Tuesday, August 01, 2017
Latest AIER Articles
My latest articles at the American Institute for Economic Research are "Occupational Licensing Harms Consumers and Producers" and "What the Market Economy Really Is."
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1 comment:
Your licensing piece reminded me of this from Adam Smith:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.
A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. It connects individuals who might never otherwise be known to one another, and gives every man of the trade a direction where to find every other man of it. - Wealth of Nations Book 1 Chapter 10.
Indeed, licensing seems to me to be a conspiracy against to public by those of the same trade to restrict the labor in their trade and line their own pockets.
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