Mark
Legend
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2012
- Messages
- 13,961
Spot on
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/d...he-eu-and-how-we-are-governed-by-corporatism/
How is state’s cold fist to be uncurled from the economy? What has to happen for personal liberty, free enterprise and innovation to flourish? Here’s an idea: how about nothing at all?
Government regulation it is forever playing catch-up. Directives, unless updated and renewed, become decrepit. Who cares, these days, about the laws controlling the manufacture and use of telegraphs or hansom cabs? Simply by screwing tight the legislative tap, we allow the private sector to outgrow the state – as happened in Belgium, which enjoyed unexpectedly strong growth as a consequence of going for nearly two years without a government.
Belgium, sadly, was the exception. Most places have cohorts of civil servants and ministers scanning the horizon for any new technology that has somehow escaped their notice. One example will serve to illustrate the problem.
Electronic cigarettes are a new invention. Instead of smoking tobacco, the user inhales a mixture of water and nicotine; instead of breathing out smoke, she breathes out vapour.
Are e-cigarettes bad for you? Yes, in the same way that half a bottle of Mersault is bad for you. But, if you were previously smoking actual cigarettes, they are unambiguously good news: the toxic mixture of combustibles with which you were previously coating your lungs and throat is replaced by a single mildly deleterious drug. For those who have tried and failed to quit smoking, e-cigarettes could be life-saving.
Here, in short, is the market working as it should. Someone has come up with a product for which there is demand, and is offering a service where none existed before. That’s the process that lifted humanity from the diseased and precarious autarky of the Stone Age to the extraordinary wealth of our own era. But it fills our rulers with horror.
I’ve observed before that, to the Eurocrat, ‘unregulated’ and ‘illegal’ are virtually synonymous. Brussels officials were scandalised at the idea that a new product was being sold without licence. First, they tried to bring it within the scope of their tobacco regulations, but that proved difficult, since the product contained no tobacco. Then they tried to classify it as a health product – which is stretching things a bit, since no one is trying to claim that smoking e-cigarettes is healthier than not smoking anything. The one thing that has not been contemplated is leaving e-cigarettes covered only by the general rules on consumer protection.
Now here’s the sinister bit. You might think that tobacco companies would lobby against more unnecessary restrictions. And indeed, most of those that sell e-cigarettes are unhappy – though, naturally, those that make only traditional cigarettes are delighted. But there’s an exception: one tobacco giant is strongly pushing for the adoption of stringent rules on e-cigarettes. Why? Because it happens to match those standards anyway, and sees the opportunity to place its rivals under a competitive disadvantage. Thus we see a familiar corporatist coalition taking shape: state-funded (and EU-funded) lobby groups line up alongside multi-national companies to restrict consumer choice.
If you think I’m laying this on a bit thick, ask yourself why the EU simultaneously funds tobacco growers and anti-smoking campaigners. The answer, of course, is that it aims to draw both groups into the Brussels nexus, encouraging them to invest in lobbying and making them dependent on the system. The people who are supposed to stand up for the citizen against these lobbies are, in theory, MEPs. The trouble is – see speech below – they always and everywhere favour ‘more Europe’. It’s a racket, and no one has any incentive to break it.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/d...he-eu-and-how-we-are-governed-by-corporatism/
How is state’s cold fist to be uncurled from the economy? What has to happen for personal liberty, free enterprise and innovation to flourish? Here’s an idea: how about nothing at all?
Government regulation it is forever playing catch-up. Directives, unless updated and renewed, become decrepit. Who cares, these days, about the laws controlling the manufacture and use of telegraphs or hansom cabs? Simply by screwing tight the legislative tap, we allow the private sector to outgrow the state – as happened in Belgium, which enjoyed unexpectedly strong growth as a consequence of going for nearly two years without a government.
Belgium, sadly, was the exception. Most places have cohorts of civil servants and ministers scanning the horizon for any new technology that has somehow escaped their notice. One example will serve to illustrate the problem.
Electronic cigarettes are a new invention. Instead of smoking tobacco, the user inhales a mixture of water and nicotine; instead of breathing out smoke, she breathes out vapour.
Are e-cigarettes bad for you? Yes, in the same way that half a bottle of Mersault is bad for you. But, if you were previously smoking actual cigarettes, they are unambiguously good news: the toxic mixture of combustibles with which you were previously coating your lungs and throat is replaced by a single mildly deleterious drug. For those who have tried and failed to quit smoking, e-cigarettes could be life-saving.
Here, in short, is the market working as it should. Someone has come up with a product for which there is demand, and is offering a service where none existed before. That’s the process that lifted humanity from the diseased and precarious autarky of the Stone Age to the extraordinary wealth of our own era. But it fills our rulers with horror.
I’ve observed before that, to the Eurocrat, ‘unregulated’ and ‘illegal’ are virtually synonymous. Brussels officials were scandalised at the idea that a new product was being sold without licence. First, they tried to bring it within the scope of their tobacco regulations, but that proved difficult, since the product contained no tobacco. Then they tried to classify it as a health product – which is stretching things a bit, since no one is trying to claim that smoking e-cigarettes is healthier than not smoking anything. The one thing that has not been contemplated is leaving e-cigarettes covered only by the general rules on consumer protection.
Now here’s the sinister bit. You might think that tobacco companies would lobby against more unnecessary restrictions. And indeed, most of those that sell e-cigarettes are unhappy – though, naturally, those that make only traditional cigarettes are delighted. But there’s an exception: one tobacco giant is strongly pushing for the adoption of stringent rules on e-cigarettes. Why? Because it happens to match those standards anyway, and sees the opportunity to place its rivals under a competitive disadvantage. Thus we see a familiar corporatist coalition taking shape: state-funded (and EU-funded) lobby groups line up alongside multi-national companies to restrict consumer choice.
If you think I’m laying this on a bit thick, ask yourself why the EU simultaneously funds tobacco growers and anti-smoking campaigners. The answer, of course, is that it aims to draw both groups into the Brussels nexus, encouraging them to invest in lobbying and making them dependent on the system. The people who are supposed to stand up for the citizen against these lobbies are, in theory, MEPs. The trouble is – see speech below – they always and everywhere favour ‘more Europe’. It’s a racket, and no one has any incentive to break it.
