Regulation begets rent-seeking. When government assumes the power to regulate imports, domestic firms will lobby to use that fact to their advantage.

Case in point: Home Products International (HPI), an American company, makes ironing tables. So does Hardware, a Chinese company. I personally have no idea which firm makes the better ironing table. That’s for consumers to decide.

Or at least it should be for consumers to decide. But it doesn’t always work that way in practice. HPI seems to have already…

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Here is a letter I sent recently to The Wall Street Journal:

September 22, 2009

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

Your article “Bad News for Broadband” (editorial, Sept. 22) hints at, but does not make, a key point: net neutrality proposals are driving a wedge between service providers like AT&T and content providers like Google.

Strange, is it not? Their interests are actually closely aligned. If AT&T upgrades its network, Google benefits from the increased bandwidth. If…

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Divide et Impera — divide and conquer — is perhaps the oldest strategic maxim of war, politics, and diplomacy. Businesses succumb to it time and time again. Why?

It is in the general interest of business to preserve an open and competitive marketplace, and to limit tax and regulatory burdens. However, it is often in the special interest of particular firms to expand the size and scope of government in order to collect political “rents” – windfall profits created by market-rigging subsidies, preferences, or mandates. 

When only a few firms…

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Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, rebuts the argument that regulatory climate policies can’t be bad for the economy because so many big businesses support them.

This is an odd argument coming from people who are usually suspicious of big business, or even hostile to corporations. When did they decide that corporate support is some kind of good-housekeeping seal of approval?

To watch today’s film excerpt, click here. To watch the entire movie, click…

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In this morning’s Washington Post, columnist George Will brings to light a particularly egregious example of politically-connected developers abusing the legal system to silence their land-grab critics:

When Kelo was decided, H. Walker Royall, a Dallas developer, already had designs on some property that for more than a decade has belonged to the Gore family shrimping business in coastal Freeport. In 2003, Royall signed an agreement with that city’s government to build a yacht marina, hotel and condominiums using property the city…

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President-elect Obama’s proposed economic stimulus package (on which Doug Bandow commented recently) isn’t even in Congress yet, and the the rent-seeking has already started. ClimateWire reports:

As lawmakers and President-elect Barack Obama mull another economic stimulus package, businesses and congressional leaders are jockeying to be in position to receive the first trickles of federal cash intended to stem losses of jobs and raise energy efficiency.

Two sectors, in particular, stand to benefit, judging by the debate so far. Labor unions are pressing for…

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