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 Paternalism on Mar 12th, 2010
Salt to possibly be banned in restaurant cooking in NYC. Really. Here is the first in my series.
My friend Art Carden writes:
Quoth a Facebook friend, in linking this piece about a proposed ban on salt in New York restaurants:
“Just when I thought people protesting the trans fat ban using a slippery slope argument were being [...]
Posted in Paternalism on Feb 28th, 2010
Now, it is only safe to go sledding on groomed hills intended specifically for the purpose of sledding. This message came from our local Government school district:
Sledding is an exciting pastime when you grow up in Upstate New York. We understand the draw to some of the hills on the PCSD grounds, but we ask [...]
Posted in Paternalism on Feb 21st, 2010
Teens don’t really vote, so why should anyone care about what they think of the new teen driver law coming to New York?
Sure, teenagers are old enough to go wield a weapon in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are old enough to be permitted to choose whether to go to college or which college to go [...]
Posted in Paternalism, Regulation on Jan 18th, 2010
Over 20 states have adopted laws requiring youths to wear a helmet
when riding a bicycle. We confirm previous research indicating that
these laws reduced fatalities and increased helmet use, but we also show that the laws significantly reduced youth bicycling. We find this result in standard two-way fixed effects models of parental reports of youth bicycling, [...]
Posted in Paternalism on Nov 24th, 2009
I had a friend who used to mix Mountain Dew (diet of course) with Coffee – maybe he is next on the F.D.A.’s “hit list”:
Caffeine may lead people to underestimate how drunk they are, giving drinkers a false sense of confidence that they can perform tasks they are too impaired to undertake.
While we’re at it, [...]
Posted in Paternalism, Politics, Regulation on Nov 18th, 2009
As opposed to using pricing mechanisms to achieve goals is no better illustrated than in this pathetic excuse for a law:
“Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators Wednesday adopted a first-in-the-nation mandate to reduce electricity demand.”
Let’s see …we want consumers to reduce electricity use, so rather than raising the [...]
Posted in Government Gone Wild, Health Care, Paternalism on Nov 11th, 2009
Newborn baby AND her six siblings seized from a mother because the mother is beating them, drugging them, impoverishing them, making them smoke, prostituting them, imprisoning them, obese.
That’s not a joke. Ok, so we won’t get death panels (we will), we’ll get these instead. What will they take Amelia and Isaac from me for? Teaching [...]
Posted in Paternalism on Oct 15th, 2009
This would never have happened.
Posted in Paternalism, Uncategorized on Sep 28th, 2009
When I first saw this headline, I thought that the EU government was trying to do something about externalities. It turns out I was dead wrong. The EU hopes to set limits on the volume of MP3 players not because the loud volume played by some is a distraction (pollution in fact) to innocent bystanders. [...]
Posted in Government Gone Wild, Paternalism, Property Rights on Jul 1st, 2009
The place has gone mad. Here is a quote from New York City’s assistant commissioner for tobacco control:
it can be effective to display gruesome health effects such as amputations and throat cancer
That is in response to a proposed bill requiring tobacco retailers to post gruesome anti-smoking signs. And this for a product that is voluntarily [...]
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