Former Democrat Congressman and New York City
mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner has a new
column at Business Insider, and for his first column
he decided to defend Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.). He tells readers
it might be surprising that he’s decided to defend a “conservative”
in his first column. It shouldn’t be.
Christie may consider himself a conservative, but like Weiner he
often sees government as the solution to, not the cause of, various
problems. This time, Weiner thinks Christie was right about
cracking down on direct sales of electric cars by Tesla. He
writes that the regulations that prevent direct sales are a good
idea, probably, but he’s not confident he knows
why:
Why would you want to have laws that require a car be
purchased through a local dealer? Perhaps to protect a
purchaser’s rights to easily enforce the warranty. To ensure the
state’s ability to enforce the reams of unique state legal
requirements that govern automobile sales, service and even
disposal maybe. Or, it might just be a run-of-the-mill instinct for
local rather than federal regulations to govern what, for many
Americans, is the biggest purchase of their lives. You may not
agree with these conclusions, but these are longstanding laws and
there was a robust back-and-forth about them well before Tesla
drove onto the scene.
Perhaps, maybe, might. Weiner is willing to provide a vigorous
defense of regulations whose purpose he can’t identify with
certainty. Perhaps Weiner is a slimeball. Maybe. He might be. To
his credit, Weiner admits he received donations from car dealers as
a politician, but then explains how lobbyists lobby about
regulations in one of the most backward ways I’ve seen:
You can’t swing a dead cat in Washington or any of the
50 state capitals without hitting a lobbyist pitching the idea some
regulation is overreaching, unnecessary, or stifling of
competition.
The statement is just as, if not more true from the other
direction: You can’t swing a dead cat in any capital without
hitting a lobbyist pitching the idea some new regulation is
needed (often to stifle his employer’s competition).
Weiner’s presumption to trust regulations are there
for a reason is backward too. Everything he listed as a possible
reason for the regulations that prohibit direct Tesla
sales—protecting warranties and enforcing legal requirements on
auto sales, service, and disposal—can be just as easily imposed on
and satisfied by Tesla’s direct sales division. It gets better.
Weiner continues:
Along with Tesla, companies like Uber and AirBnB, are
trying to do more than upset the established entities in their
markets. They’re all building businesses on an even tougher
bet—that they can get rule makers and legislators to throw out the
laws that those same people wrote. In this respect, the Tesla fight
is noteworthy only in that it’s a cool car.
Like with Uber and AirBnB, Weiner, it’s also noteworthy that the
fights are over rules and laws pushed not in the interest of
safety, or good governance, or whatever mumbo jumbo is used to
justify regulations, but because of an industry’s desire to stifle
competition, and the government’s desire to
act like a hit man. Back to Weiner’s column:
Reasonable people may think regulations that get in the
way of tech companies are all just bad laws. In Tesla’s case, some
might consider bans on direct auto sales to be part of a
protectionist regime set up by a powerful lobby—neighborhood car
dealers—and unchallenged by a lazy industry that didn’t want to
antagonize its sales force. Still, dismissing all existing
regulations out of hand without recognizing them as the product of
reasoning and careful consideration isn’t the answer.
I suppose it takes the kind of tolerance for hypocrisy and lack
of self-awareness that politicians have to have to succeed to
perform the kind of mental and rhetorical gymnastics Weiner has
here. He offers nothing to dispel the idea that the ban Tesla is
suffering from was “part of a protectionist regime set up by… car
dealers,” but nevertheless suggests that regulations still be
assumed to have been the product of reasoning and consideration.
Why? Liberals like Weiner often complain about the influence
of money in politics but stop short of identifying the root
problem as the power of government.
When individuals, groups, or even companies support political
candidates with money, they are exercising their right to free
speech. That money, or
straight up bribes, can only lead to corruption when the
government has the power to be corrupt. It wouldn’t matter how much
money car dealers, or Tesla for that matter, gave politicians if
their elected offices didn’t have the power to write rules that
protect car dealers from competition or that send taxpayer money to
Tesla, or even that end up enriching the politicians themselves.
Money, corporate or otherwise, doesn’t corrupt politicians. Their
ability to write rules that pick winners and losers and distort
entire industries and markets does. And the idea that every law and
regulation is “probably” there for a good reason abets that
ability.
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