• The Never-Ending Struggle

      Posted by John Stossel | August 26, 2010

      The new issue of Reason Magazine celebrates a rare victory for liberty.

      But Editor Matt Welch puts the victory in perspective amidst...

      The never-ending struggle to go about your business without fear of government sanction.

      The 2,300 page Dodd-Frank finance regulatory act adds more sanctions:

      As Associate Editor Peter Suderman wrote when the law was being passed, “For regulators in Washington, this is a He-Man moment: They get to lift thousands of pages of legislation above their heads and declare, ‘I have the power!’

      The Act brings more complication to a world where no business can be certain that it isn’t in violation of some law.

      People who don’t know if their day-to-day behavior will trigger criminal prosecution are not truly free. … If cops or motivated government attorneys decide they don’t like you, life can soon become hell.

      … Once you take it as a given that the government has an important say in what you do with your property or put in your body, a whole universe of appalling actions and apologia becomes possible.

      … sometimes it feels like we’re losing a game of whack-a-mole. For every outrage reversed through bad publicity or expensive lawyering, there are untold dozens of quiet capitulations to a rampaging state.

      …until we make a dent in the widespread notion that there always has to be some type of government structure or some taxpayer-financed watchdog to police every imaginable peaceable transaction, any contemplated fix to the mess we’re in will be temporary at best.

      TAGS
      Government
      Regulation

    • JOHN HAS A NEW BOOK! ORDER TODAY

    This Week's Show -- May 16, 2013

    Government is at war against the little guy.

     

    Bureaucrats pass thousands of regulations to "keep people safer" and "make the marketplace more fair." Today 170,000 pages of federal regulations are on the books. Break just one rule, and government may wreck your life.

     

    So Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson started a "Victims of Government" website that features victims of overregulation.

     

    Nevada bureaucrats tell people who teach movie make-up that they must get an expensive license or close.

     

    Stossel has two empty rooms in his house now that his kids moved out. Using sites like Roomorama, he could make a little money and rent the rooms out. But two years ago, New York passed a law that makes most of what apartment rental sites do illegal. Stossel debates Liz Kreuger, who sponsored that bill.

     

    Is there any hope for the little guy? Authors of "Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers", Edward Lopez and Wayne Leighton, point out that deregulation did happen once. Americans pay much less to fly and to ship something because the CAB and ICC no longer exist. And we have cell phones because the FCC finally allowed spectrum auction. They say the only time things change is when the right people, the right ideas and the right circumstances all come together to repeal the bureaucrats rules.

     

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