Another fantastic video from the Institute for Justice:
Tag Archives: War on Commerce
Why is Greenland so rich these days? It said goodbye to the EU
If you think that leaving the EU would be catastrophic, take a look at Greenland. By rights its people ought to be poor. Their island is isolated, suffers from freezing weather, has a workforce of only 28,000 and relies on fish for 82 per cent of its exports. But it turns out that since leaving the EU, Greenland has been so freed of EU red tape and of the destruction of the Common Fisheries Policy, that the average income of the islanders today is higher than those living in Britain, Germany and France.
Greenland’s politicians realised that the fisheries policy was ruining their fishing industry. They had the guts to stand up against the all the prophets of doom and let their people vote in a referendum on leaving the European Community, as the EU was then called. On January 1, 1985, it became independent of Brussels – the only country ever to do so.
Greenland was, with Britain, one of only two EU countries to be heavily dependent on fishing. In fact, Britain had, in some estimates, 80 per cent of Europe’s fish stocks when it entered the EU, because our fishermen had carefully managed them, while the fisherman of Spain, France and Italy had destroyed most of the Mediterranean stocks.
The surprising thing is that while the unemployment from closing (loss-making) coal mines is frequently denounced by Labour politicians, more British workers lost their jobs as a result of gigantic French and Spanish boats being permitted to raid our stocks.
(Read more from blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
Why Toronto’s street food program is in shambles
“Anybody asks me about this program — I feel like I’m going to vomit,” Pinder declared one sunny day last week in front of several customers lined up at her silver cart at King and Bay Sts.
“The city — Ã la Cart — bankrupted me.”
The retired mental health worker is not alone. Just one of the eight vendors selected for the pilot program is certain of returning next summer for the final year. Others have given up or are demanding concessions from the city to return. Several haven’t paid their 2010 location fees.
he ethnic food program — offering everything from bulgogi to souvlaki — is in a shambles.
So, how did a well-intentioned effort to reflect the diversity of Toronto through street food go so sour?
. . . .
Vendors say the health manager assigned to help them had no experience in hospitality or small business. Menu changes had to be approved by the city’s medical officer of health.
“When we asked for other changes, with the cart or location, we were told council would get a report once a year,” Bonivento says.
Hot dog vendors are overseen by municipal licensing and standards.
Filion, who in January 2009 predicted the vendors would earn “a very, very good income,” says public health was capable of running the program but acknowledges there were problems with the execution.
. . . .
From day one, vendors were wrapped in red tape. The original 15 in the program were reduced to eight after many balked at rigorous requirements, including the requirement that anyone who already held a hot dog licence had to give it up to participate; no signs allowed on the “uniform look” carts; a preference for “locally sustainable produced foods”; and a requirement that owners personally work the cart at least 70 per cent of its operating time (later reduced to 50 per cent).
. . . .
Above all else, vendors say, they failed because of the $30,000 cost of the carts and many other limitations. Instead of considering existing cart models, staff drafted a thick list of specifications and tendered for a custom-built version. Only one firm, Crown Verity, bid. The result was a cart that weighs 360 kilograms, is not towable, has a small countertop, a malfunctioning freezer and takes two people four exhausting hours a day to load and unload from a truck or trailer.
“You’ve told us we need to run a mobile business and you’ve provided us with a cart that’s immobile,” Bonivento says.
. . . .
“The biggest obstacle to success is the cart itself. You can’t fight that.”
Noorullah Iman, a father of five with a three-bedroom apartment and debts that threaten to bankrupt him, says he quit the program after realizing kebab and samosa sales would never cover his $1,500-a-month cart loan.
. . . .
Vendors complain they were given bad, unresearched locations with fees of up to $15,000 a year that had no basis in reality.
Last summer, Andnet Zere tried to sell Eritrean injeras at Roundhouse Park, south of the CN Tower, while mud flew from construction around her. Two authorized moves later, she quit.
. . . .
Sperling says the sites were chosen by a staff committee that considered “perceived pedestrian traffic.” Vendors were told the city did not do pedestrian counts or market research, and were encouraged to do their own homework. (Read more from thestar.com)
The Case for Legalizing Capitalism
I’m going to get this book.
Federal Regulation in Every Room of your house
These regulations are sure to raise the price of appliances — often by more than consumers are ever likely to earn back in the form of energy savings. And some will make the product perform well.
The administration is meddling with every room in the house:
The Basement
New standards are in the works for water heaters and furnaces. For water heaters, the Energy Department estimates price hikes from $67 to $974, depending on size and type.
The Bathroom
The same 1992 law that gave us those awful low-flush toilets also restricted the amount of water showerheads could use to 2.5 gallons per minute. Some consumers who disliked the resulting weak trickle opted for models with two or more showerheads, each using the maximum 2.5 gallons. But Team Obama has now eliminated this “loophole” by requiring that the total flow must comply with the limit.
The Kitchen
Think remodeling a kitchen is expensive now? Pending regulations target refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, ovens and ranges.
For refrigerators (at least), this is a clear case of overkill. The American fridge has already been hit by several rounds of tighter standards, with each new rule saving less energy than the last — but boosting the price and compromising performance and reliability. Even the Energy Department admits that most consumers will lose money on its latest refrigerator regulation.
The Laundry Room
New standards are on the way for washers and dryers. When the last clothes-washer regulation hit in 2007, Consumer Reports lamented that several ultra-efficient models “left our stain-soaked swatches nearly as dirty as they were before washing” and that “for best results, you’ll have to spend $900 or more.” The Obama rules will probably mean even worse news.
Any Air-Conditioned Room
Both central air conditioners and window units are scheduled for new regulations. When the Energy Department rolled out its last round of central-AC rules back in January 2001 (one of those last-minute Clinton administration “midnight” regulations), it admitted that many homeowners would never recoup the added up-front costs. The new standards will follow the same “logic” — and thus should make for another lousy deal.
The Obama regulations come on top of all the past ones, including the worst one of all — the Bush-era requirement that will effectively ban incandescent light bulbs starting in 2012. (Read more from mises.org)
The case against coersive taxation
From a correspondence with friends:
I hold the very radical belief that taking someone’s property by force or threat of force is stealing, regardless of whether it’s done by an individual or institution or government, regardless of whether you call it taxation, and regardless of what virtues are invoked to justify the violence.
***
My apologies for the long-winded reply, but this stuff is my passion. I’m happy to make my case, even if we agree to disagree afterward:
> “Is it wrong to keep a standing army?”
Yes. The United States did not keep a large standing army during peacetime until 1948. Since then, we’ve had a foreign, undeclared war every decade, and never mind the fact that our Constitution requires congress to declare war. The psychopaths in government are having too much fun sending suckers like me off to war and their friends are making too much money.
How you like them apples? You’re a citizen of a country that can’t go a single decade without invading another.
How about the fact that we spend more than the rest of world COMBINED on “defense” which to me looks more like “offense”?
> “With all that you own and all that was given to you just by virtue of being born in the US, don’t you think that is worth protecting?”
I feel tremendous admiration and gratitude to all the entrepreneurs who risk their personal wealth to produce goods and services they hope I will VOLUNTARILY buy.
These are the people we should revere. These are the people to whom we should build monuments, not the power hungry politicians and bureaucrats who are too stupid, lazy, and cowardly to provide us with things we want. They cannot serve society, so they seek to rule it. Entrepreneurs build civilization. They are the ones who need protection, primarily from their government.
> “You use the services of the country, therefore, you have to pay your share.”
1- There are many that don’t use, which I’m also required to pay for.
2- I’d hardly categorize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bank bailouts, the nationalization of General Motors, the TSA’s pornographic body scanners, the NSA’s eavesdropping on my telephone calls, the Guatemalan Syphilis Experiment, and the BULLSHIT speeding ticket I got as “services.”
3- I’d absolutely *love* to stop using ALL public “services” in exchange for keeping all the money which people VOLUNTARILY give me for my work.
But regardless, I’m glad you at least used the words “have to.” You acknowledge then that government-provided services are coercive.
Violence will be used against me if I attempt to do without the benefit of infecting unsuspecting Guatemalans with Syphilis, for example. Initially, my refusal to pay for this public “service” will only inspire increasingly menacing letters from the tax collector, but ongoing refusal to pay will be met with physical violence, including lethal force should I attempt to defend my property. (btw, I pay all my taxes — out of fear.)
Please acknowledge the violence.
It can be justified only if you believe that a peaceful system of voluntary exchanges cannot provide education, security, food for the hungry, housing the poor, transportation, culture, etc.
Then you are faced with a dilemma: Should we leave the poor to their fate or should we violently separate people from their wealth? Should remain ignorant about the advanced stages of Syphilis or should we use the threat of violence to force people to pay for government experiments?
Of course, I believe there is overwhelming evidence that all these things are better provided in a free market (all the ones which are worth doing that is, and none of the ones which aren’t) . Therefore, the dilemma you might feel between violent taxation and some societal need doesn’t even exist.
Because your statist approach is the violent approach, I think the burden of proof lies with you; you must to demonstrate the government’s superiority to the free market. Nevertheless, I’ll make the case that the free market is the better provider, just because it’s so easy to do:
> 1) Security.
If you search for “mall cop tasers” on youtube, you don’t find anything (I didn’t), because privately hired security, unlike security hired by the greedy, lazy, cowardly, power-hungry sociopaths in government is accountable.
You might also be interested in the not-so-wild west where private security flourished, and the murder rate was lower than that of most modern-day U.S. cities:
www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=552
Also, gun town USA — where crime nearly vanished, and not a single person has been murdered in the 25 years since a renegade mayor required every household to purchase a gun:
www.wnd.com/?pageId=41196
(I’m philosophically against the requirement, because it’s coercive, but I think this demonstrates the ability of people to protect themselves peacefully.)
> 2) Transportation
The railroad was build on private initiative in pursuit of private profits. It worked great until government strangled it with regulation, then killed it by FORCING everyone to subsidize an interstate highway system.
The obvious failure of the free market then precipitated the nationalization of Amtrak, a government monopoly, which, if I remember correctly, has lost 32 billion dollars to date.
Despite the best efforts of the statist ideologues, Indiana, Chicago and California are considering selling roads to entrepreneurs who are willing to risk their private wealth in the providing of transportation services.
> 3) need a structured state government to implement changes
Like a hole in the head.
Local governments have either outlawed or required people to kiss the ring of governance, beg permission and pay a hefty licensing fee for the following privileges:
-arranging flowers in Louisiana
-selling coffins in Louisiana, even for monks
-interior designing in DC or Florida
-showing tourists around in Boston
-labeling GMO-free foods “GMO-free”
-selling raw milk
-running lemonade stands in Portland ($120 health department fee)
-selling pumpkins and Christmas trees into Lake Elmo MN
-delivering your neighbors garbage to the dump in San Francisco
-putting signs in your store windows in Dallas
-eyebrow threading in Texas
-training Yoga instructors in Virginia
You risk the violence of government for committing these “crimes.”
4) civil services
How about the fact that poverty in the US fell by 1% a year from 1950 until 1968 when the government’s “war on poverty” began? Since the government’s “war on poverty,” the poverty rate stagnated and remained so despite a quadrupling of the government’s anti-poverty budget.
Source:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=064YTtSxVSo#t=46m10s
Consider this next time you hear someone say the free market punishes the poor.
5) (I’ll cover education, though you didn’t list it.)
As I said, I believe the burden of proof lies with the advocates of violence. I challenge you to find any evidence that public education has been anything but a pathetic, disastrous failure despite a tripling of the federal education budget, and a doubling of the number bureaucrats per student:
www.lostrepublic.com/archives/4630
There’s also the fact that before America’s first public schools appeared in Massachusetts, there was near 100% literacy.
I think all the evidence of the superiority of the free market in providing services generally provided by government is irrefutable. You may find ways spin, question and undermine it, but instead of doing that, can you find evidence that the government approach is superior? Can you find any evidence whatsoever to justify the coercive funding of public “services”?
Jim Rogers: How I See the World Today– Q&A
Small Business in America
Great anecdotes in this discussion:
“Nothing good comes out of Congress.”
Last U.S. incandescent light bulb factory closed last month
The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s.
The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs.
“Now what’re we going to do?” said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful. (Read more from washingtonpost.com)
German “heatball” wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.
Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs — by producing them in China, importing them as “small heating devices” and selling them as “heatballs.”
To improve energy efficiency, the EU has banned the sale of bulbs of over 60 watts (Read more from news.yahoo.com)
French entitlement: ‘We don’t want to lose our lives by earning a living.’
While it may be a little dangerous to speak so soon, a remarkable gulf is growing between the responses of the British and the French public to their governments’ attempts to balance the books. In Britain, there has been a calm reaction to the cuts so far announced, with a clear majority supporting the government’s bungled announcement that it is to restrict child benefit payments. In France, the only austerity measure to speak of is raising the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 — and it has brought protesters to the streets. Three million are on strike, with two thirds of the public supporting them. . . .
The state continues to account for over half the French economy — as it does, now, in Britain.
But while we seek to reverse this, Sarkozy is compounding the problem by setting up a fund to increase government-owned stakes in large companies. His resolve, of which we heard so much on his election in 2007, seems to be evaporating. . . .
A banner hanging in Paris this week sums up the sense of entitlement felt by too many French to a life of ease. It reads, ‘We don’t want to lose our lives by earning a living.’ . . .
France’s problem is that, for too long, the economy has been run as a kind of job club for French workers. They are virtually impossible to sack, which makes membership of this club an unattainable dream for those outside it — many of them young Muslims, languishing in the banlieues. It has long been a popular belief among French politicians that jobs are a finite resource that can be shared around more fairly through the application of short working weeks and early retirement. That theory does not sit easily with France’s scandalously high structural unemployment rate, which was around 10 per cent even during the boom years.
Britain and France believe in liberty, but have different definitions of it. Ours involves liberty from government, the idea behind David Cameron’s dismally expressed ‘big society’ agenda. In France, they still like the big state and squeal at the prospect of being removed from its teat. . . .
Even the introduction of a 35-hour working week caused consternation among civil servants who previously had worked only 32 hours a week. Technically, employers now have the ability to ask staff to work longer. In practice, no one dares. . . .
To respond to a debt crisis with more debt is to enter a form of denial — a form that we can see on the streets of Athens and Paris. Germany and Sweden have chosen the hard path to fiscal credibility, and have seen economic momentum restored. As Barack Obama waits in vain for his $800 billion ‘stimulus’ to work, it is clear that governments cannot borrow their way to recovery.
The British have always understood this. (Read more from newstaging.spectator.widearea.co.uk)
Jeffrey Tucker: Government is Unraveling Civilization by Force
Recommend starting @ 10:30
Lenin’s slogan “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.”
The left used to believe in material progress.
By 1958 the claim that Capitalism was impoverishing the world was so ridiculous that the left abandoned it. A writer named Galbraith, in “The Affluent Society” led the way in the new “post-materialist” socialist critique of capitalism. The new criticism was of moral and materialistic degradation, and also claiming that the private secor impoverished the public sector (huh?).
Lew Rockwell quote: “It’s as if the socialists discovered that their plan creates poverty, so they decided to change their name to environmentalists to make poverty the goal.” HA!
@ 17:00 he reads a list of titles from Amazon.com about “sustainability.” Very funny.
@ 18:05 he picks apart a youtube interview with an Australian environmentalist. (very funny)
@ 24:20 He offers a list of examples:
* the last factory which made incandescent bulbs shut down.
* U.S.A. bedbug infestation (because D.D.T. is banned based on a propaganda book). Another chemical, propoxyl (?) that would get rid of them are also banned. Ohio Dept. of Health has pleaded in vain with the EPA to allow it.
* EPA recommends hot water, but also restricts temperature of water heaters.
* Mandatory recycling. Limited garbage pickup.
* Plumbing. Shower heads, toilets.
* Pseudoephedrin. People have gone to join for buying too much.
* Cars.
* Subsidies of electric car.
* Attack on energy, oil.
* Accusing BP of being like a terrorist organization.
* Attack on internet in the name of intellectual property. (Some libertarians disagree with this criticism.)
Tom Woods on the Delusion of Good Government
@ 11:00 – methods of military procurement.
@ 16:30 – list of Blue Ribbon commissions and other attempts at reforming military procurement.
@ 19:20 – The welfare industry supports over 700,000 social workers, 420 schools of social work, thousands of special interest groups, and 43,000,000 beneficiaries.
@ 20:45 – he turns his analysis to the Drug War.
@ 26:00 – Unical convinces California to pass regulations requiring use of its product.
@ 28:20 – 35:00 How the government killed traveling salesmen to protect wholesaler interests. Laws against retailers selling below the manufacturer’s recommended retail price & Life Magazine’s anti-discount house propaganda.
@ 28:20 – he dismisses myths about the Industrial Revolution.
@ 46:10 – From 1950-68 poverty in the U.S. drop 1% a year with very modest anti-poverty laws. Since the 1968 introduction of massive anti-poverty legislation, it stagnated. And remained stagnated despite a quadrupling of the welfare budget.
Comedy: Union hires temporary, minimum wage, professional picketters
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Big Pharma Scores Big Win: Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU
Big Pharma has almost reached the finish line of its decades-long battle to wipe out all competition. As of 1 April 2011—less than eight months from now—virtually all medicinal herbs will become illegal in the European Union. (Read more from gaia-health.com)
Dear socialists, please read this article carefully. It is yet another example of how abusive businesses BENEFIT from big government. Please stop suggesting that more government is the solution for everything.