Street vending has been a path out of poverty for Americans. And like other such paths (say, driving a taxi), this one is increasingly difficult to navigate. Why? Because entrenched interests don’t like competition. So they lobby their powerful friends to erect high hurdles to upstarts. It’s an old story.

Now, growing local governments are crushing street vendors.

The city of Atlanta, for example, has turned all street vending over to a monopoly contractor. In feudalist fashion, all existing vendors were told they must work for the monopoly or not vend at all.

…

Institute lawyer Elizabeth Foley says the regulations make “it virtually impossible to be an effective street vendor. You can’t be within 300 feet of any place that sells the same or similar merchandise. That’s absolutely ridiculous for the government to use its power to enact a law like that. … These people are just trying to make an honest living, and the city is making it impossible to do so.”

…

Raul Martinez, the mayor when the law passed, defended the rule.

“You don’t want to have everybody in the middle of the streets competing for space on the sidewalk without some sort of regulations. In the city of Hialeah, we’re not overregulating anybody.”

He says one purpose of the law is simple fairness: Street vendors don’t pay property taxes. Brick-and-mortar stores must.

No one likes paying taxes, and so everyone tries to either avoid the misery or spread it around. One common justification for paying taxes, then, is fairness: Why should I pay taxes when my competitor doesn’t?

That is, perhaps, a legitimate question, but it is irrelevant nonetheless because fairness does not exist. For starters, no two people can even agree on what constitutes fairness. And even if they could, ensuring fairness requires more data than anyone possesses or could hope of possessing.

Taking the case at hand, it seems obvious that it is unfair for street vendors to not pay taxes. But should their tax bill be comparable to brick-and-mortar stores? The answer isn’t straightforward because one must consider how much less of a burden street vendors are to the local government relative to brick-and-mortar stores. One must also compare the relative advantages of each venue—a street vendor does not offer the same product as a restaurant, even if the menu offerings are identical. Trying to determine a fair tax rate in light of the considerations is simply impossible.

As such, it is simply best for the government to surrender the battle on fairness and simply say that the government needs X amount of dollars in revenue and that policy Y is the easiest way to attain this. The continual bickering over fairness simply increases systemic costs, damages the economy, kills people’s job prospects, increases political rancor, and does absolutely nothing to improve the system in the long run. Therefore, the government would be better off implementing one simple tax and living within its means, and stop concerning itself with fairness.

Things are never so simple, of course. The tax has already been received by many Danish firms as a ‘bureaucratic nightmare’, piling on additional costs to firms in an already tough period. Once more, any tax such as this is going to be inherently regressive; those least able to afford any price increases will be hit the hardest. But what does it matter? The French ‘fat tax’ is expected to raise an estimated €120,000,000 p.a.. A nice little earner.

Fat taxes are politically convenient in countries where obesity is a sizeable problem. There is presumably plenty of revenue to be had because fat people aren’t going to change their eating habits overnight, nor are they the type to be particularly cost-conscious, in terms of both direct and indirect costs.

Furthermore, defending fatties is political suicide for most, since fat people are generally reviled. Thus, a fat tax is politically brilliant because it will raise revenue easily and enjoy widespread support (or, at the least, it won’t face much political opposition).

Most are in agreement that obesity is a society-wide problem. The more rotund we become, the more our healthcare costs increase. So what’s the solution? Surely not pricing poor people out of the market for fatty foods. We must seek a solution other than ‘more taxes’ – the default position of any government. Perhaps our BMIs could be helped by making it easier for people to help out at sport clubs without undergoing a raft of CRB checks, or by reforming our health system which currently permits the cost of atrocious health habits to be picked up by someone else.

Sadly the precedent has already been set. When we already allow the government to dictate what we may and may not consume in the form of innumerable drugs, letting them control what we eat is a logical advancement. And it will all be done for our ‘own good’.

Actually, once you expect the government to provide free universal health care for every citizen (and all non-citizen residents), the natural consequence is for the government to enact some sort of cost-cutting measure, like rationing or queuing. Alternatively, the government can enact a tax on unhealthy things in order to make providing health more reasonable. If fat people ignore the increased prices, the government will at least have enough money to defray future health care costs that inevitably arise as a result of unhealthy diet. Alternatively, if fat people decide to respond to the tax rationally, then the government will have to pay less for health care later on, thus negating the effect of less-than-projected revenue.

In many ways, a fat tax mimics the natural workings of the free market. If there were no governmental guarantees of health care, people would more inclined to take care of themselves and eat properly. Thus, the fat tax serves as a replacement market mechanism.

Now, this is not to say that I support a fat tax. I simply view it as the rational response to the current conditions in Europe, with regards to how health care is provided over there. Personally, I think the best solution would be to have the government completely deregulate and desubsidize the entire health industry, and get out of providing and paying for health care in its entirety. But if the government is going to be involved in health care, it is going to have to find a way to manage costs. That much is certain.

We are no longer free. Now, we are much less free than Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin, and all the other colonists were before the American Revolution.

Need to see a physician because of illness or injury? Now it is between you, your physician, and the government. The government will decide whether you are worth treating. “You lucky dog!” has taken on new meaning, because for your lucky dog, it is still between you and the veterinarian how to take care of your sick or injured pet. You have been made as dependent on the government as
your pet is on you, but I bet you love your pet. Your government does not love you.

Want to start a business? You’ll need to go through wearying red tape, “comply” with a noose of regulations, buy a bunch of  Occupational Safety and Health Administration posters, and worry about whether there is something you’’ve overlooked, whether it makes sense or not, that could land you “in violation.” Also, for occupations from physician to simply braiding hair, or decorating a house, you may need a license, and be forced to take a couple of years worth of courses before you can compete with someone in deciding what kind of sofa pillow to recommend.

Want to move into your own house? You may need permission from the local government to occupy it, and they may insist that you alter the banister on the basement steps so nobody could possibly fall through between the banister and steps. Rain stain on the wallpaper? It must be fixed, and then be “re-inspected” to make sure it has been done to some government functionary’s satisfaction. And so on and on and on. Think you own the house? Think again. In some locales, you use it only at their sufferance.

Think you are ever going to retire? The government has forcibly taken the fruits of your labor from you, and claimed they are in some “trust fund” and will be paid back to you in due course. For people in the early part of their Ponzi scheme, it worked in spades; they got much more back than they ever paid into the scheme. For those of us reduced to serfdom to pay the way of others, we are likely never to get back what was taken from us. The government, especially since World War Two, has become more daring and brazen in stealing from us and bullying us. There is no legal enforcement at any citizen’s disposal to compel government to give us what was taken. It is said to be a “compact between generations,” but I never signed on to it. The same goes for Medicare and Medicaid.

People who die before getting “Social Security,” many of whom are poor, cannot leave it to their children, so are doubly robbed.

Stalin is said to have taken a bird and slowly plucked off its feathers, and then disgustingly boasted that not only was the bird now totally at his mercy, but was also grateful for the slight bodily warmth of his hand.  We are similarly at the mercy of an irresponsible, bullying government, which has partially plucked us and has as its goal to reduce us to subjects under a despotism much more absolute than that of King George the Third.

As we enter the third bleak year of an unconstitutional and alien regime, there is no cause for celebration this July the Fourth. When we have restored Constitutional government, limited only to its delegated powers, and are teaching our children how to be ever vigilant in preserving it, that will be the time to celebrate.

As reported by ABC News, what started out as a program to hold unclaimed property, such as the contents of safety deposit boxes owned by people who have moved away without a forwarding address, has gone wildly out of control. The program is now using the flimsiest of excuses to drill safe deposit boxes and sell the contents, often for below-market value, the proceeds going to the state’s general revenue.

In a case reminiscent of the Monty Python organ donor skit (or perhaps the movie Repo Men), a San Francisco woman’s jewelry appraised at over $80,000 was sold even though she lived a few blocks from her bank, had not moved, and was current on all of her box rental feeds. In another case, a man’s retirement savings consisting of $4 million of stock certificates were sold; and “A Sacramento family lost out on railroad land rights their ancestors had owned for generations”.

Students who attend Chicago’s Little Village Academy public school get nothing but nutritional tough love during their lunch period each day. The students can either eat the cafeteria food–or go hungry. Only students with allergies are allowed to bring a homemade lunch to school, the Chicago Tribune reports.

“Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school,” principal Elsa Carmona told the paper of the years-old policy. “It’s about … the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It’s milk versus a Coke.”

But students said they would rather bring their own lunch to school in the time-honored tradition of the brown paper bag. “They’re afraid that we’ll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won’t be as good as what they give us at school,” student Yesenia Gutierrez told the paper. “It’s really lame.”

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As I see it there is nothing inherently wrong with governments seeking to enable us to live happier lives, particularly since this is what many citizens want. It is certainly better to have people in government trying to enable us to live happier lives than for them to be trying to make themselves happier at our expense. The main problem as I see it is that the approaches that we – the people in western democracies – have been encouraging governments to adopt to help us to live happier lives have often been counter-productive.

The first problem has to do with our perceptions of the nature of happiness. I think we have been too ready to assume that the best way to enable people to live happier lives is to attempt to control their lives for them. Thus, for example, people are taxed during their working lives to provide health care or retirement incomes that they could afford to provide for themselves. Added to this we have proposals to prevent people from saving too little, working too hard, gambling too much, eating too much and so forth. We need to consider whether the humans are able to flourish if they do not have control of their own lives.

The second problem has to do with the idea that governments could promote the happiness of society if only it could be measured correctly. There has been an ongoing debate about the shortcomings of GDP as a well-being measure and various alternatives are being proposed, including some involving direct measurement of happiness. We need to consider whether it makes sense to discuss the relative merits of different indicators as though all the different factors that are important to the flourishing of any group of individuals can be captured by a single statistic.

The third problem has to do with the effects of government pursuit of happiness on individual flourishing. The more governments take over responsibility for our happiness, the more restrictions they impose on the opportunities that are available to us. For example, if governments regulate to reduce working hours in order to enable people to enjoy more leisure, this restricts the opportunities available to people who have strong personal reasons for working longer hours. We need to consider more carefully the likely effects of such government interventions.

The fourth problem has to do with the effects of government pursuit of happiness objectives on the social fabric. The opportunities available to individuals depend to a large extent on the kind of society they live in. If they live in a corrupt society in which rule of law is breaking down, their opportunities for mutually beneficial interactions with other citizens are likely to be diminished. Incentives for corruption are obviously stronger when governments intervene extensively to regulate the behaviour of citizens. We need to consider how successful different societies have been in containing corruption in the face of such incentives.

These issues are to be discussed in a book I am currently writing, with the provisional title:

The introductory chapter of the book is available here. Comments would be appreciated. (Please do not be offended if I do not respond immediately because it may take a few days to re-surface, or come down to earth from other activities.)