BrianGarst.com

The Competitive Enterprise Institute offers some excerpts from the book, The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money

Some of the blood boiling examples:

. . .Hair braiders must take a 1,250 hour training course in “cosmetology” before they can legally braid hair in Philadelphia or anywhere else in the state. As a point of comparison, federal law requires pilots to log 40 hours of flight time before getting a license.

While the reason for the braiding regulation is hard to imagine, the harmful effects are clear. Hair braiding could be the ideal job for a black woman?either a mother re-entering the work force, or someone looking for a second job. In cities where the practice is fairly unregulated, such as Washington, D.C., the field provides exactly this opportunity. In Philly, the state has made it much harder to pursue this line of work. Of course, keeping the number of hair braiders low drives up the price for consumers?which is good news only for those who had the time and the resources to get their license. Once again, government has created a cartel, not only in Pennsylvania, but also in seventeen other states that require hair braiders to obtain training and licenses.

. . .In Louisiana, for example, florists can run afoul of the law if they practice floristry without a license. The state requires any would-be florist to pass a licensing exam. Who are the judges? They are currently practicing florists. The result: a majority of applicants fail. In short, the state has given current florists the power to keep potential competition out of the market. Only with the help of big government could the existing businesses maintain such an oligopoly. Such pro-incumbent-business regulations abound.

. . .If you have weeds on your property in Arizona, you should probably study the state code before trying to remove them. Paying your neighbor’s son to spray them with Weed-B-Gone or any standard over-the-counter weed-killer, probably violates the law. It’s illegal to do it yourself if you are a renter, but it’s also illegal for your landlord to spray. Maybe you know a gardener whom you could hire to do it? You’d better check that he has 3,000 hours worth of experience spraying weeds, otherwise the Arizona Structural Pest Control Commission (SPCC) may come after you both.

In many ways, capitalism can be its own worst enemy. Competition forces businesses to innovate, which is good, but others try to stack the deck in their favor. By itself that’s not so much of a problem, but when big government collaborates with businesses to stack the deck, it’s a threat to free markets that all of us must take seriously.