Regulation

This shutdown is not showing us what freedom looks and feels like. It is not a libertarian experiment. It is showing us just how much government is doing that it need not do.

Plenty of terrible things happened this year but some great things too! 

Gas can regulations began in 2000, with the idea of preventing spillage. The notion began in California, spread, and was picked up by the EPA, which is always looking for new and innovative ways to mandate as much human misery as possible.

Professor Stiglitz is confident that humanity can be made better; just collect the data, organize and catalog it, and reduce all to a series of statistical indices, and heaven will be a little closer on earth once the right policies are implemented.

The rest of us are caught between two brands of ideological fanaticism that begin in a bad idea, deploy government power to realize the goal, and end as a grave threat to liberty and property.

Inconsistencies are visible when politicians claim that war is the best way to peace, and when they admit that prohibition of alcohol failed in the 1930s even as they insist that the prohibition of drugs today will somehow work.

It’s one of the most puzzling claims of the pro-regulation ideology: food makers and sellers have a weak incentive to make sure their food is safe for consumption. The briefest look at the dynamics of this food panic reveals the opposite.

But despite the campaigners’ enthusiasm for the idea, smokers are known for not smoking fewer cigarettes when prices rise. Instead, they either ignore the hikes or find different ways to get their hands on nicotine products — and that includes resorting to the black market.

All the essential tools for making clothing super white have been deprecated, mostly by government regulations.