Most people just assume that occupational licensing protects consumers. The truth is, most licensing is a veneer. But it's really designed to create barriers to entry. What's clever about IJ's comparative analysis is that it holds up states with licensing to states without. If you can't find any trouble in the states without them, it's probably not doing any good for the states that have them. In those states, it's probably time to scrap them. But wouldn't that anger cronies?
Charles Murray is a really interesting fellow. Normally I don't post thirty minute videos. I think our Ideas Matter readers generally want quick contact. Few of us have thirty minutes to spare. But occasionally we have those videos that get to some of the deepest issues of our time. And they require more. I hope you get a lot out of this Reason interview with Murray (the excellent Ron Bailey is the interviewer).
And if you enjoy the video I hope you'll enjoy my own 2006 interview with Murray below the fold:
Before we get into the evidence, we should mention that Frances Fox Piven seems to be conflating colonialism with capitalism. If, for example, property rights institutions provide a basis for any free enterprise system, it's difficult to see how commerce could have amounted to peasants losing their farms (unless, of course, by lose she means sold). When peasants have their land taken, it's always by governments or cronies colluding with governments to undermine property rights.
But back to the question--relatively speaking (because there is no perfectly free system on earth): Do the most economically free countries tend to produce more freedom and equality?
"Living wage" is common parlance these days. And yet if Antony Davies is right, the supply and demand for labor is no different from that self-same law applied in other areas of the economy. You can't legislate away an economic law without distortions. As we've shown here many times, minimum wages actually hurt poor people.
Even if we agreed with Karl Marx that an "unemployed army" of immigrants and other poor people keep the price of low-skill labor low, can't we agree that 4 productive people making $5 per hour (labor market rate) is better for the social order than 2 productive people making $7.50 and 2 people drawing government benefits while doing nothing of value?
A lot of people think they have to pay full attention to the big-picture stuff -- like the national debt, international affairs, or the failure of fed policy. But some of the most egregious affronts to individual freedom happen right next door.
The Institute for Justice is doing a great job of defending people from petty fascism while telling the stories of the victims. If we don't start looking immediately around us, we may miss what's going on in our back yards -- and fail to defend ourselves and our neighbors from the local dictators.
I'm off today to fly away to a rather nerdy conference about higher education reform. In the meantime, check out this hilarious video by a British, "black-country" welfare baby. You may have to play it a couple of times to get the accent (near Birmingham UK). But imagine Ozzy Osborne's accent amplified by 10. Then you'll start to hear things like "lazy cow" being her doctor's diagnosis, for example.
This is not where we're headed folks; this is where we are. Welcome to the dependency state. This is only funny because we're familiar with it. And we laugh at absurdity.
You'll forgive the rather harsh assessment of both left-liberalism and conservatism. But in this video, Thomas Sowell really captures a) what's wrong with the liberal left and b) the only respectable form of conservatism.
Remember "The Story of Stuff?" It's Annie Leonard's Malthusian ode to backwards economics. Perhaps you shook your head at how something so dumb could get so much traction. I know I did. But green religion runs deep. Well, she's back with another: "The Story of Broke."
Noam Chomsky embodies the problem with progressivism: He confuses the symptoms of state power with the disease. Government power is the problem, after all, because there is no such thing as corporate power without state power. Without the state's favor, you have to be responsible to an army of customers. With a large, powerful state, it's always possible to buy favors. That's a tough thing to swallow if you're worldview is pegged to loathing corporations. But Chomsky has built his own intellectual empire on a notion that gets the causal story precisely backwards.
