We want less regulation! Hang on… not so fast…
The SCOTUS is supposed to be ruling on the health care insurance mandate next week. I’m still scratching my head over that (I think the real “solution” is to abolish for-profit insurance, but that’s a different argument…) Don’t we already mandate car insurance? And try getting a home mortgage without insurance. Oh yeah, those are only for people who may drive or have mortgages. Maybe health insurance can be required only for those who may need health care?
On a more critical note, today’s Morning Edition on NPR had a piece about Why It’s Illegal To Braid Hair Without A License. Apparently, in Utah, braiding is such a danger to the public that it needs licensure and regulation. Clearly, we want our buildings and roads designed and constructed safely, and most people want health care from an certified provider (homeopathy excepted…), but braiding?
It seems the professions want the regulations – fewer licensees means less competition and freedom to charge more.
So…. I’m hearing government regulation is bad.
Unless it’s not.
Category: hypocrisy, law and order
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Jim is a husband of more than 26 years, father of four home-schooled sons (26, 22, 15 and 13), engineer delighting in virtually all things technical, with more than a passing interest in history, religions, arts, most sciences (particularly physics)and skepticism.Subscribe
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Seems that the bank fraud crisis would not have occurred had we had stronger banking regulations, including Glass Steagall.
Here a simple regulation my city enacted: If you have more than one false alarm of your home alarm system, you get fined. If you have two false alarms, you are fined $25, 3 costs you $50 and four is $100. You wouldn’t believe how quiet things have gotten since that regulation went into effect.
I’m watching the health insurers scream now that they are required to spend 80% of their premiums on actual health care. Music to my ears.
How many fossil fuel disasters involved companies that violated regulations? BP, coal mining companies?
I just don’t get how the issue became regulations versus no regulations. The issue should have always been striving for good regulations (good for society as a whole) and repealing those that are not good.
This activity should have been regulated:
http://www.propublica.org/article/injection-wells-the-poison-beneath-us
Occupational licensing is pernicious and not based on public safety concerns at all in most cases. You know that it’s BS when they grandfather the requirements in, which is what they did with Florida interior designers. 90% of Florida’s interior designers have licenses yet did not fulfill the license requirements, because they were grandfathered in. So the only effect of these regulations was to prevent new entries into the interior design field. So Florida recently considered repealing the licensing requirement, and the representative of the cartel seriously said that this could cause 80,000 deaths!
Now the health insurance mandate, the problem there is that Congress probably doesn’t have the power to impose on. States on the other hand, do that have that power, just as they do for drivers. A federal insurance requirement for drivers is not possible.
Actually what seem to make all the difference is to be found in the process by which the licensing requirements are determined.
In the case of a restaurant license, the health department sets many of the requirements, based on a certain amount of scientific standards. The same is true for exterminators, and for many professions where the public good is considered. But in many cases, the licensing requirements may be determined by a commission, or a licensing board comprising people knowledgeable in the profession. Often referred to as “industry consultants”, these commissioners usually have vested interests in the profession being licensed.
For example, consider licensing for day-care. In most jurisdictions, the daycare licensing board is populated with representatives of corporations and franchisees in the the daycare industry, and the resulting requirements prove disadvantageous to small independent daycare operators.
This is typically the case when government is run “like a business”.
I agree with all but the last part. It’s more like government being run like a government, and then moving that government model to an industry to change it from a free market into a cartel.
Generally I look for two things: is the industry currently regulated? If not, what problems is the regulation regime supposed to fix? How successful regulation been in other states or countries? Who is exempt? Exemptions are a red flag that the regulations aren’t really all that important.