicles. All the best auto safety stuff was developed to lure
\npurchasers away from competitors, not to satisfy government regulators.
\nMoreover, the best auto safety tests are conducted by the insurance industry,
\nnot the government.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwe don\u2019t even need government regulation of drivers. Let insurers handle it via
\npricing. Government driver\u2019s licenses allegedly ensure a minimum level of
\ncompetence on the road but it\u2019s a gross guess at best, and not at all
\ncontextual. Some people mature sooner than others but in many states you cannot
\neven begin the learning process until you are 16. Some adults who are fine to
\ndrive on local country roads should not be allowed to drive on highways or in
\nmajor cities. But they scored 1 for a binary license, so they can.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nmajor variables, issuing cheap insurance for the best drivers in the safest
\nconditions and dear insurance for the less experienced in dangerous conditions.
\nAnd no insurance at all for the worst. Premiums could even vary by location and
\ntime of day. Insurers could also feed recommended speed limits based on road
\nconditions and driver aptitude right to people\u2019s cars. But nooooo, because of
\nregulation of insurance premiums. The government\u2019s sole role could be to punish
\npeople for driving without an insurer-issued license and insurance.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nreally work across the board? Well, a zero regulation environment served just
\nfine in America\u2019s pre-regulatory past. You think the nation\u2019s Founding Fathers
\nand Mothers faced numerous, onerous regulations? Only on their international
\ncommerce, and we know what that led to<\/i><\/b>. There were some local
\nregulations on the books, like the assize of bread, which fixed the weight of a
\npennyloaf of bread up to some minimum standard. But it isn\u2019t clear how much
\nlocal regulations were actually followed as America was not then a police state
\nor even an administrative state. Justices of the Peace handled almost
\neverything according to local conditions and customs. And juries of peers
\nhandled the worst situations.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntimes were simpler then, that more complex technologies require regulation, and
\nso forth. That\u2019s a big, steaming pile of bull \u2026 oney! More complexity suggests
\nless regulation, not more, due to what is called the Knowledge Problem. Nobody
\nalone can understand the complexity of goods production, especially how it
\nmight evolve over time, so nobody can know enough to make sensible rules and
\nregulations.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntwo of the modern marvels of the twentieth century, stock exchanges and
\ncommercial passenger air travel. Both got much better and cheaper when they
\nwere price deregulated in the 1970s. Something called competition kicked in,
\nleading to innovations that drove brokerage commissions to close to zero and
\nairplane travel to real low real levels, which is to say adjusted for
\ninflation. Until the recent spate of regulatory b.s. anyway.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngovernment inspectors have made airline travel safer, you haven\u2019t been paying
\nattention. Insurers and the fear of getting sued out of existence do way more
\nto prevent crashes than guhmint does. Like automakers and railroads, fear of
\nlost business and getting sued or suffering higher insurance premiums keeps
\nairline passengers safer than FAA regs do.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nfood. If you think that every bite of your food has been approved by a loving
\nbureaucrat, think again. Almost none of it is inspected. Competition, not the
\nFDA, added to your own common sense, is your real savory savior.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nalso applies to fire safety. America\u2019s cities no longer burn to the ground, as
\nmany did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because insurers raised
\nthe premiums of businesses that did not implement fire safety best practices, like
\nnot leaving oily rags in the smoking break room.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngovernment regulations are useless, many actually hurt Americans by raising
\ncosts, costs that get passed on to consumers and investors. Every second wasted
\nfilling out a government form or waiting for a government inspector means a
\nhigher market price and\/or lower profits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\ncodes and zoning laws, for example, make much more costly the construction of
\nhousing and is the leading causing of the alleged housing affordability crisis.
\nMost infamously, government officials in the city of angels proved themselves
\nquite unangelic when they ordered the seizure of mobile housing units that cost
\nonly $300 to construct because they were not up to some building codes. Better
\nthat people live in tents or under the stars, where their possessions are
\neasily stolen and their bodies easily violated, than in secure and fire safe
\nbarebones units.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nknows!<\/span><\/p>\n
\nproblem with regulations is their opportunity cost. The salary of a useless
\nfood inspector could be used to pay a police officer, or a public defender.
\nResources thrown into the Drug War, which is simply a regulatory scheme that
\nenriches drug dealers, the DEA, and the pharmaceutical-medical complex, and the
\nSex War, which is simply a regulatory scheme that enriches pimps, madames, and
\nlaw enforcement officers, are not available to fight crimes with actual
\nvictims, like murder, rape, and robbery. America spent trillions failing to
\nkeep long pointy things out of the bodies of consenting adults but can\u2019t keep
\nschoolkids safe. What\u2019s up with that?<\/span><\/p>\n
\nenforcement to keep schools safe. The teachers could do that, were it not for a
\nregulation making schools so-called gun free zones. They are gun free alright,
\nuntil a bad guy with a gun shows up. School covid masking policies showed that
\nmany teachers care more about themselves than their students. We all get that,
\nbut most teachers don\u2019t want to shoot their students and those who do, can do
\nso anyway. But most teachers will save their own skin and, in the process, like
\nan invisible hand, save their students, if allowed to carry.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwith this country is due to regulations, many begun under the administration of
\nFranklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR for short. F\u2019in Dumb Retard as some of his
\ncritics call him. I\u2019m currently writing a book called FDR Exposed!<\/i> that
\nI hope will be out in late 2023. But if you can\u2019t wait that long, over a decade
\nago I published a book called Fubarnomics <\/i>that also shows how New Deal
\nregulations messed up this country but good. It\u2019s got a toilet paper roll of
\ndollar bills on the cover. Should have been Benjies instead but the publisher
\ndidn\u2019t want to be seen as too extreme.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ncosts so much? An FDR-era regulation that allows employers to take a tax
\ndeduction on health insurance. So Murica is the only country in the developed
\nworld where health insurance is linked to employment instead of to individuals.
\nHence all the uninsured people, the pre-existing condition problem, and the
\ninability of insurers to rate risk. Technically, we do not have health
\ninsurance in the country at all because the rate can\u2019t go up and down with
\nindividual risk. As a result, some people are charged too much and some too
\nlittle. The people being charged too much know it and drop out. Hence the
\nnecessity of the Obamacare mandate. If we deregulated health insurance, we\u2019d
\nsee innovations in insurance and medical care that would soon put the kibosh on
\nout-of-control healthcare costs.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nmandates, what good did mask and vax mandate regulations do? None on net. In
\nfact, like other regulations, they not only diminished liberty, they hurt innocent
\npeople, especially those who survived Covid early on and were hence a threat to
\nno one, but still had to wear the mask and get the shot.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhealthcare costs so high in this country? CONS. No, not incarcerated persons,
\nCertificates of Need, legal barriers to entry into various healthcare services
\nlike those provided in hospitals and nursing homes. Proponents argued that
\nregulations restricting supply would lower<\/i><\/b> prices. Yeah, that\u2019s
\nnot how prices work. Holding demand constant, decreasing supply increases<\/i><\/b>
\nprices. But policymakers and politicians went along with the healthcare
\nbootleggers, and we all paid the price in 2020, when Covid raged through
\noverpacked nursing homes. Somehow, it was okay for hospitals to shut down before<\/i>
\nCovid hit, so that hospitals wouldn\u2019t have to shut down when<\/i> Covid hit.
\nAnd elites wonder why so many people started putting clown emojis next to world
\nemojis.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nemergency regulations, and with a little common sense, the whole Covid thing
\nwould have sorted itself out. Think about it. You run a business and half your
\ncustomers are too afraid of Covid to come in, but the other half think that masks
\nand vaccines don\u2019t work. What to do? Well, how about opening one day without
\nany mask or vaccine requirements and the next day with them? Everybody gets
\nserved and feels safe, from Covid on the one hand and tyranny on the other. But
\nin most states and nationally, regulators came in on the side of the Covid nuts
\nand said no soup for you, at least no soup seated at a table in a restaurant.
\nWhat\u2019s that tell ya?<\/span><\/p>\n
\nregulation to come out of the New Deal FDR era was Social Security. The
\ngovernment forced workers into the program, which simply earmarked a regressive
\npayroll tax to fund a crappy life annuity and, later, an even crappier any occ
\ndisability policy with politicized claims service. It kept heading toward bankruptcy,
\nso the government kept forcing more and more people into it, like a Ponzi
\nscheme. And it kept raising the payroll taxes. Social Security is facing
\nbankruptcy again and there are no more workers to add so the only question is
\nhow much payroll taxes will go up versus how much Social Security benefits will
\ngo down and how many disabled people will be turned away without getting any
\nhelp.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nscrewed up Americans\u2019 ability to save for retirement. You pretty much have to
\nthrow it all into the stock, bond, and securitized real estate markets and if
\nyou take it out before what regulators deem to be your proper retirement age,
\nregulators tax the bejesus out of it. What would the stock market be at today
\nif Americans were not forced to invest in it, and stay invested in it? A lot
\nlower, I suspect, because who would voluntarily invest in companies subject to
\nonerous, volatile regulations on everything from carbon emissions to the
\nemployment terms of their own workers? Did you see how corporations were so
\nquick to become Woke in 2020? They tremble in fear of regulators, especially
\nthe IRS but also the FDA, FAA, FCC, CDC, the SEC, and the other alphabet soup
\nagencies that collectively comprise The Swamp, <\/i><\/b><\/span>the swamp<\/span><\/i><\/b>, <\/span><\/i><\/b>the swamp<\/span><\/i><\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ndoes go up over the long term but not because corporations become more
\nefficient, because more money has to come into a market with only a few
\nthousand choices. To keep gobs of money flowing into the market, regulators do
\nsomething that should be unspeakable. They give tax breaks to people for the
\ninterest they pay on home mortgages instead of the equity<\/i><\/b> they
\nput into their homes. The former helps mortgage lenders, but it keeps people
\nleveraged up instead of putting their savings into someplace they can live when
\nretired, and maybe rent out portions for income. Buying a house and renting
\npart of it was the normal retirement strategy of Americans before the New Deal.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ninterested in investing for retirement have to invest in financial securities,
\nwhich are subject to inflation risk as many learned to their chagrin in the
\n1970s and as they are learning again today. High inflation means high nominal
\ninterest rates which means lower bond and stock prices, all else equal. High
\npeacetime inflation is possible because FDR devalued the dollar in terms of
\ngold, confiscated private gold holdings, and by the end of World War II took
\nAmerica off the classical retail gold standard. He put the once mighty nation
\nonto a fixed gold-exchange system doomed to fail, as it did during the Nixon
\nadministration a mere quarter century later. That led directly to the floating
\nfiat mess we have today. The US dollar\u2019s only redeeming quality today is that
\nit is not quite as bad as other fiat currencies. Or so most people seem to
\nbelieve.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nentrepreneurs have started looking for alternative monies, like Bitcoin, not
\nsubject to political inflationary pressures. Regulators, though, are again
\nmessing everything up. Two big ones, the SEC and the FDIC, both came out of the
\nNew Deal. FEMA is also totally unnecessary but nevertheless it should swallow
\nthe Securities and Exchange Commission because the SEC is a disaster area, and
\nalways has been. I\u2019ve been trying to write its despicable history but it uses
\nFOIA requests and the National Archives to block me at every turn, especially
\nafter my article with Andrew Smith came out that showed how SEC regulations
\npromulgated in the 1970s led directly to the subprime mortgage crisis that
\nfomented the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbecause FDR and his minions ostensibly created the SEC to prevent another
\nfinancial crisis like the stock market crash of 1929, which was blamed for
\ncausing the Depression when in fact it was merely the messenger of deeper
\neconomic problems. The SEC was also supposed to stop insider trading. Ask Nancy
\nPelosi how that is working out.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nis good, right? I mean there haven\u2019t been any bank runs since its
\nimplementation \u2026 except for when there were some bank runs. But seriously, the
\nFDIC does seem to have decreased the number of bank runs. That is a problem,
\nthough, because it achieved that goal by lulling depositors asleep. They no
\nlonger watch their banks very closely because they don\u2019t have to. The FDIC will
\nbail them out if their bank fails. So bankers can, and do, take on more risk
\nwithout being chastised by net deposit withdrawals. At best, then, the FDIC and
\nthe spate of regulations that come along with it are a wash on net. Yay
\nregulators!<\/span><\/p>\n
\ndownright pernicious are difficult to expunge so you can imagine what happens
\nto innocuous ones. They linger, seemingly forever. I am sure that you have seen
\none of those websites with the crazy regulations from the past that are still
\non the books. You know, like the one in Alaska that says that you can\u2019t awaken
\na sleeping bear to take its picture. You can shoot it with a gun though. Or the
\none in \u201cR-Kansas\u201d that makes it illegal to mispronounce the state\u2019s name. Or
\nthe one in California that makes it illegal to eat a frog that has died in a
\nfrog jumping contest. Obviously, a dead frog is totally inedible, which is why
\nthe French serve frog legs still attached to living frogs. Or the regulation in
\nGeorgia that forbids people from putting an ice cream cone in their back
\npockets on Sunday. Any other day of the week, just stuff drumsticks back there
\nto your butt\u2019s content, but on the Lord\u2019s day? Hell no. Or the one in Kentucky
\nthat forbids the sale of fewer than six ducklings dyed blue. Obviously, that
\nwas put in place to protect Big Blue Duckling from competition from new
\nentrants that can\u2019t afford to buy more than six ducklings, which by the way
\ncome free with chicken chicks, or fiddy cents worth of blue dye. Big Green
\nDuckling just didn\u2019t have the lobbying bucks to protect itself and now look at
\nthe dying duckling dying industry in Kentucky.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nState it is illegal to harass a certain large, hairy biped still unrecognized
\nby science. Best of all, though, is Utah, where it is illegal not<\/i><\/b>
\nto drink milk. Yes, you heard that right. I am not sure that it is correct, but
\nit does point out the cause of many regulations, simple rent seeking, or
\nsomebody trying to get something for nothing by mandating the use of their
\nproduct. At least in Utah the mandate is for milk and not a dangerous
\nexperimental injection. [Good, the drones aren\u2019t out yet today.]<\/span><\/p>\n
\nanother response to the Great Depression called the Smoot-Hawley tariff.
\nAmerican manufacturers tried to save themselves by throwing consumers under the
\nbus with high taxes on their competitors. But, as usual, high tariffs ended up
\nhurting everybody, including the manufacturers themselves, after foreign
\ncountries reciprocated and world trade volume plummeted. See when trade is
\nvoluntary, both the buyer and the seller benefit. Implement a tax or regulation
\nand not as many voluntary trades take place, hurting the buyers and the sellers
\nwho would have traded were it not for the extra burden.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nunrealized gains deadweight losses because they are losses that nobody else
\ngains. They are lost to humanity. Hence in today\u2019s hyper-hyperbolic lingo,
\ndeadweight losses literally kill people. Literally<\/i><\/b>. Ergo,
\nregulations kill people and should be banned. Or in other words, everything
\nshould be deregulated.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nabout hunting and fishing regulations? Well, I have a book just out about that
\ncalled The History and Evolution of the North American Wildlife Conservation
\nModel<\/i>, which might have been the best set of regulations ever devised. You
\ncan read the book for all the juicy details but basically a set of regulations
\nthat evolved a little over a century ago saved a lot of critters, including
\ndeer and moose, from going extinct. But the model was not the only solution to
\nthe root problem, which essentially was what economists call the tragedy of the
\ncommons or the common pool problem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nconsider critters gifts from God, ya see, so they believed they could shoot \u2018em
\nwhenever, and wherever, they wanted, even on your<\/i> private property. As
\nthe countryside became more populated, that led to lots of hunting and,
\neventually, people specializing in providing wild game to urban markets and
\nrestaurants. They all competed to kill critters themselves, before the other
\nguy shot \u2018em. You can see how that could lead to the local extirpation of some
\nspecies, like beaver and deer, and a series of local extirpations of course
\neventually lead to extinctions.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngovernments said we are your new god, we own these critters and we are going to
\ncharge you fees for killing them, establish tag and bag limits, seasons,
\nmethods of harvest, trespassing restrictions, and so forth. And no more selling
\nwild game meat. The regulations worked, though too well in places now overrun
\nwith deer, wild hogs, geese, turkeys, and such. But regulators don\u2019t want to
\nchange the regulations much, like allowing the sale of wild game meat again.
\nThink about that when you crash your car into a deer or bear some dark night.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe extirpation problem would also have worked and been more flexible over
\ntime. Just enforce property rights so that critters could thrive on private
\nlands. Private property rights saved the bison and private property rights
\nexplain why exotics from Africa thrive on ranches in Texas, New Zealand, and
\nSouth Africa. But the private property approach does not compute with statists.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbooks, check out James C. Scott\u2019s Seeing Like a State<\/i>. He explains how
\nregulators want to make everything quote unquote \u201clegible\u201d by reducing complex
\nrealities to simple, quantifiable categories. Unfortunately, those categories
\nobscure complex realities, leading to disasters like government-managed
\nforests. Imagine the hubris needed to think that your puny human brain can plan
\na forest better than Mother Nature can. All that the government foresters
\nmanaged to do was to plant a first generation forest that produced more
\nproducts that humans wanted. The second generation, though, saw decreased
\nyields and the third was an ecological disaster because it turns out that
\nvarious species depend on each other in ways that humans can never fully
\nunderstand, much less improve upon with a top-down plan. Now Greens have gone
\nin the other direction and regulate in favor of biodiversity for its own sake.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhave even led to desertification. Much of North Africa and the Middle East is a
\ngovernment-made desert because regulations induced herders and farmers to strip
\ntopsoil, which decreased vegetation, which decreased local water mass and hence
\nrainfall and rainfall retention, leading to rapid erosion of the remaining
\ntopsoil and hence desertification. Something similar is happening in California
\nright now, with regulatorily induced superfires speeding the process.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nclaim that life will be perfect with complete deregulation, only that it will
\nbe better than at present. Shit happens. Life\u2019s a bitch. If something can go
\nwrong, it will. All that. But regulators cannot fix much of anything and are
\nlikely to make matters worse. So let\u2019s do away with regulators and regulations
\nand unleash entrepreneurs — commercial and social — to find marginal
\nimprovements and, occasionally, breakthrough technologies that can improve life
\nfor billions. Unburdened by regulations and our current tax distortions,
\nentrepreneurs would soon discover new ways of doing things. Many will prove
\nduds, but others will work and spread.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nrelated to recidivism, school shootings, and gender equity in corporate
\nboardrooms. All seem to cry out for more regulations, but all could be
\nameliorated with a little ingenuity.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nfrom prison commit crimes and go back, at great expense to the public as well
\nas their victims. Why not pay nonprofits for each week they manage to keep the
\nex-cons in their charge alive and out of prison? They\u2019ll figure out the best
\nways to do so or fail for lack of funds.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhorrible, but we know that banning guns in them, or in the nation overall, is
\nno solution. Even if all guns could be confiscated, bombs and vehicles could be
\nused instead, perhaps with more deadly effect. And although not all cops are
\ncowards, they do not have a legal duty to protect Americans, even kiddies. But
\nwhat if every school and other soft target was protected by drones controlled
\nremotely by skilled operators? And if the drones could also double as medical
\nfirst responders?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwomen are under-represented on corporate boards, they immediately want a
\nregulation imposing a quota, like the one recently shot down as
\nunconstitutional in California. Why not instead randomly pick board members
\nfrom a pool of qualified candidates to ensure that corporate boards represent
\nthose presently qualified? Over time, more women and members of other
\ntraditionally underrepresented groups would acquire the necessary
\nqualifications because they would rationally compute that they would have a
\nchance of being chosen.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nexample, where a company is actually working on the concept, such ideas do not
\ngain traction precisely because they do not require onerous regulations and the
\nexpensive bureaucratic apparatuses that accompany them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwill go nowhere is my Ministry of Truth proposal. Now before you storm the
\nstage, let me explain. The government wants to regulate your Free Speech, a
\nclear violation of your natural and Constitutional rights. What I want is a Ministry
\nof Truth as a fourth branch of government that would only identify, stop, fine,
\nand punish disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda spread by government
\nofficials, politicians, and candidates for office. It would have the same
\npowers as the rest of government, including the power to own F-16s and nuclear
\nweapons. A tip of the hat to President Biden for that tip.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nMinistry of Truth would also have the power to seize and sell any personal or
\ngovernment assets used to create or disseminate misinformation and to impose
\nheavy fines and jail terms for dissembling government officials under
\nadministrative law procedures and mandatory arbitration. Finally, it would be
\nheadquartered in Wyoming or South Dakota and be utterly independent of the
\nfederal government except for its budget, which will automatically be 10
\npercent of the country\u2019s combined federal, state, municipal, and special
\ndistrict budgets, which should of course all be capped in nominal terms
\nimmediately. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nfirst order of business will be to fine Tony Fauci one trillion dollars. If
\nthat sounds excessive, remember that inflation has not been transitory as
\nclaimed, so the Ministry\u2019s second order of business will be to fine Federal
\nReserve officials, seize and sell off the Fed\u2019s assets, and shutter it.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsoon fill the void the Fed will leave, especially when cryptocurrencies are
\nderegulated and the states make gold and silver a legal tender, which they can
\ndo under <\/span>Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the US Constitution, which
\nreads, in case you forgot your pocket Constitution: \u201c<\/span>No State shall \u2026 make
\nany Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
\nat all clear that the government will ever deregulate crypto, which threatens
\nits seigniorage profits as well as its much-vaunted anti-money laundering laws.
\nThose are regulations that force banks and other financial service providers to
\nspy on you on the government\u2019s behalf, so that it can enforce other useless or
\ndownright pernicious regulations, like the aforementioned wars on consenting
\nadults putting pointy things into their own bodies. At the rate we are going,
\nsoon only the government will be able to decide what you put into your own
\nbody. Experimental things called vaccines maybe, or tracking devices, for your
\nown safety of course. [Exaggerated eye roll.] And the government will keep
\nthings out too, like baby formula and real beef.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nformula, do you know that if you happen to have a full breast of milk you can
\nmake quite a nice bit of money selling it to babies rendered hungry by
\ngovernment overregulation? Breast milk is one of the few unregulated markets
\nleft. You can\u2019t lawfully sell raw cow milk in some states, but raw booby juice
\nis aokay. Let\u2019s keep it that way, before we end up in a life-and-death
\nsituation instead of merely suffering further annoyances, like those regarding
\ncontact and eyeglass subscriptions, which require an annual examination. The
\ncontacts I wore yesterday were fine but the same ones today are illegal until I
\npay a vig so someone can tell me what I already know, that my existing
\nprescription is fine. They are my eyes, after all, and \u201cwhich is better, A or
\nB, B or C, C or B?\u201d is not scientific or all that helpful.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nand regulators employed, so it is good, right? No! They could all be doing
\nsomething else, something that consumers actually want. Regulations are like
\nbroken windows in that Frederic Bastiat\u2019s broken window fallacy applies to
\nthem. That which is seen are the regulators and their beneficiaries, like ophthalmologists
\nand Utah dairy farmers, getting paid. That which is not seen are the other
\nthings that people would rather have put their time, attention, and money into
\nif the regulation didn\u2019t exist.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nregulatory apparatus is such a joke. Somebody else did something bad so the
\ngovernment has to restrict your rights. Crazy! Regulations passed on such
\ngrounds violate due process by punishing people not proven guilty of anything
\nby a jury of their peers. If eliminating such crap sounds pie-in-the-sky to
\nyou, check out the recent federal court decision in Jarkesy vs. <\/i>my
\nfriends at the SEC<\/i>. The court ruled that administrative law is
\nunconstitutional on due process grounds, especially denying Americans the right
\nto trial by a jury of their peers. It\u2019ll probably get overturned by statists,
\nbut many Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact that regulations, even
\nif they appear irrelevant or innocuous, are not<\/i><\/b> their
\nfriends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nin New Hampshire and show the rest of America the way! Whattaya say?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"