Mellor: In the 1940s. There was a proliferation of these licensing laws in the Progressive Era and an explosion of them after the New Deal. They’ve just continued to increase as the number of occupations has grown and enterprising people have created more niches.
In Louisiana, once they set this law in place, it was regulated by the floristry board that was comprised of florists. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the passage rate on the practical exam—where you arrange flowers and show your proficiency—was about 35 percent a year. It was utterly subjective. They’d just say things like, “It doesn’t have the proper sense of balance. It doesn’t have the proper perspective. It’s not artistic enough.”
There was no appeal from it, no standard of review. You were basically stuck. Many more people passed the bar exam in Louisiana than passed the floristry exam.
The state was arguing that you could create a corsage in such a way that someone could prick their finger on the pin, and that this was a public health and safety rationale sufficient to uphold that law. That’s literally what they were arguing.
In Oklahoma we had a case where individuals were seeking to sell caskets without having to be fully licensed funeral practitioners. Bear in mind that the fully licensed funeral directors have to go to school for two years, have to embalm bodies, have to do all sorts of things that have nothing to do with selling what amounts to a box.
And you can only go to a funeral director for a casket. Markups of 100 to 600 percent are routinely imposed on casket buyers in the funeral home context.
The court said that Oklahoma had a legitimate interest in
protecting the funeral home industry from competition. That opinion
should chill everyone who believes in free enterprise, because it
says dispensing favors is the national pastime of state
legislatures. Economic protectionism is a sufficient ground alone
to justify this kind of practice.
reason: But in other areas of commercial activity that
have long been regulated, things seem to be going in the other
direction. You can buy mail-order dentures now. You have
1-800-CONTACTS. Before you would go to an eye doctor, you would get
a prescription, and then often you would go to a captive optician
to buy your contact lenses, your glasses, etc. That seems much more
open now. In certain areas where things were tightly regulated, it
seems to be loosening up.
Mellor: Obviously, the Internet has had a profoundly beneficial effect on commerce and on the choices available to consumers. At the same time, though, people who are active in their communities providing goods or services in those communities as entrepreneurs are increasingly subject to licensing and permitting requirements that range from annoying to impenetrable. That’s the real burden, and that’s what we’re trying to stop. These burdens fall most heavily on folks who are really the aspiring entrepreneurs at the entry level, trying to break in for the first time or move up the next notch.
reason: So it’s the flower arranger seeking to go out on her own in New Orleans.
Mellor: Or the cab driver, the jitney driver. Virtually every city in the country has some degree of entry control and monopolization with the cab market. At the same time, cabs have provided a wonderful means of entry-level opportunity for entrepreneurs, often immigrants. They provide flexibility. They provide an opportunity to work as hard as you want and earn as much money as you can or as little as you want.
It’s one thing to say that under the police power of the government they can require safe vehicles and insured vehicles and competent drivers. But they start creating monopolies, limiting the number of cabs that can enter a market, regulating rates. We’ve worked in Denver, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and New York to open up transit markets. We’ve had success, but we have a lot yet to do.
reason: Give an example of a success.
Mellor: Maybe you’ve been to Queens or Brooklyn and seen the commuter vans that operate there. These are wonderful community-based transportation options for folks who prefer them over public buses, which are usually woefully inadequate; cabs, which are nonexistent; or private cars, which are either unaffordable or inconvenient. In the mid-’90s, when we took on the case, there were about 60,000 people a day using these otherwise illegal vans to get from point A to point B because the vans ran on a fixed route.
reason: You would show up at a particular place and get in and pay a certain amount of money.
Mellor: One buck. They were called dollar vans. They’ve since changed a little bit, but at the time it was a dollar and you got on and went as far as you wanted with that dollar. They were efficient and safe, yet they were illegal, because the city council had passed a law at the behest of the transit workers unions and the public bus companies that limited the number of vans.
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|3.3.08 @ 5:19PM|#
reason sucks
SIV|3.3.08 @ 5:38PM|#
There was a proliferation of these licensing laws in the Progressive Era and an explosion of them after the New Deal.
Progressives hate freedom.
|3.3.08 @ 6:10PM|#
Chip Mellor is certainly working for freedom.
Alcohol commerce is a good ol' boy fuck story in ~50 states, and some terrorities. We all know why. Because they can. It's illegal to open a 4th casino in Detroit. MGM and Mike Illitch's wife (He owns Little Ceasers, Detroit Tigers, Detroit Red Wings) are owners of two of the three casino licenses allowed in Detroit. Both are very happy with the status quo. Wherever you live you see government regs that serve no purpose other trhan protect the insiders from competition. It pisses me off no end.
And it is Incumbent Protection, not campaign finance regulation.
Robert|3.3.08 @ 6:42PM|#
But it's better than when they allowed no casinos, isn't it? Oligopoly beats zeropoly.
Robert|3.3.08 @ 11:49PM|#
Bug or feature? Robert LeFevre and others have criticized the secret ballot. If we don't allow our representatives to vote in secret, why should we allow the people they represent to do so? Wouldn't it be better to know who in the grass roots to credit or blame? And what's wrong with being compromised in the community? Why shouldn't we be able to reward or penalize on the basis of the ones who are ultimately responsible in a democracy, i.e. individual voters? With the secret ballot, what recourse do you have against those who oppose you with their votes?
Mike Laursens of the World|3.4.08 @ 12:30AM|#
Err, umm, like what kind of recourse do you have in mind against those who you think voted the wrong way?
paul|3.4.08 @ 1:28AM|#
Bug or feature? Robert LeFevre and others have criticized the secret ballot. If we don't allow our representatives to vote in secret, why should we allow the people they represent to do so?
Because they represent us.
BECAUSE THEY REPRESENT US.
Sorry, I thought you might not have heard me.
As representatives of...us... we need to know HOW they're representing us. If once they're an elected representative (I like that word) they sneak around in secrecy, and tell us "Yeah, I'd like to show you my representative track record, but I can't do that" then they wouldn't be representing us, they'd be representing themselves.
That's why I can vote in secret (goddamnit) and they fucking can't. I represent me, so my vote is secret. See how that works? It's actually not that complicated.
With the secret ballot, what recourse do you have against those who oppose you with their votes?
Ok, maybe the joke's on me. You a troll? You serious with this comment?
Ok, rocks or gunshots through the front window is always effective. Maybe a molotov cocktail on the side of the house. That one will wake those pesky, non-vote-cooperating neighbors.
stuartl|3.4.08 @ 10:17AM|#
Oligopoly beats zeropoly
Bad beating worse makes bad okay?
|3.4.08 @ 11:48AM|#
SIV--
I was talking to a very smart couple about politics. The conversation moved to the inevitable corruption associated with government power. Though I had remained aloof regarding my own particular leanings, I took that opportunity to remark, as neutrally as one can when mentioning an ideology widely regarded as insane, that that insight was (often) the launching point for those who embrace libertarianism. The husband followed up immediately by adding "or liberal progressivism." Either he was talking about a progressive movement seeking to reduce government purview I had never ever heard of, or he misunderstood me, or I misunderstood him. But I think we'll agree on which was probably actually happening.
Robert|3.4.08 @ 1:07PM|#
Any legal kind.
And who do we represent? As long as our votes can affect others, aren't we responsible for effects on them?
Robert
Mike Laursens of the World|3.4.08 @ 3:25PM|#
Any legal kind.
That's a little open-ended. What recourse do you think should be legal? Should it be legal to:
* Take out an ad listing all of the people who voted for or against something?
* Fire an employee or evict a renter who didn't vote the way you wanted him to?
* Challenge the person to a duel?
Paul|3.4.08 @ 4:23PM|#
And who do we represent?
Robert, please, re-ready my original post. Nay, let me quote it for you:
Each voter represents himself, his own desires, his own ambitions, his own self-interest. Yes, even if you're a pinko-commie bed-wetting liberal who thinks that every vote he casts is a selfless act, cast only for the "common good", you're still representing yourself, and your self-interest. Period.
As long as our votes can affect others, aren't we responsible for effects on them?
I'm trying to craft an honest answer here, but I'm afraid that "responsible" may not be the correct term to use when you vote. Because "responsible" voting begins to smack of only voting when it's not in your self-interest, and we all know what lies down that path. More people (including me) have suffered deeply by "responsible voters" who kept voting for the "common good".
Sell "common good" somewhere else, we're all stocked up here.
Robert|3.4.08 @ 4:24PM|#
Yeah, why not?
|3.4.08 @ 4:38PM|#
Smooth move Robert. Trying to get someone to prove a negative is a sure sign you're losing the argument.
Ventifact|3.4.08 @ 4:39PM|#
Laursen --
I think those should all be legal behaviors regardless of motivation. That is, I am a fan of secret ballots and so I don't hope for a world in which a landlord knows how a tenant votes (unless the info is shared willingly). But I do think if you own a building you are under no obligation to let people reside there. Similarly, I do prefer secret balloting but think any legally obtained information should be legal to disseminate through advertising.
And assuming duels are verifiably different from murder -- that the challenged person is not under threat of bodily harm (or coercion) if he decides not to participate in the duel -- there is no reason to keep people from risking their own lives that way. (Provided they aren't, like, blasting away at each other on a crowded bus or something...)
Vent|3.4.08 @ 4:43PM|#
Bud -- he was challenging Laursen to explain why we might have a right to restrict i) speech involving public information, ii) a person's choices regarding use of private property, and iii) consenting persons' rights to engage in dangerous activities that don't involve nonconsenting persons.
Mike Laursens of the World|3.4.08 @ 4:47PM|#
I wasn't arguing for or against anything. I was just trying to draw out more from Robert on what he is getting at.
Colonel_Angus|3.4.08 @ 4:53PM|#
"That's a little open-ended. What recourse do you think should be legal? Should it be legal to:
* Take out an ad listing all of the people who voted for or against something?
* Fire an employee or evict a renter who didn't vote the way you wanted him to?
* Challenge the person to a duel?"
Agreeing with Ventifact, I can fire anyone I want, or ridicule anyone I want in the newspaper. If someone somehow makes their oppinions public, they open themselves up to all sorts of criticism, excluding things like assault, harassment, or property damage. But the secret ballot allows that choice. One can keep their oppinions secret or put them out in public.
And in the case of duels, when there is consent there is no wrong doing. If you get your ass shot in a duel, it's your own fault.
Colonel_Angus|3.4.08 @ 5:53PM|#
" With the secret ballot, what recourse do you have against those who oppose you with their votes?"
@Robert:
One can in turn vote for another candidate, or try to persuade peple to vote for that person or in favor of such proposition or whatever.
Robert|3.5.08 @ 3:22PM|#
But how can you reward or punish them if you don't know which way they're voting? How do you know whom to try to persuade, if you don't know who needs persuading to being with? The elected official's votes are public, but what can you do when people you don't even know, and you can't find out who they are, are voting in someone you don't want?
nfl jerseys|11.5.10 @ 11:36PM|#
kkj
Nike Dunk Low|8.11.11 @ 11:03PM|#
is good
|9.23.11 @ 1:00PM|#
You guys sure hate taxes, but you'll drive on the roads that were created by them.
Ayn Rand was a novelist......fiction.