Category Archives: Regulation of the Day

Regulation of the Day 185: How to Wear Pants

Posted on July 19, 2011 | Comments Off on Regulation of the Day 185: How to Wear Pants

Collinsville, Illinois officials know that when you look good, you feel good. That’s why they are now regulating the height at which people shall wear their pants. Some young people these days prefer to wear their pants somewhat low. This fashion trend is no doubt a direct reaction against World War II-era fashion, when men wore their pants much higher.

According to the new dress code regulations, Collinsville residents must not wear their pants more than three to four inches below the waist. First-time offenders get a $100 fine. A second offense nets a $300 fine and 40 hours of community service. There is no corresponding regulation for wearing pants super-high.

Collinsville regulators do not unanimously favor the new rules. Bob Knable, the city manager, has apparently heard of opportunity costs. Police forces only have so much time and resources. He points out that time officers spend eyeing peoples’ pants is time not spent on more serious matters.

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Regulation of the Day 184: Picking up Dog Poop

Posted on July 18, 2011 | 2 comments

A Vienna, Austria man was recently jailed for not picking up after his Great Danes. Having solved Vienna’s other problems, the city council recently passed new dog poop regulations. These include government-employed “Waste Watchers.” According to the Austrian Times, these “work from six a.m. to 11 o’clock at night handing out fines of up to 2,000 Euros for breaches in the law on dumping of waste and fouling of walkways.”

The 52-year old man was fined €1,380. When he told a court he could not afford the fine, he was jailed for two days.

As part of its new dog poop initiative, the government installed plastic bag dispensers throughout the city. Dog owners are required to use the bags to clean up after their dogs and place the final product in government-provided waste bins.

The offending man pleaded that his two Great Danes are simply too much for the plastic bags to handle. Great Danes can weigh as much as 200 pounds, and are prolific eaters.

The man should think about providing his own bags if the city’s aren’t up to the job. It is less than courteous for him to just leave the mess on the sidewalk. But a fine of up to €2,000 and possible jail time? That’s overkill.

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Regulation of the Day 183: Throwing Wet Sponges

Posted on July 11, 2011 | Comments Off on Regulation of the Day 183: Throwing Wet Sponges

Apparently British regulators don’t think their subjects are sponge-worthy. A long-running annual carnival event in Ulverston where participants throw wet sponges at each other was shut down last week by health and safety regulators.

They feared that the sponges would pick up dirt and grit from hitting the ground. Subsequent throws could then injure participants. Somebody could lose an eye.

The waterfight did happen as scheduled, fortunately. Instead of sponges, the combatants used Super Soaker squirt guns, which apparently comply with British health and safety regulations.

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Regulation of the Day 182: PowerPoint Presentations

Posted on July 6, 2011 | Comments Off on Regulation of the Day 182: PowerPoint Presentations

A political party in Switzerland is seeking to ban Microsoft PowerPoint presentations in meetings. The Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP), founded in May by Matthias Poehm, claims that wasted time from sitting through PowerPoint presentations costs the Swiss economy $2.5 billion per year. The party estimates Europe-wide costs to be $160 billion.

In Switzerland, 100,000 signatures is enough to trigger a referendum on almost any issue. The 245-member (and growing!) APPP is currently rounding up signatures for a referendum on PowerPoint presentations. Poehm, who founded the party to promote his new book, The PowerPoint Fallacy, urges public speakers to use flipcharts instead.

Poehm deserves credit for being a creative promoter. And I share many of his sentiments about PowerPoint. But PowerPoint policies are best set by individuals, not binding referenda. His book, now available in several languages, will hopefully persuade many individuals to spare their colleagues some tedium. But politicizing the issue, humorous though it is, might not be the best way to improve the quality of public speaking in Switzerland.

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Posted in International, Regulation of the Day, Technology

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Regulation of the Day 181: Offensive Bumper Stickers

Posted on July 5, 2011 | Comments Off on Regulation of the Day 181: Offensive Bumper Stickers

Tennessee State Rep. Gary Moore must be a very busy man. This year alone, he has solved the state’s budget troubles, fixed the broken education system, slashed the crime rate, and ended poverty.

Granted, I didn’t see any headlines about any of those things. No, the evidence for Rep. Moore’s achievements is much more indirect: he found the time to introduce a bill banning offensive bumper stickers. Surely he wouldn’t spend time on something like that unless he’d already solved his state’s more pressing matters?

There’s no way that fining drivers $50 if another driver takes issue with their bumper sticker would take precedence over reforming TennCare. The bumper sticker bill also covers movies being shown inside vehicles; surely Nashville’s solons wouldn’t worry about what cartoons parents are showing their kids in the back of their minivans until they found a way to raise stagnant standardized test scores.

On the other hand, maybe Tennesseans would be better off if their elected officials spent all of their time on minutiae. Whenever legislators do try to tackle the big issues of the day, wallets across the state get a lot lighter.

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Regulation of the Day 180: Braiding Hair

Posted on June 8, 2011 | 1 comment

Businesses often use regulations as a cudgel to bludgeon their competitors. Occupational licensing is one of the most-abused types of regulation. John Stossel’s latest column shows how by telling the story of Jestina Clayton, an immigrant from Africa who braids hair for a living.

Her customers are satisfied. But now her competitors want her to take 2,000 hours of classes and spend thousands of dollars to get a cosmetology license. This even though braiding is the only service Jestina offers. And because the her competitors are the very people who grant or deny licenses, it will be easy for them to keep entrepreneurs like Jestina out of business even after she completes the licensing requirements.

Jestina’s story repeats itself every day in any number of occupations. Stossel writes:

Once upon a time, one in 20 workers needed government permission to work in their occupation. Today, it’s one in three. We lose some freedom every day.

“Occupational licensing laws fall hardest on minorities, on poor, on elderly workers who want to start a new career or change careers,” Avelar said. “(Licensing laws) just help entrenched businesses keep out competition.”

This is not what America was supposed to be.

He’s right.

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Posted in Competition, Economics, Regulation of the Day

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Regulation of the Day 179: Giving Food to Homeless People

Posted on June 6, 2011 | 2 comments

Last Wednesday, three people were arrested in Orlando for giving food to homeless people in a local park. They violated city regulations that require “groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.” The rules apply to events that give food to over 25 people; the arrestees fed about 40 people.

Their charitable work could cost them each a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. All three are affiliated with a group call Food Not Bombs that regularly gives meals to homeless people. The Wednesday event that led to the arrests was a deliberate resistance to the ordinance. Hopefully they will succeed in overturning it; the last thing government should do when people try to help each other is get in the way.

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Regulation of the Day 178: Helping Tornado Victims

Posted on June 3, 2011 | 1 comment

Mike Haege owns a tree-trimming business in Hastings, Minnesota. After a tornado hit northern Minneapolis, he decided to help out. On May 23, the day after the tornado, he signed up as a volunteer and brought some equipment to help people without insurance to dig out from the damage. Mike and his fellow volunteers removed fallen or damaged trees from driveways and doorways, all free of charge. He probably made a lot of friends that day.

Regulators were not among them. While he is licensed to work in many Minneapolis-area cities, he isn’t licensed in Minneapolis proper. So they kicked him out of the city. The Hastings Star Gazette reports:

The inspector told him to get out of the city, so Haege left with the volunteer. As they were on their way back to the volunteer area, residents waved down Haege, pleading for help. He pulled over and helped get a tree out of the way for them.

Haege had no idea police officers were behind him in a sort of unofficial escort out of town. He said they stopped traffic for about two hours while they figured out what to do with him. At one point, officers threatened to throw him in jail, he said.

All the while, residents continued defending him, screaming in his defense.

Officers told him to leave. They told him he was going to receive a “hefty fine” in the mail, and that if he stopped on the way out, the fine would be doubled.

True to their word, Mike later received a $275 fine in the mail.

Volunteer today!

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Regulation of the Day 177: Single-Wide Trailers

Posted on May 25, 2011 | Comments Off on Regulation of the Day 177: Single-Wide Trailers

In 1957, the town of Cordova, Alabama banned single-wide trailer homes. It was a cynical attempt to lower the local poverty rate by keeping poor people out of town. Mayor Jack Scott explains, “We’re trying to better Cordova[.] We’re trying to clean up Cordova and keep it clean. We’re trying to keep the property values up. We’re trying to get it to where people will want to build homes on these vacant lots.”

The recent spate of tornadoes in Alabama has left a number of Cordova residents homeless. Some people are interested in buying trailers to live in temporarily while they rebuild their houses. FEMA also has trailers available for people. But they’re single-wides, so they aren’t allowed in Cordova. The weird part is that the ordinance was mostly unenforced until the tornadoes came. Now the city is cracking down at precisely the time when people need trailers the most.

The citizenry is understandably upset about this regulation. But when over 200 people, many of them displaced, showed up at a townhall meeting, they ran into another regulation. Fire marshals only allowed 100 people to enter the National Guard Armory, where the meeting was held. After much complaining, they relented and allowed everyone in.

Hopefully they will also convince Mayor Scott to rescind the trailer ban. Cordova’s people need roofs over their head more than they need their mayor’s aesthetic vision.

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Regulation of the Day 176: Cooking a Burger

Posted on May 23, 2011 | Comments Off on Regulation of the Day 176: Cooking a Burger

In North Carolina, it is illegal to cook a burger to an internal temperature under 155 degrees. Rare and medium rare burgers are banned from the state’s restaurants. As regulator Larry Michael told AOL News, “According to North Carolina rules, a hamburger is cooked properly when it reaches an internal temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit[.] There are no exceptions.”

Actually, there are. People cooking at home can still legally cook there burgers to whatever temperature they like. And a kind of rare burger black market has emerged. Regular customers who have built up a degree of trust with the staff can order a rare burger. But they’ve taken to speaking in code. The server will say that they’ll make the burger as pink as they can, just in case food inspectors are within earshot.

The reason they have to so circumspect is because openly giving customers what they want could cost the owners their restaurant license. Maybe it would be better to let adults set their own risk preferences. I personally prefer my burgers cooked medium. But if someone else wants to order a rare burger and is willing to bear the small risk of catching E. coli, let them. The only loser is the regulator who would have to find a more productive line of work.

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