“The history books say that during the Progressive era, government trustbusters reined in business. Nonsense. Progressive ‘reforms’ … were done at the behest of big companies that wanted competition managed. They knew regulation would burden smaller companies more than themselves.”
– John Stossel
“The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public … The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order … ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined … with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men … who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.”
– Adam Smith
“A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Protecting Free Markets from City Regulations
As an Orem city councilor, I have a duty to defend your God-given (or natural) rights to both property and contract, which are the basis of free markets. Markets can’t function freely when politicians control them, or merely manipulate them through regulations. This is why I oppose any regulatory law on principle, and support only criminal law.
For those who might not perceive this difference clearly, as an example: criminal law might read “don’t murder anyone, including with a gun;” but regulatory law might read “guns must be built with certain materials and may not exceed a certain caliber and must include certain features and must be stored unloaded in locked state-approved cases.”
Regulations are too-often counterproductive—in fact, business regulatory agencies are captured routinely by their largest regulatees, who then wield regulatory power to unjustly perpetuate their dominance and profitability, while licenses endure similar problems. Rather than subjugate markets, it’s better to keep people free to devise their own superior solutions.
And this is why I want to eliminate all regulations, and to focus instead on rights-violations. For example, it’s fine to prohibit an apartment complex with 200 parking spaces from renting to tenants with more than 200 cars total that need to be parked, but it’s not fine to dictate landlords’ internal policies that don’t overstep their rights to violate others’ rights.
On Overgovernance
Over several decades, Detroit degenerated from a rich thriving metropolis to bankrupt crime-ridden ruins due to metastasizing debts, taxes, expenses, officers, ordinances, regulations, city-run businesses, and crony-enriching boondoggles, as police ignored serious crimes to enforce trivial regulations (or accept bribes). I’ll do my best to avert all such trends for Orem.
David for Liberty 