Hardcore Capitalist's Perspective - 12/4/2010

• The Newest Gateway Drug: Nutmeg
  The clamor to "do something about" the latest "gateway drug" is already rumbling. Turns out everyone's favorite holiday spice, nutmeg, is what some kids are using to get "high". Guess we'll have to call for a government prohibition on this too, despite all of nutmeg's non-drug uses, just as we must endure a government prohibition on hemp, despite all its non-drug uses.
• Cops Launch War on Bad Haircuts
  Armed police burst into barber shops throughout Orange County, California, recently, handcuffing barbers in front of customers. Thirty seven arrests were made (mostly black and Latino). What heinous conspiracy was brewing in these barber shops? "Barbering without a license". Of course, this isn't really about protecting consumers from bad haircuts. It's about scaring barbers into paying the State its "taste".
• Principal Enters Truant Student's Home
  Mirroring a scene from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," a NY principal snuck inside a sleeping student's home to wake him up and drag him to school. The principal is being charged with trespass, but what really stands out to me is how revealing this is of the compulsory schooling system. These days, students "belong" to the government school system, and the State is justified in all manner of rights violations to control "their" kids.
• FTC Goes After Online Dating
  The Federal Trade Commission is now using your tax dollars to go after online dating, since individuals clearly aren't smart enough to handle their own romantic affairs. If you meet someone online and want to contact them through a personal email address, if you claim feelings of love too soon, if you claim to be an American overseas, or if you make plans to visit your romantic interest but have to cancel, then be careful, because the FTC will have its eye on you. How long until the government tries to regulate offline dating as well?
• Busted for Playing Chess
  Watch where you move that pawn. Seven elderly chess-players in a NY park were busted by police for not being accompanied by a small child, as the law dictates. The regulation is supposed to deter pedophiles, but I'm not that only letting into the park adults who are accompanied by small children is the best way to keep out pedophiles. Cops say they were following the "broken window" theory (the theory that says if there's a broken window, it creates an atmosphere that encourages worse crimes), but will old men playing chess in a park really make thugs feel more comfortable mugging or raping, in the same way that a dilapidated building might?
• US, S.Korea Agree on Trade Deal
  Comments David Shellenberger: "People need protection from their own governments, not from trade. Protectionism is an immoral use of government power to force the public to support uncompetitive industries, at great cost to the general economy. Rather than entering into trade agreements, and accommodating special interests, countries should simply remove their own barriers, enjoying unilateral free trade."

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Published at RightOSphere.com.