“Chaotic lack of rules”

Vulgar Politics
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Just when I thought I had heard/read it all, comes this gem out of NYC:

Efforts to tame a lawless bus industry that has left Chinatown like the “Wild West” have been introduced by neighborhood politicians.

The move, which would force buses traveling between New York and other cities to have a permit to operate, has teamed up State Sen. Daniel Squadron, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Council Member Margaret Chin.

They introduced a bill before the State Legislature Friday, designed to create a permit system for the first time ever and ease what they called a “chaotic lack of rules” which puts travelers and neighborhood residents at risk.

It seems that the main problem here is that companies often do not have a designated stop; opponents say this causes traffic problems. Granted, if this is true, then it is because of true, chaos-causing rules–the rules giving the state control of the roads.

“With no rules to regulate buses, the streets of Chinatown are like the Wild West, and that doesn’t work for bus companies or the community,” said Squadron. If only.

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Down in smoke

Drug Policy, Taxation, Victimless Crimes
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My former colleague and neighbor Jesse Walker, in the course of an “appreciation” of exiting Sen. Russ Feingold — whom he calls “the Bob Barr of the left” — expresses the briefest note of sadness over the failure of California’s Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. I will demur.

Sadness? At a law that, had it passed, would have regulated and taxed the use of a common plant — a lovely weed and an amazing source of industrial fiber as well as widely used herbal remedy? No. All those regulations and taxes would only have skewed the cultivation and marketing of the plant from personal and small-business operations to Big Business. Right now Californians are increasingly cultivating and openly using marijuana. In defiance of the federal government, no less.

But with the initiative, the state would have started cracking down on little producers, and making it harder for small business to provide their customers with the drug. …

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Legalize It _\|/_ But Don’t Tax Or Regulate It, Bro

Drug Policy, Humor, Police Statism, Pop Culture, Taxation, Victimless Crimes
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“Should Be Legalized” is a a great, high quality parody of Eminem’s “Love The Way You Lie.” The video reminds us of the dangers of prohibition and urges Congress to legalize marijuana. I must, however, object to the video’s desire for pot to be regulated or taxed.

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Ecofascism in the Name of Fending Off Ecofascism

Corporatism, Democracy, Environment, Nanny Statism, The Left, Totalitarianism, Vulgar Politics
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Micah White at The Guardian writes of the growing danger of ecofascism or environmental authoritarianism. Some environmentalists, like James Lovelock and Pentti Linkola, want to put democracy on hold and/or return humanity world-wide to a primitive state of existence in order to combat global warming. Ironically, his proposal to fend off this growing danger is itself an example of the very thing he fears, though perhaps his proposal is motivated not entirely by environmental concerns but also by an independent dislike of consumerism.

White’s solution is to end the culture of rampant consumerism in the West. How does he propose to do this? Ah, now there’s the rub.

…

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Mileposts on Environmentalism’s Road to Hell

Environment, Nanny Statism
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Plane dropping fire retardantWill there come a time when firefighters have to consider saving an endangered species over someone’s home?  One wonders:

Lost in the images of aircraft dropping giant red plumes of retardant on a Colorado wildfire this week is the fact that the practice may not be legal under federal environmental laws.

A federal judge in July declared that the government’s current plan for dropping retardant on fires is illegal, and he gave the U.S. Forest Service until the end of next year to find a more environmentally friendly alternative.

The issue appears to hinge more on how the retardant is used than on the retardant itself, but when human lives and property are on the line, should it matter at all if some fish and plants are put at risk?  Plants grow back and waterways recover, even from the worst disasters.  People’s lives and homes aren’t so easy to reassemble.

Then we have the Federal government’s futile attempts to spark the “green economy”, which has succeeded primarily in shipping jobs overseas (h/t Jeffrey Tucker):

The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s….

What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.

Bastiat weeps!  Of course the unintended consequences are never considered by policy makers when The Future of Civilization is at stake (or at least when cheap political points can be scored).  A few hundred people’s livelihoods, consumers’ freedom of choice: small sacrifices on the environmentalists’ altar.  Maybe Mother Earth will thank us in a few million years.

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