This post is incredibly dumb.
So Miami Beach has a regulation against roadside vendors (and for purposes of this post their shall be no discussion of whether or not such a regulation is a good idea). Someone calls up and asks how to sell stuff on the roadside. Person answering the phone says you can't.
But Michelle Malkin says the regulators are "boneheaded" because they should have seen how deserving the caller was of being given an exemption.
I say Michelle Malkin is the boneheaded one. Why do we want our government workers to have the arbitrary power to decide upon whom to bestow a valuable government benefit? A just system of laws require that they apply the same way to all people.
10 comments:
So.... In other words. Stop the whine and get in line. I like it fine! Geez, did I write that?? LG - Check out my blog, Spinnada. I think you will enjoy it, fellow Libertarian. Hasta La Vista, Baby.
I agree with Aaronlane. Michelle is criticizing the regulators for making the regulations, not the city bureaucrats who told the girl about the regulations. She is not advocating specific exemptions for lemonade stands or Tsunami-related stands.
I believe the point you chose to ignore in this post is the crux of her objection. Namely, that this type of restriction is an impediment to all types of positive business.No no! Her point was that the government official was "boneheaded" for not realizing that a 10 year old girl raising money to help Tsunami victims gets an automatic exemption from a regulation that would a apply to an adult trying to make money so he could pay his rent.
This isn't a judgment call that I believe our government workers should be making. I work for the government, and if someone calls me with a question, I'm going to give out the correct answer, and not ask if the caller is really calling on behalf of a 10 year old kid out to do the Lord's work.
And to respond to the guy who wrote the very first comment, the answer is I'm only single if the man asking is able to type in grammatically correct English.
I agree with Aaronlane. Michelle is criticizing the regulators for making the regulations.
If she wanted to complain about the regulation, then she should writing about the great benefit from allowing vendors to sell stuff at the roadside. Instead, she's writing about some 10 year old girl and the Tsunami.
Michelle's comment is short and somewhat ambiguous. However, I considered a couple of things:
1. The article said that the girl's lemonade "plan hit a brick wall, thanks to government regulations." Hence, the regulations, i.e., the laws on the books, were to blame.
2. Michelle is clearly targeting the regulators who put the regulations on the books in the first place. She never argues for an exemption for this girl, just points out that this is one example of stupid government regulations. She says "no good deed goes unpunished", implying there are other similar instances.
JRad, where have you been? She's made a post about this. Even I made a post about this.
Goverment + Libertarian = Works.
Government + Anarchist = Hypocrite.
Don't make me break out the ClueStick.
Well, what did the regulation actually *say*? Perhaps it had an exemption for charitable activities, or for kids, or for enterprises open 3 days or less.
While I agree that it's dangerous to give too much discretion to unelected bureaucrats, it's impossible to run any organization well without making some provisions for discretion. It's hard to discuss this seriously without knowing what provisions for discretion, if any, were in the regulation, and whether the official in question interpreted them correctly.
Steph,
Actually, it's more like a pro-life person getting an abortion.
I don't see the conflict with being a Libertarian and working for the government. Do you think that any libertarians should have committed suicide in the U.S.S.R when the only kind of jobs were government jobs. I don't think a persons career choice should be restricted by the fact that the government has monopolized a particular part of the economy.
That being said, I do think it is inconsistent to call for a breast implant tax.
I also think too much was read into the Malkin post. I would certainly agree with LGs points if I was sure Malkin meant it that way.
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