Bargain Ban

Daniel Steiner, the Florida limo service operator who was punished for charging too little, has taken his case to federal court, arguing that Hillsborough County's regulations infringe upon his 14th Amendment right to earn a living.

Comments

[thoreau]

One interesting aspect to this story is that a lot of his business involves taking elderly disabled people to medical appointments. The cost of specialized transportation is a very real part of the cost of caring for the elderly and disabled, and so this case should be of interest to people who lament the lack of affordable care.

[thoreau]

NoStar-

Good point. And by the time they were done making quality transport "affordable" the bills would probably be even higher than what this guy's competitors are currently charging.

There's nothing so cheap and efficient that the gov't can't make it more expensive anyhow.

[BigPhil]

"... fighting the arbitrary dictates of local transportation regulators ..."

I spend twelve years in various aspects of the taxicab business. You can't appreciate "arbitrary" until you meet a taxicab inspector.

[Tingy Wah]

Honestly, the Free State Project would be better off trying to populate, then completely de-regulate, a city or municipality. There's plenty of state shrinking to be done on a local level, and the goal of overwhelming an area with libertrians would be made easier.

[Mark Draughn]

BigPhil, tell us some stories.

[Curtis]

Thanks for a great item of true interest. This fellow has my strongest support. To bring from the link...
"Sandefur added, "This case exemplifies the problem warned about by President Ronald Reagan when he observed that '(t)he Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.'" (((-- Citation: Ronald Reagan, Televised address to the nation, October 27, 1964.)))

Sandefur noted that former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once called the fundamental right to earn a living to be "the most precious liberty that man possesses."

Whenever a Daniel Steiner goes down in the face of bad law, the public suffers.

[NoStar]

Tingy Wah,
I like your suggestion, but I have spent my adult life looking for a libertarian woman to procreate with. I am attracted to intelligent women, and that seems to be the problem. The ones I find attractive to are too intelligent to fall for a schmuck like me.

[Pro Libertate]

Gee, I'm so glad that the Big Guava is protecting me from myself so effectively--keeping me six feet away from dangerous women at nude bars, watching every move I make, every breath I take in Ybor City, and keeping limo drivers from introducing price competition into the Bay Area (that's the Tampa Bay Area for you terribly confused Californians).

I like Tingy Wah's suggestion--there's an awful lot of craziness going on in municipalities around the country, and it would be a lot easier to affect what they are doing than to "take over" a state. Here, it would make sense just to get a libertarian into the City Attorney's office. For instance, the six-foot rule was blatantly unconstitutional at the time it was enacted and should've never gotten past the City Attorney. The city was saved the mucho dinero it would've lost violating the First Amendment by a rather surprising about-face by the U.S. Supreme Court. Too bad, really, because a few dollars ripped out of the coffers might've gotten their attention.