finally

a headline writer who speaks the truth!

what the heck?

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Sandefur's Latest Lawsuit:

Sandefur sent along this interesting new case that the Pacific Legal Foundation is filing in federal court in Oregon. The state of Oregon has a law requiring all moving companies to be licensed by the state, but the law allows all existing companies to protest the granting of new licenses. No surprise, the existing companies protest every new license because they don't want the competition and, also no surprise, the state hasn't licensed any new companies in the last two years. Now I'm not one of those libertarians who thinks all economic regulation is bad. There are some things the market just does not control for, in my view. But economic regulation that prevents competition and raises the cost to consumers is simply insane. Since when is it the government's job to inflate the price of goods and services?

One of the reasons I'm against give-away laws like DMCA or the law passed in Maryland that requires distributors to get beer and wine from maker to restaurant (which has clobbered Maryland's wine industry and is the reason MDRF doesn't have any local beers anymore).

It is the government's business to protect the rights of the individual.  It is NOT the government's business to protect the current business practices of corporations from new technologies and competitive techniques that may make them obsolete.

If anything, the progress in this country ONLY happens when such technologies are not suppressed but are encouraged.  THAT was what the patent system was supposed to do, and it is clearly written that way in the Constitution.