Tag Archives: regulation

Whose Information Is It?

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Information belongs to the government of the People’s Republic of China, apparently.  Especially when it’s investment information, information that might facilitate the prosperity of individual citizens and their businesses, information that might lessen their dependence on and control by, that government.

A Chinese quasi-regulator told the country’s top raters of investment funds to stop publicizing the sizes of money-market mutual funds, in what is being seen as another attempt by Beijing to slow the industry’s rapid pace of asset accumulation.

Because an informed investor can make his own decisions instead of the decisions Government wants him to make.

A copy of an internal directive reviewed by The Wall Street Journal told firms that rate and rank investment funds to avoid publishing the asset sizes for money-market funds, which could have the effect of drawing more investors to the largest funds.

Which would (in a free market) have the knock-on effect of competition raising rates paid investors in those not-largest funds, which would benefit the investors.  And the further knock-on effects of drawing yet more money into the funds and of adding liquidity to these short-term instruments which would facilitate the short-term borrowing (useful for inventory control, meeting payroll, etc) of businesses.  Which would have the further knock-on effect of spurring the private economy and not the Communist Party of China’s controlled economy.

Gotta keep the peasants down on the farm.  The cities are collecting too many of them, anyway.

Unless it’s proprietary or a matter of national secrets, information isn’t controlled by Government beyond a couple of laws protecting intellectual property and those secrets.  In free nations, anyway.

Job Cut Worries

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The Left has them in the Department of Education.  It seems that the DoEd is sharply cutting back staff in its Office for Civil Rights.

[C]ritics say the move will blunt the office’s response to issues like sexual assault on college campuses and racial discrimination in public schools.

And

Some civil rights advocates are…saying the buyouts [to encourage departure] are determined by department chiefs who they say are targeting the civil rights office.

I certainly hope so.

Law enforcement and crime, including sexual assault, are matters for the police and the DoJ.  DoJ also has its own civil rights section. DoEd has—or should have—nothing to say on these matters.

The duplication needs to be eliminated altogether, and not just with a few job cuts.  All of the should be jobs cut, and DoEd’s Office of Civil Rights should be completely eliminated.

Good for Workers, Good for Business

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Recall the National Labor Relations Board’s case of a couple of years ago, Browning-Ferris Industries.

Browning-Ferris concerned a recycling center staffed by contractors. The original [NLRB] ruling found the contractors were jointly employed by a staffing firm and Browning-Ferris.

This ruling, if allowed to stand (the case also is in the Federal court system) would have allowed contractors like those at Browning-Ferris, McDonald’s, and any other franchise-centered corporation not only to form unions at individual franchises (which they’ve always been able to do), but also to form a grand union across the corporation.

President Donald Trump appointed a couple of folks to the NLRB to fill vacancies created when two ex-President Barack Obama (D) appointees quit in a snit over Trump’s election.  Now the NLRB has voted to overturn that prior NLRB ruling.

This is good for both business and for employees.  It’s good for business because modern unions have devolved into extortion rackets that threaten a business’ ability to exist through crippling strikes unless the unions get pay and benefits that they demand, even when those things cost more in their per-employee aggregate than the employee’s work is worth.

It’s good for the workers because it means, with labor costs allowed to match the value of the work done, labor won’t be replaced by automation that’s cheaper than the union-elevated labor costs.  Jobs will be preserved, and more hiring will occur.  It’s also good for workers because it frees them to negotiate their own wage and benefit package instead of being dragooned into whatever a union might impose on them.

The Question is a Non Sequitur

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John McKinnon and Brent Kendall, in their Wall Street Journal piece, asked Is FTC Up to the Task of Internet Regulation?

His piece is about the split between what the FCC (the erstwhile “regulator” of the Internet, courtesy of the Obama administration) and the FTC are qualified to regulate.

The question is a bit of a non sequitur, though. The Internet is merely a transport medium, and it needs very little regulation. The FTC is fully up to the task of regulating (ideally with a similarly light touch) trade, which is independent of the medium—highway, railroad, snail mail, or electronic—over which the traded products are transported.

And: lightly regulated commerce is highly conducive to innovation.  Just look at our communications system since the breakup and deregulation of Ma Bell.  And the Internet between its inception and the Obama FCC-imposed impediment.

Disappearing Insurance

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First it was health insurance, dysfunctional as it was, being replaced by the health coverage plan welfare program known as Obamacare.  Now auto insurance is under attack.

New York financial regulators have banned the use of education and occupation as factors in setting auto-insurance premiums….

Never mind that these are useful, if imperfect by themselves, correlates with driving skill and so of insurance risk. The companies accepting the risk transfer by selling a policy don’t get to know that information, they don’t get to assess the level of risk being accepted.  They can’t charge an accurate premium.  That hurts the driver as much or more than it does the insurer.

When insurers are not allowed to learn all the factors that go into the level of risk an insuree is seeking to transfer to an insurer, the policy being agreed ceases to be insurance.  New York’s auto “insurance” program isn’t yet approaching State welfare status, but it is ceasing to be insurance.