Complexity Is a Subsidy
I read this in Jonah Goldberg’s emailed newsletter, the “Goldberg File”, last week. I thought it was really good. The other day Mary Katharine Hamm tweeted a link to one of those utterly predictable stories about how corporations with more lobbyists pay lower taxes or some such. She also remarked “complexity is a subsidy” — [...]
Can Wal-Mart Scale L.A.’s Great Wall of Regulation?
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L.A. Chinatown residents want a Wal-Mart. L.A. won’t let Wal-Mart in to serve them. While Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) has decried Wal-Mart’s “ability to…drive all other competitors away” with rock-bottom prices, many Chinatown residents, suffering for years from gouging by the local markets, would probably say “good riddance.” In what must frustrate the unions most, [...]
Regulatory Reform Needs to Be Comprehensive
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The second core problem with the current system is that the more regulation agencies generate, the harder it is for individuals and businesses to comply. In many cases, no one knows for sure how many of the regulations we have on the books are really necessary or effective.
How Doctors are Trapped
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Every lawyer, every accountant, every architect, every engineer — indeed, every professional in every other field — is able to do something doctors cannot do. They can repackage and reprice their services. If demand changes or if they discover a way of meeting their clients’ needs more efficiently, they are free to offer a different bundle of services for a different price. Doctors, by contrast, are trapped.
Oil Sanctions and the Pretense of Knowledge
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He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chose to impress upon it.
Financial Crisis Amnesia? Or the Perils of the Passive Voice
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Tim Geithner (aka the tax cheat Treasury Secretary) wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, defending the new financial regulations. I think he better illustrated the perils of the passive voice, however.
It’s Not About Contraception
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This controversy is not about contraception. It’s about freedom versus compulsion.
Why Medicaid Is No Longer a Voluntary Program
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But EMTALA did more. It killed the voluntary nature of the Medicaid system.
New York Bans Mandatory-Mail-Order Pharmacy Plans
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Some health plans require you to fill your prescriptions through mail order pharmacies. Some patients don’t like that requirement. In New York State, that requirement will soon be a thing of the past.
Debit-Card Law Has Nasty Side Effect
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People are not just pieces to be moved around a chess board by wise overseers. They make their own decisions and you can’t predict what the ultimate effect of regulations will be.