The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Regulation on Dec 24th, 2011
How come the FDA does not inspect postal mailing envelopes? Licking glue is probably not the safest thing in the world, and gosh just think of the evils that could come from it. Or maybe the FDA does indeed inspect them?
Posted in Paternalism, Regulation, incentives on Dec 6th, 2011
One of my favorite places in western NY happens to be right by my home – Mendon Ponds Park. I especially love to cross-country ski, snowshoe, and ice-skate there in the winter. In any case, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find places to sled in Monroe County anymore. This is rather startling since the [...]
Posted in Regulation on Nov 25th, 2011
My bet is that the movie theater lobby is behind this stupidity. Any other ideas out there? HT to Julia R for brightening my day!
Posted in Regulation on Nov 22nd, 2011
Food safety nanny-staters in New Jersey’s soup kitchens: This the men and women of the Community Soup Kitchen have provided for 26 years, not once missing a day. Now comes a challenge greater than any snowstorm or power outage. Earlier this year, the Morristown Division of Health ruled that henceforth the soup kitchen would be [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Environment, Regulation on Nov 18th, 2011
In this article we are told the following: Those who create costs pay for them — that simple idea is the logic behind the Clean Air Act and most other environmental regulations If that is the simple logic behind the Clean Air Act, then the act should be torn up and tossed into the garbage. [...]
Posted in Regulation on Nov 9th, 2011
Let’s agree that we want a federal government agency to have the power to make strong decisions. Let’s agree that this agency is the US Food and Drug Administration. We now have a choice to make. Allow the FDA to ban everything, but to approve only that which is sanctions (sanction in the affirmative sense). [...]
Posted in Public Choice, Regulation on Nov 7th, 2011
Here is an interesting new paper which demonstrates that lobbying at both the extensive and intensive margins is almost exclusively determined by firm size. … Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly persistent over time. … we [...]
Posted in Regulation on Oct 31st, 2011
You cannot order Dunkin’ Donuts coffee online in California. It all goes back to the 2002 discovery by Swedish scientists that acrylamide, a chemical that in large doses has been shown to cause cancer in mice and neurological damage to humans, is present in coffee – – as well as in many other products, including [...]
Posted in Government Gone Wild, Paternalism, Regulation on Oct 20th, 2011
The ever readable Tom Palmer points me to a story that I have forgotten, incredibly: Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen [...]
Posted in Environment, Regulation on Oct 4th, 2011
Ethanol is a fuel that is derived from the digestion of sugars in plant material by bacteria. One of the most “popular” is ethanol. Now, you guys are all by now pretty familiar with how “un-green” ethanol is likely to be (if not, I can remind you in a later post). But let’s be charitable [...]
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)