Government regulations regularly treat honest businessmen as guilty until proven innocent by requiring that they get government permission to open a business, even one as familiar as a fast food restaurant.
Whenever the press, politicians and academics vilify a financial phenomenon, further examination almost always reveals that its bad elements are caused by regulation, not by markets — and often its consequences are good, despite what the experts claim. Case in point: the hysteria surrounding so-called high-frequency trading.
Government regulations criminalize all kinds of rational, productive, and honest business activity. As bad as this is, the non-objective nature of the regulatory state and the wide powers its enforcers wield can enable regulators to get away with extorting large sums from honest producers even when there is no clear wrongdoing according to their own rules.
I’ve blogged before on how the Jones Act of 1920 forbids maritime shippers from carrying cargo from one U.S. port to another unless the ship is, in essence, owned and run by Americans. This law is an obvious attempt to insulate some American businessmen from competition.
Over at ArsTechnica.com, Jon Brodkin has a fascinating discussion of the regulatory maze that confronts Comcast in its effort to consummate a $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable.
