UPS

Regulation of the Day 139: Mailing Fake Grenades

by Ryan Young on June 3, 2010

in Personal Liberty, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

According to a new United States Postal Service regulation, all fake grenades and other “replica or inert explosive devices,” must be sent via Registered Mail.

You must also write ‘‘REPLICA EXPLOSIVE’’ on the package “using at least 20 point type or letters at least 1?4-inch high.”

Unlike most Regulations of the Day, this makes some sense. Many a post office has shut down because of false bomb scares. An uncle sending his nephew a birthday present could theoretically grind a major city’s mail service to a halt.

That isn’t the uncle’s fault; it’s the hyper-sensitive post-9/11 security mindset’s fault. Sadly, that mindset won’t be going away any time soon. This rule will hopefully prevent some false positives . Labeling the package lets postal workers know that they need not freak out. The Registered Mail requirement allows postal workers to verify that the grenades are, indeed, harmless.

Of course, the new rule treats the symptom, not the disease. It should hopefully reduce the amount of unnecessary bomb scares. But the real problem is the ingrained human habit of over-reacting to terrorism.

Terrorist attacks are extraordinarily rare, and need to be treated that way. Until common sense awakens from its post-9/11 slumber, this regulation may actually do some good.

Or the terrorists could start shipping grenades via UPS.

Union Bosses Say the Darndest Things

by Marc Scribner on August 4, 2009

in Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Regulation, Trade

As described in an OpenMarket post by CEI’s Ivan Osorio a couple weeks ago, the Teamsters union and UPS are currently lobbying Congress to change FedEx’s labor law status, thereby making it easier for the Teamsters to organize FedEx drivers.

Today, the Washington Times ran an article on the ongoing battle, which included a you-can’t-make-this-up quote from Teamsters boss James P. Hoffa:

FedEx has built much of its empire on low-cost business models and other unsavory tactics, some of which are now coming back to haunt it.

This quote, which the Times pulled from a Teamsters-run anti-FedEx website, typifies the backward thinking of the organized labor movement: Business cost-savings should be thought of as “unsavory.” Labor, for those of this mindset, is not seen as a production input; rather, work is viewed as an end in itself. Consumer welfare, let alone shareholder welfare, is rarely considered at all.

This should appear ridiculous to anyone with even a cursory understanding of economics–you work in order to consume the things you want. Unfortunately for consumers, Big Labor is now driving U.S. economic policy.