In Florida, you may not practice interior design without a license. You also can’t get paid to help someone book a vacation without a state-issued license. There are dozens of licensing regulations in the state that kill entrepreneurship and drive up costs.
Chip Mellor of the Institute for Justice has a Forbes article telling of Gov. Rick Scott’s efforts to repeal this needless harmful regulations.
But the Sun-Sentinel newspaper opposes Scott’s effort:
Unfortunately, the hue and cry from those professional groups and industries some state lawmakers mistakenly think would benefit from deregulation haven’t yet registered with those legislators who confuse regulations with red tape.
But of course the incumbent businesses aren’t the ones who are supposed to benefit from this deregulation bill — they are the ones unjustly benefitting from Florida’s regulations. Mellor tells of the lobbying effort:
The Sun-Sentinel’s editorial is pretty absurd, but it fits a standard template of journalists and politicians pointing to the businesses that profit from Big Government subsidies and regulatory robbery, and saying “look, even industry likes the regulation, so it must be good.”
Gail Collins of the New York Times basically did this with light bulbs recently. The Center for American Progress did this on climate change. And President Obama did it when he said, “even the drug companies” were on board with ObamaCare.
