Honor laborers by letting them work
On this Labor Day, it’s fitting to appreciate and defend people’s right to engage in labor. That right has been under attack since March as state and local governments have threatened force to stop waiters and waitresses, bartenders, hairdressers, manicurists, gym trainers, and Pilates instructors, to name a few, from practicing their trade.
And it’s not as if the politicians defending those rules think that they themselves should be subject to them. Nancy Pelosi’s only apology for breaking a rule in San Francisco by getting her hair done was for being set up (i.e., caught on camera), not for breaking the rule. Chicago major Lori Lightfoot thought that she should be able to her hair done even though the commoners are not. The difference, you see, is that she was “in the public eye.” Government workers in San Francisco are allowed to go to government-run gyms while the government keeps private gyms closed.
As I said in a recent talk I gave on Zoom to an audience in Nashville on August 13:
Classical liberals and libertarians have often been charged with not caring about the working class. That charge never stood up to scrutiny. But it is especially clear now that we who advocate the right to make a living are the true defenders of the working class.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas Hutcheson
Sep 8 2020 at 8:42am
This would be a better criticism if couched in terms of a suboptimal application of Pigou taxation of the externalities that exist when asymptomatic individuals transfit an infection to unsuspecting others. The optimal regulation/tax (rules on capacity, distancing, masks wearing, ventilation, etc.) on a firm should be high enough it they will offer the optimal combination of the risk vs. regulation-induced inconvenience/tax so that the client can make a utility-maximizing choice.
Presumably Henderson believes that total prohibition of hairdressing leads a super-optimal inconvenience tax and a consequent sub-optimal supply of the service that is not (not much?) improved by occasional offer of the service with no regulation at all. I would agree with that assessment.
The accusation of hypocrisy is odd if Rep. Pelosi did not make the suboptimal regulation that the hairdresser violated.
Jon Murphy
Sep 8 2020 at 3:36pm
Of course, for those of us who entirely reject the Pigouvian treatment would find that advice unhelpful.
David Henderson
Sep 8 2020 at 4:59pm
You write:
No, it’s not. Pelosi has been an outspoken proponent of the idea that we should all wear masks. I trust you to find the references.
Thomas Hutcheson
Sep 8 2020 at 9:37pm
@ Henderson
I refer to receiving the hairdressing service when the shop by regulation should have been closed. I see no hypocrisy in that.
If she asked the hairdresser to remove their mask or she removed her own when the regulation does not allow for removal in these circumstances and she had advocated for that feature of the regulation, I can see a quod licit jovi, non licit bovi kind of hypocrisy even if that looks like a feature of the regulation that does not look cost effective.
@ Murphy
What is the correct analysis of how to regulate the externality that prolonged proximity risks transmitting infection, stipulating that in a low transaction cost environment, a one-on-one interaction like an individual hairdressing, negotiation would be superior to regulation/taxation?
Jon Murphy
Sep 9 2020 at 8:51am
That begs the question. See Coase.
I think the best way to analyze any question of externality or market failure is to take Coase’s (The Problem of Social Cost) insights on total versus marginal effects and examination of alternative arrangements of responsibility (Demsetz’s 1995 paper on the divergence between Coase, the Profession, and Pigou), couple it with Carl Dahlman’s (The Problem of Externality) useful clarification of Buchanan and Stubblebine’s discussion on externality (Externality), a healthy dose of Public Choice analytical egalitarianism, Roger Koppl’s observation of the conditions that lead to expert failure, and good ol’ embrace of subjectivity of costs and benefits.
That is precisely the hypocrisy. Pelosi was well aware of the regulation. She championed it and cheered it. She chose to violate it. And her “apology” was not for ignoring the regulation but for getting caught. It’s shameful (but, unfortunately, par for the course).
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