In normal times the government supports many bad, irresponsible, and unjust policies, driven in part by perverse incentives. Not the least of these is an imprudent eagerness to please special interests. Emergencies and the resulting panic only further loosen whatever weak restraints there normally are against government misbehavior and malfunction.
Freelance jobs are "feudalism," says California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez. She persuaded California's legislature to pass a new law reclassifying freelance workers as employees. That means many people who hire them must now give them benefits like overtime,...
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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The Katrina tragedy and the more recent experience of Hurricane Ike should call into question the so-called safety net composed of government policies that actually encourage people to embrace risks they would otherwise shun–to build in defiance of historically obvious dangers, secure in the knowledge that innocent others will be forced to share the costs when the worst happens.
No longer will government make disasters more disastrous by pretending that citizens have a right to defy the forces of nature at others’ expense.
In an article on Ars Technica, a lobbyist for the cable industry is quoted as saying that deregulation allows vendors to innovate faster and is a pro-consumer move. The article's author, however, cries that past evidence shows that deregulation has always brought...
By employing government coercion to deprive us of the freedom to judge for ourselves what we inhale or consume, the anti-smoking movement has become an enemy, not an ally, in the quest for health and happiness.
Whenever someone is hurt in an accident, people say, "There ought to be a law!" Politicians rush to oblige them and then take credit for all the lives they saved. But shouldn't they also accept blame for the lives lost because of those laws? Lives lost? Yes. A joint...
With gasoline prices across the nation at $3 a gallon, one knows that American oil companies are easy targets for every regulator (and every potential regulator) in town. And when an oil-man-turned-president blames Americans for having an "energy addiction," it is...
The people who will be stopped by the system will not be terrorists but innocent citizens, seeking to evade unjust laws and regulations.
An explosion last week at a British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas refinery in Texas killed fifteen workers and injured seventy others, five critically. As usual, myopic media accounts blamed BP and its allegedly unsafe work conditions – and called for more intense government regulation and fines.
Another bumpersticker for you: "The Labor Movement--The People Who Brought You the Weekend." Not quite. Improved working conditions don't happen because a compassionate President signs them into law. If any given law would harm significant sectors of the economy, no...
A dispute about how tall the city of San Mateo, California, will allow buildings to be built may seem like a completely local problem that no one outside of San Mateo should care about. But the principle involved touches everyone from coast to coast, on issues having...
Ever wondered how the whole airline fare system works? Why is it, for example, that the guy you sat next to on that flight to Schenectady got a fare that was half of what you paid? Why is it that fares booked a month out are cheaper than fares booked two weeks out,...
What is essential for safety is not bureaucratic regulation, but free, motivated human intelligence and judgment, which includes a consideration of the costs of achieving greater degrees of safety.
Three days before President Bill Clinton left office, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) proposed a regulation (No. 126100-00) that would have forced American banks to report the interest they pay on the deposits of nonresident aliens. The IRS openly admitted that the...
Politicians and economic analysts are shocked. They have told us for weeks that the stock market is crashing because of low "investor confidence" in response to a "crime wave" of corporate fraud--made possible by "a climate of lax regulation" and "the lure of heady...
An unregulated free market provides the environment in which auditors who differentiate on a reputation for quality and useful disclosures could add value to their business, and their customers’.
Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta, Czar Norman, has ordered new, ill-thought out, oppressive airline regulations in the wake of recent terrorist attacks. Among them: a ban on knives -- plastic or steel -- anywhere in the airport and on airplanes, even in...
The attacks against deregulation of the California power industry by the enemies of capitalism are attacks against a straw man. Deregulation means that government removes onerous regulations that violate the rights of producers and consumers to trade freely (markets...
The power crisis in California now threatens to shut down Silicon Valley--and if Silicon Valley goes, it could end up shutting down America's economy. To save itself -- and the rest of us -- what should California do? That depends on what the problem is. Some say the...
In our evaluation of the conflict between industrial greenhouse gas emitters and coastal property owners—as in all others—economics serves as a complement to considerations of justice. And the Coasean approach affords us a valuable one.