Quotulatiousness

February 26, 2019

“The SNC-Lavalin affair is the quintessential Canadian controversy”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Conrad Black on the ongoing SNC-Lavalin scandal:

The SNC-Lavalin affair is the quintessential Canadian controversy. It is alleged by unnamed sources that the former justice minister and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was pressured to order her officials to assess fines rather than prosecute executives for financial crimes in the matter of SNC-Lavalin’s methods in seeking certain construction contracts in Libya, not a country where the Better Business Bureau rules commerce with an iron fist. At a later date, Ms. Wilson-Raybould consented to be moved to the position of associate minister of national defence and minister of veterans’ affairs, generally considered a demotion. When rumours circulated in the media about the propriety of allowing the company to pay fines rather than prosecute some of its executives, the prime minister defended the government, denied the rumours, and stated that the minister’s continued presence in the government was proof that the rumours were unfounded. The minister then resigned, but has since attended a full caucus meeting and had a calming effect on the Liberal MPs. She has said nothing publicly because of the delicacy of lawyer/client privilege opposite the prime minister, who has declined to waive the privilege. This is, in fact, bunk. The prime minister was not the client of the minister of justice in the SNC-Lavalin affair, and the prime minister doesn’t have any standing to waive anything on this subject, and his invocation of cabinet secrecy is twaddle, especially after the subject was aired before the entire Liberal caucus.

All government spokespeople deny any official misconduct or impropriety but the principal secretary and chief strategist of the regime, Gerald Butts, resigned, with the novel explanation that although nothing inappropriate had occurred, he thought the air should be cleared, so he walked the plank. This is the point at which this supposed scandal becomes uniquely Canadian. A minister belatedly resigns but informally continues to attend cabinet and expatiate on this issue and the government reinforces its protestations of absolute innocence of wrongdoing by the prime minister accepting the abrupt resignation of the most influential non-elected person in the government (and he also had a great deal more influence than almost all the elected ministers and MP’s).

I invite any reader to cite another country where a minister would consent to be shuffled down, maintain a complete silence while her father, an indigenous leader, has conducted an entertaining non-stop press conference denouncing the “white man’s justice,” although he has clearly gamed the system pretty well for himself, and the head of the prime minister’s office and closest collaborator of the prime minister resigns while proclaiming that nothing improper has been done and that he is only sacrificing himself to satiate the false accusers. This is too innocuous for the Americans and major European countries, too wholesome for Latin America, too complicated for the Swiss and Scandinavians, too discrete for Australia, and small potatoes for the Japanese. This is Canada, the land of Dudley Do-Right, and before him, of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald singing Rose-Marie in the Rockies. The story line of this scandal is absurd, but in its way, magnificently Canadian.

February 25, 2019

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [is] doing for America what Jeremy Corbyn has done for Britain”

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Alex Noble sings the praises of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she does the heavy lifting to bring awareness of socialism to the American people:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking at the Reardon Convention Center in Kansas City, on 20 July 2018.
Photo by Mark Dillman via Wikimedia Commons.

Good old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – she’s doing for America what Jeremy Corbyn has done for Britain. Much to the dismay of the secret socialists now entrenched in the Democrat Party, she is stripping away the protective layer of bullshit that socialism normally has to rely upon to keep people from understanding its inherent failings, and is thus laying it bare before the world.

Because she is too ignorant to understand them – she actually believes in socialism, and thinks that if only it is adequately explained to the rest of us, we will love it as she does.

She doesn’t know enough history to know that everyone over the age of forty has seen socialism tried a dozen times in their lifetimes. Her sales pitch is wasted on us – we’ve seen the results before.

So when she told Amazon that their particular brand of crony capitalism was not welcome in New York, she genuinely thought people would admire her.

Instead, even the crony capitalists on the Democrat side of the aisle (i.e those who understand how the game is really played) are very upset with her – she has driven away 25,000 jobs and all the votes economic benefits that would have flowed from them.

All because she thinks Amazon should pay more corporation tax.

February 16, 2019

The state of play in the SNC-Lavalin affair

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Law, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

If you happen to have misplaced your Libranos scorecard, Daniel Bordman has a quick summary to bring you up to date:

So here is how the accusation stands: The PMO put pressure on the AG to the benefit of SNC-Lavalin, she refused and was shuffled out of the AG position.

This led to a massive public outcry from the Conservatives, NDP and the 10 or so Journalists left in the mainstream media. The original plan was for the new AG, David Lametti, to explain to the public why this story is overblown and there was no need to look any further into the allegations.

His plan: he went on TV and explained to the public that he had spoken to Justin Trudeau and he had denied the allegations, so no investigation was needed. Brilliant! If only Bruce MacArthur and Alexander Bissonnette had known of this expert legal strategy of denying what you were caught doing, they could have escaped justice.

It is also important to note that the Prime Minister admits to having “rigorous conversations” with Jody Wilson Raybould over the SNC-Lavalian case.

After the Shaggy “it wasn’t me” defence failed to convince anyone outside of the CBC editorial board of Justin Trudeau’s innocence, a new plan was formed.

Plan B seemed to be, have everyone smear Jody Wilson-Raybould and act like it was her scandal not the PMO’s.

While she was remaining silent due to attorney-client privilege (which is a debatable position), Trudeau continued to speak for her. Again, it should be pointed out that Trudeau could have waived this at anytime to let her tell her side of the story, he didn’t.

This all came to a head when Trudeau claimed that “her presence in the cabinet speaks for itself”. The next day she resigned.

Off to Plan C, which seems to have been concocted by new Liberal strategist, Kim Jong Un.

A committee will be constructed to investigate these accusations, which of course will have a majority of Liberals and be headed by Liberal MP, Anthony Housefather, who has already added his flare to the investigation suggesting the reason that Jody Wilson Raybould was shuffled out of the AG position was because she didn’t speak French.

Remember, he is the impartial leader of Liberals investigating an allegation of Liberal corruption. It is also important to point out that both of the ministers in charge of immigration matters, Ahmed Hussain and Bill Blair, can’t speak a word of French between them.

February 14, 2019

We’re all shocked, shocked to hear allegations of Liberal Party corruption (again)

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Blazing Cat Fur, surprise is expressed that anyone is surprised that corruption in the federal Liberal Party is again in the news. As I commented on Gab last week, “But this has been ‘business as usual’ for the Natural Governing Party for generations. Why is it suddenly not okay now?” It’s no wonder that veteran Liberal politicos are shocked that anyone even cares at this late stage.

Paul Wells of MacLean’s has written Canada, the show in which he professes surprise and disappointment at the back-room dealings exposed in the SNC-Lavalin affair, why he’s almost in shock! Shock I tell you! – “You thought this government was about family benefits and boil-water advisories? The Lavalin affair offers a glimpse of the real scene — maybe the real Canada.”

Seriously? Is anyone over age 8 shocked to learn that Canada is run for the benefit of the Liberal Party and its crony capitalist backers?

I mean besides the media cheerleaders who helped elect the cardboard cutout known as Justin Trudeau.

You shouldn’t be surprised at the antics of a Liberal party whose moral universe dictates no strings attached abortion on demand and the demonization of its opponents. Or whose “leader” experiences sexual assault differently than his victim.

A brokerage party that has weaponized “diversity and multiculturalism” to implement a divisive mass immigration policy that benefits – Surprise! Our corporate welfare class.

The antics of a party that labels citizens who object to their mass-immigration Ponzi-scheme as intolerant, racists, islamophobes & Nazis has surprised you with its shady dealings? Really?

January 14, 2019

Lysander Spooner and the US postal system

Filed under: Government, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Naomi Mathew recounts the battle between anarchist Lysander Spooner and the United States Post Office:

This is a story about a philosopher, entrepreneur, lawyer, economist, abolitionist, anarchist — the list goes on. As his obituary summarizes, “To destroy tyranny, root and branch, was the great object of his life.” Although he is rarely included in mainstream history, Lysander Spooner was an anarchist who didn’t merely preach about his ideas: He lived them. No example illustrates this better than Spooner’s legal battle against the US postal monopoly.

Born in 1808 in Athol, Massachusetts, Lysander Spooner was raised on his parent’s farm and later moved to Worcester to practice law. Eventually, he found himself in New York City, where business was booming — but not for the Post Office.

The Postal System of the 1840s

In Spooner’s day, government subsidized the cost of building infrastructure used for mail routes. Postage rates paid for these subsidies, which in turn made the rates expensive. For example, in 1840 it cost 18.75 cents, over a quarter of a day’s wages, to send a letter from Baltimore to New York.

Corruption was another issue facing the post office. Positions appeared to change after each election cycle, indicating political cronyism. Congress was also under pressure from the coach contractor lobby, and favorable postage routes were often given to contractors with political connections. Thanks to a legal monopoly it had enjoyed since the Confederation, the Post Office remained the sole legal mail business despite its skyrocketing costs and corruption.

In his book Uncle Sam, The Monopoly Man, William Wooldridge describes how high postal costs led some to defy postal laws: Traveling individuals doubled as temporary, private postmen. By the 1840s, these illicit services were chipping into government revenues. Eventually, a court ruled it legal for individuals (but not companies) to carry mail. As a result, underground mail enterprises sprung up. Agents covertly used the existing rails, coaches, and steamboats to transport letters. It is estimated that in 1845, a third of all letters were transported by private mail firms.

November 30, 2018

“Infrastructure” is a Canadian word meaning “jobs for the boys”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

November 27, 2018

Cutting back on ethanol makes financial and environmental sense

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Government, Health, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:40

Craig Eyermann explains why President Trump’s push to expand the use of ethanol in cars is a bad call for many reasons:

For example, because ethanol packs less energy per gallon than gasoline does, vehicle owners can expect to get even lower fuel mileage from the expansion of E15 fuel (a blend of 15% ethanol with 85% gasoline) under the new mandate to include more ethanol in automotive fuels, which would be 4% to 5% less than they would achieve if they only filled their vehicles with 100% gasoline. Today’s vehicle owners already pay a fuel efficiency penalty of 3% to 4% lower gas mileage from the E10 ethanol-gasoline fuel blend mandated under the older ethanol content rules, where the new rules will require even more fill-ups.

Beyond that, to the extent that it diverts corn from food markets to fuel production, corn-based ethanol production also jacks up the price of food—the corn itself, plus everything that eats corn, like beef cattle. One review of multiple studies found that the U.S. government’s corn-based ethanol mandates added 14% to the cost of agricultural commodity prices from 2005 through 2015.

Last summer, the Environmental Protection Agency also found that burning increasing amounts of ethanol has made America’s air dirtier because it generates more ozone pollution, which contributes to smog formation. Worse, growing the additional corn to make more ethanol has also increased agricultural fertilizer runoff pollution in the nation’s rivers and waterways.

That runoff has been linked to the increased incidence of harmful algal blooms, which have been responsible for contaminating drinking water and contributing to red tide events in coastal regions, where fish and other aquatic organisms have been killed off.

There is a solution to these federal government-generated pollution problems: stop forcing corn-based ethanol to be used in the nation’s fuel supplies. There’s even a case study from Brazil, where the city of Sao Paulo found that its air became cleaner after it switched from ethanol-based fuels to gasoline in the years from 2009 to 2011.

October 31, 2018

Premier Ford’s promise to lower electricity rates in Ontario

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon says Doug Ford can’t risk abandoning his promises about Ontario electricity costs, despite his cabinet’s worries about provincial reputation damage:

Ford has every reason to return the power system to some semblance of economic sanity. Ontario is now burdened by some of the highest power rates of any jurisdiction in North America, throwing households into energy poverty and forcing industries to close shop or move to the U.S. The biggest reason by far for the power sector’s dysfunction is its renewables, which account for just seven per cent of Ontario’s electricity output but consume 40 per cent of the above-market fees consumers are forced to provide. Cancelling those contracts would lower residential rates by a whopping 24 per cent, making good on Ford’s promise to aid consumers.

[…]

To date, Ford has stopped renewable developments that haven’t been completed, which will prevent things from getting worse, but he has failed to tear up the egregious contracts of completed developments, which will prevent things from getting better. Based on conversations that I and others have had with government officials, it appears that Ford is inclined to cancel the contracts and honour his signature promise, but he is being thwarted by cabinet colleagues who fear that Ontario’s reputation will take a hit in the business community if they don’t play nice.

Except, there’s nothing nice about betraying a promise to the voters who democratically put you in power in order to avoid pressure from lobby groups who think governments are entitled to hand out sweetheart deals to their favoured cronies. There’s also nothing democratic about it. It is an axiom of parliamentary government that “no government can bind another.”

Canadian governments, including Ontario governments, have in the past torn up odious contracts, including those in the energy sector. When they did, upon passing binding legislation, they were able to reset the terms, offering as little or as much compensation as they wished. Outraged business lobbies’ claims that the reputation of governments would be affected were not borne out. Moreover, such rightings of political wrongs serve the interest of small government and free markets, because businesses have always understood that there’s an inherent risk in contracting with governments that are able to unilaterally rewrite contracts. To overcome that inherent risk, businesses add a risk premium when getting in bed with government, helping to explain the rich contracts the renewables developers demanded. That risk premium acts to make business-to-business dealings more economic than business-to-government dealings.

September 6, 2018

Trans-partisan planning

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Coyote Blog, Warren Meyer offers a plan to address man-made climate change, pitched to avoid being dismissed as “typical” of one or the other side:

While I am not deeply worried about man-made climate change, I am appalled at all the absolutely stupid, counter-productive things the government has implemented in the name of climate change, all of which have costly distorting effects on the economy while doing extremely little to affect man-made greenhouse gas production. For example:

  • Corn ethanol mandates and subsidies, which study after study have shown to have zero net effect on CO2 emissions, and which likely still exist only because the first Presidential primary is in Iowa. Even Koch Industries, who is one of the largest beneficiaries of this corporate welfare, has called for their abolition
  • Electric car subsidies, 90% of which go to the wealthy to help subsidize their virtue signalling, and which require more fossil fuels to power than an unsubsidized Prius or even than a SUV.
  • Wind subsidies, which are promoting the stupidist form for power ever, whose unpredictabilty means fossil fuel plants still have to be kept running on hot backup and whose blades are the single largest threat to endangered bird species.
  • Bad government technology bets like the massive public subsidies of failed Solyndra

Even when government programs do likely have an impact of CO2, they are seldom managed intelligently. For example, the government subsidizes solar panel installations, presumably to reduce their cost to consumers, but then imposes duties on imported panels to raise their price (indicating that the program has become more of a crony subsidy for US solar panel makers, which is typical of these types of government interventions). Obama’s coal power plan, also known as his war on coal, will certainly reduce some CO2 from electricity generation but at a very high cost to consumers and industries. Steps like this are taken without any idea of whether this is the lowest cost approach to reducing CO2 production — likely it is not given the arbitrary aspects of the program.

These policy mess is also an opportunity — it affords us the ability to substantially reduce CO2 production at almost no cost.

August 15, 2018

QotD: State economic intervention in theory and practice

Filed under: Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The economic theory: the state intervenes in the economy in order to prevent free-riding – in order to internalize externalities – in order to better ensure that all private parties pay the full marginal costs of their activities, and that all private parties reap the full marginal benefits of their activities – in order to promote competition – in order to protect the weak from the strong.

The political reality: the state intervenes in the economy in order to promote free-riding – in order to externalize costs and benefits that the market has reasonably internalized – in order to better ensure that politically powerful private parties escape the full marginal costs of their activities, and that politically disfavored groups be stripped of much of the marginal benefits of their activities – in order to promote monopoly – in order to render some people weak who are then pillaged by the strong.

Don Boudreaux, “Economists’ Normative Case for Government Intervention is a Very Poor Positive Theory of that Intervention”, Café Hayek, 2016-09-26.

July 19, 2018

Crony capitalists of the military-industrial complex

Filed under: Business, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Matthew D. Mitchell comments on some of the problems with government contractors and their all-too-cosy relationship with the government officials who hand out the public’s funds:

… as economist Luigi Zingales explains in his book, A Capitalism for the People, governments contracting with private interests has its own set of risks:

    The problem with many public-private partnerships is best captured by a comment that George Bernard Shaw once made to a beautiful ballerina. She had proposed that they have a child together so that the child could possess his brain and her beauty; Shaw replied that he feared the child would have her brain and his beauty. Similarly, public-private partnerships often wind up with the social goals of the private sector and the efficiency of the public one. In these partnerships, Republican and Democratic politicians and businesspeople frequently cooperate toward just one goal: their own profit.

When President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the “unwarranted influence” of the “military-industrial complex,” he was concerned that certain firms selling to the government might obtain untoward privilege, twisting public resources to serve private ends. It is telling that one of those contractors, Lockheed Aircraft, would become the first company to be bailed out by Congress in 1971.

For many observers, the George W. Bush administration’s “no-bid” contracts to Halliburton and Blackwater appeared to exemplify the sort of deals that Eisenhower had warned of. It is true that federal regulations explicitly permit contracts without open bidding in certain circumstances, such as when only one firm is capable of providing a certain service or when there is an unusual or compelling emergency. In any case, a report issued by the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in 2011 estimated that contractor fraud and abuse during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq cost taxpayers an estimated $31 to $60 billion. This includes, but is not limited to:

    requirements that were excessive when established and/or not adjusted in a timely fashion; poor performance by contractors that required costly rework; ill-conceived projects that did not fit the cultural, political, and economic mores of the society they were meant to serve; security and other costs that were not anticipated due to lack of proper planning; questionable and unsupported payments to contractors that take years to reconcile; ineffective government oversight; and losses through lack of competition.

Governments may also award contracts to perform a service that has more to do with serving a parochial interest than with providing a benefit to the paying public. For example, Congress may order the Pentagon to procure more tanks even though the Pentagon itself says the tanks aren’t needed. Paying General Dynamics hundreds of millions of dollars to produce unneeded tanks in order to protect jobs in particular congressional districts may be an abuse even if the underlying process by which the contract was awarded is legitimate.

July 7, 2018

The bad economics of rooftop solar installations

Filed under: Business, Economics, Environment, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Norman Rogers points out where the numbers don’t add up for many jurisdictions’ domestic solar power schemes:

Photovoltaic panels on a roof, 28 April, 2015.
Photo by Antonio Chaves, via Wikimedia Commons.

A modest proposal:

We’ve all heard about “shop local” and “get your food from local farmers, not distant corporate farms.” Lots of people have apple trees in their backyards. Often they can’t begin to eat or give away all the apples. In the meantime, big supermarkets sell corporate apples for one dollar a pound and up. I propose that people with backyard apples be able to take them to the supermarket and sell them to the supermarket for the same price at which the supermarket is selling apples. Furthermore, they should be able to take them at any time and receive payment. If the store gets too many local apples, it can reduce its purchase of corporate apples.

My apple proposal may seem ill advised, but that is exactly how rooftop solar power works. The homeowner gets to displace power from the power company, and if the homeowner has more power than he needs, the power company is obligated to purchase it, often for the same retail price at which it sells electricity. That policy is called net metering. In order to accommodate the homeowner’s electric power, the utility has to throttle down some other power plant that produces power at a lower wholesale price.

The exact arrangements for accepting rooftop solar vary by jurisdiction. In some places, net metering is restricted in one way or another.

A large-scale natural gas-generating plant can supply electricity for around 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. Rooftop solar electricity costs, without subsidies, around 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, or five times as much. Average retail rates for electricity in most places are between 8 cents and 16 cents per kilowatt-hour. Yet, paradoxically, the homeowner can often reduce this electric bill by installing rooftop solar.

It is actually worse than forcing the power company to take 30-cent electricity that it could get from a natural gas plant for 6 cents. When the company throttles down a natural gas plant to make room for rooftop electricity, it is not saving six cents, because it already has paid for the gas plant. All it saves is the marginal fuel that is saved when the plant is throttled down to make room for the rooftop electricity. The saving in fuel is about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. So 30-cent electricity displaces grid electricity and saves two cents.

QotD: Crony rules

Filed under: Law, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The direction [by government] of economic activity thus necessarily involves discrimination between persons, the creation of monopoly and privilege, while the aim of the Rule of Law is the abolition of all privilege, be it in favor of the strong or of the weak. And it is no less fatal to freedom if exemption from general legal rules is granted to the weak than when it is granted to the strong. Once the door is opened to differentiation on the ground of deserts or needs, it will be arbitrary will instead of objective rule which will govern men.

F.A. Hayek, “The Political Ideal of the Rule of Law”, 1955.

June 30, 2018

QotD: In government regulations, complexity is a subsidy to existing companies

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the major themes of the book I’m working on should be familiar to longtime readers of this “news”letter. It boils down to a simple insight: Complexity is a subsidy. The more complex you make the rules, the more you reward people with the cognitive, material, or social resources necessary to get around them. Big corporations tend not to object to more burdensome regulations because they can afford to comply with them. Dodd-Frank was great for the “too big to fail” crowd. But it has been murder on community banks that don’t have the resources to comply. As Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, put it:

    It’s very hard for outside entrants to come in and disrupt our business simply because we’re so regulated. We hear people in our industry talk about the regulation, and they talk about it with a sigh about the burdensome of regulation. But in fact in some cases the burdensome regulation acts as a bit of a moat around our business.

But you’ve been hearing this stuff from me for years. Let’s get back to the arrogance thing. It seems to me a big part of the problem with progressive elites these days is that they lack self-awareness. That elites arrange affairs for their own self-interest is an insight that was already ancient when Robert Michels penned his Iron Law of Oligarchy. But ever since the progressives concocted their theories of “disinterestedness,” they’ve convinced themselves that they are not in fact a self-serving elite. Give feudal aristocrats their due: They were a self-dealing crop of rent-seekers and exploiters, but at least they were open about the fact that they believed they had a divine right to sit atop the social pyramid. Today’s progressive aristocracy is largely blind to the fact that their cult of expertise isn’t really about expertise; it’s about organizing society in a way that reinforces their status and power.

Well, most of them are blind to it. Occasionally the mask slips. Jonathan Gruber, one of the chief architects and financial beneficiaries of the health-care “reform,” told audiences that Obamacare was designed “in a tortured way” to hide the fact that “healthy people pay in and sick people get money.” They had to do it this way to get around the inconvenient “stupidity of the American voter.” A feudal lord who talked this way about his serfs wouldn’t get any grief for it. But in America such honesty gets you rendered an un-person.

Jonah Goldberg, “The Consequences of Overpromising on Obamacare”, National Review, 2016-10-08.

April 7, 2018

Car rental agencies look to government to quash upstart “personal vehicle sharing” companies

Filed under: Business, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Steven Greenhut discusses yet another entrenched industry trying to get the government to protect them from disruptive competitors:

Real capitalism is a tough sport where entrepreneurs risk their capital in hopes of winning customers.

The “crony” version of it involves politicians rigging the rules to assure that the “right” people are winners. We see this ugly process on high-profile national issues, such as when Donald Trump promotes tariffs to boost steel makers at the expense of companies that use steel products. But most of this nonsense proceeds quietly in legislative committees, without garnering any headlines or vocal opposition.

One awful but illustrative example popped up recently in the California state Capitol. Assembly Bill 2246, by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, apparently is part of a national effort by rental-car companies to snuff out a burgeoning industry that just happens to be threatening its business model. The bill would redefine “personal vehicle sharing” companies as “car rental companies” — and then slam them with reams of new regulations. Similar measures have been proposed in Idaho, New Hampshire, Maryland and Maine.

Rental-car companies are facing the same challenges as other established business models in this internet and app-based age. Capitalism — the real sort — is defined by “creative destruction,” as economist Joseph Schumpeter called it. New companies are free to offer better products and services that appeal to customers. This is creative as new ideas flourish and consumers get a broader choice and lower prices thanks to competition. But it’s also destructive. Complacent old companies suddenly are forced to improve their offerings or shut their doors. The consumer is king.

For example, I recently grabbed a taxicab rather than my usual Uber and noticed the oddest thing. The cabbie had a modern app-based system for taking my credit-card payment. Until recently, paying by credit card was a hassle because cab services didn’t really want to take your card. I’ve also noticed a fleet of nice new cabs around my city. And the cab I took even sent an email with a receipt and a rating system. Sound familiar?

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