It’s exemplified by California’s egg-laying chicken cage requirement. In 2008, California voters

required the state’s poultry farmers to house their hens in significantly larger cages. The state legislature realized this would put home-state farmers at a disadvantage, so in 2010 it compounded the problem by requiring that eggs imported from other states come from farms meeting the same cage standards, effective Jan 1, 2015.

That’s an expensive requirement: $40 per egg layer.

The number of egg-layers in California has fallen by nearly a quarter in the last two years, and quite a number of egg producers outside California have declined to meet the California standard and so to stop selling their eggs in that state.

As a result,

the average price for a dozen jumbo eggs is $3.16, up from $1.18 a dozen a year ago, and in some parts of the state it’s more than $5.

Who’s paying those outlandish egg prices? Among others, it’s the financially poor citizens of California.

What’s humane, exactly, about this cavalier inflation of the cost of food for those poor? Does anyone seriously think the highly intelligent folks behind this cage law—especially the state legislators who thought it would be a good idea to compound the problem—didn’t know this sort of outcome would result?