Proper protection of individual rights by government and private licensing and certification programs would make us safer (100% safety for fallible and mortal beings is impossible)—no regulations and government inspectors needed.
Regulation
Reputation Versus Regulation: Why Is The Government Concerned With Whom You Eat With?
Most regulation is useless. It’s the need to maintain one’s reputation that does most to keep us safe.
Abolish the TSA
The TSA is a failure.
Unemployment: A Deadlier Disaster for the Third World
As wage rates rise, workers can more and more afford to accept lesser increases along with improved working conditions of a kind that must be at their expense.
Selling Horse Meat as Beef: Buyer Beware, Too?
In my last article I wrote about stores selling products past their best before date—such as the expired canned lobster pate, which raised demands for legislation against selling expired food products in Canada. I argued that such legislation would be a violation of...
Consumer Protection: Regulation vs. Reputation
A Canadian woman recently bought a can of lobster pate at a Wal-Mart store. The pate was about a year and half past its best before date, and the woman claimed that she felt ill about four hours after consuming some of the pate. In this era of the nanny state, the...
Post-Sandy: A Man-Made Disaster
It is intolerable that their people be made to suffer the effects of disastrous legislation piled on top of a natural disaster and thereby needlessly enlarging and extending the effects of the natural disaster.
The Protection Racket of Occupational Licensing
If licensing is not protecting consumers, why do many professions require a license?
Building Safely without Government Building Codes
Most people accept building codes as a necessary government intervention. One Website states: Codes provide minimum standards for building construction in order to safeguard the public’s safety, health, and welfare. Another Website states: If we searched we could find...
According to the FDA: Americans are Idiots
As an adult, have you ever been forced to eat or drink anything against your will? Have you ever been coerced into eating a bacon cheeseburger and a mountain of fries? Have you ever been compelled to drink one more beer than you should? What you put into your mouth...
Freedom versus Regulation
If a survey were taken, what would receive the lowest scores for quality, price, and value: The post office The state of our roads The quality of public education The price of gasoline Energy bills Wall Street Congress Chances are good that all of these would receive...
Regulations Punish the Virtuous
We are often told that government regulations are necessary to protect consumers from unscrupulous businesses: The only thing worse than regulations is the absence of them. Without government regulation, how can you know if food, water, medicine, everything you use in...
Government Regulation is Killing Business
I received a letter from a businessman who had been strangled by government regulations. As he puts it, "I lost two companies due to the state's regulators and federal regulators misconduct." Fed up, he moved his company to Texas where the climate is...
"Good" Government Regulations?
Obama says that the government can eliminate "burdensome" rules, but America's businesses must recognize the "good" that regulations do. What is the standard of "good" here? Good to whom, and why? If regulations are good for businesses and customers, then why must...
Use Bankruptcy Courts Not More Financial Regulation
"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Ronald Reagan considered those nine words the most terrifying in the English language. And the government has been offering a lot of such help lately. Most recently, of course, is the trillion-dollar health care bill...
The Government's Deregulation Scapegoat
After virtually every disaster created by Beltway politicians you can hear the sound of feet scurrying for cover in Washington, see fingers pointing in every direction away from Washington, and watch all sorts of scapegoats hauled up before Congressional committees to...
Was the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis Caused by Lack of Regulations?
Did lack of regulation create the subprime mortgage crisis? I am asked this all the time. The short answer: Of course not. Nowhere close. Not a chance. Here is the long answer. What regulations have we had? The mortgage originator (your local bank or mortgage broker)...
A Proper Public Policy for Dealing with Hurricanes and Other Natural Diasters
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.
Let’s Stop Making Disasters More Disastrous
No longer will government make disasters more disastrous by pretending that citizens have a right to defy the forces of nature at others’ expense.
True Deregulation for The Cable Industry
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...
Anti-Smoking Paternalism: A Cancer on American Liberty
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.
Hazardous Safety Regulation
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...
Anti-‘Price-Gouging’ Regulation
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...
Papiere, Bitte (Papers, Please)
The people who will be stopped by the system will not be terrorists but innocent citizens, seeking to evade unjust laws and regulations.