Bureaucracy and Regulation

Even though our legal authorities treat smugglers as criminals, smugglers actually are promoters of liberty who usually break unjust laws. The US was practically founded on smuggling.

Like bad money driving out good money, government intervention can also create Gresham’s law conditions for entrepreneurs. Using the political process, bad entrepreneurs can get government to regulate entrepreneurial competition out of business.

Contra Keynesians, who believe that government spending and bureaucracy are the keys to economic growth, it is the bureaucratic state that swallows resources and stifles entrepreneurs. The more powerful the bureaucracy, the lower the standard of living.

Socialism does not infect our body politic just through economic measures. The current obessession with implementing DEI policies has all of the hallmarks of how socialist measures undermine a private property order.

Supporters of the new California minimum wage law for fast-food restaurants claim it will bolster economic opportunity for lower-income people. It actually will be a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

Government schooling advocates are demanding that homeschoolers be regulated by public school authorities. Perhaps homeschooling advocates should be monitoring the government.

In order to vastly expand the regulatory state, the Biden administration is using fake cost-benefit ratios to make its regulations seem less costly and more beneficial. This is clearly fraudulent, but no bureaucrat will be charged with any crimes.

Long before government mandates and pressure infected businesses and universities with the DEI virus, Ludwig von Mises explained how bureaucracies infect the decision-making process. 

The Tennessee Board of Regents for higher education is finding that their DEI efforts are not successful, and the Tennessee legislature has become skeptical. It might be better to scrap the DEI collectivist “solutions” altogether.

Asset forfeiture is another term for state-sponsored theft. Reform of this pernicious policy is almost impossible because of the incentives set up by governments at all levels.