The Extremist

A Real Fix

I've been watching tattoo artist Sal Unvar's journey through the corrupt, absurd and often ridiculous labyrinth of Key West Code Enforcement in my two-week-old issues of Key West the Newspaper. From my present vantage point in a third world country, far removed from busybody legal demands over house color, fence height, and street performance, the spectacle is a source of constant amusement.

   

My neighborhood here is remarkably beautiful, lush and green, thick with birds and flowers. We live in a pretty little white house with a spectacular view of the city below us. But local home décor decisions would induce apoplectic seizure in a card-carrying member of

Key West

's Art and Historical Society.

   

The house at the entrance to our driveway is lime green. Next door, behind an eight-foot iron fence topped with razor wire another is painted orange with emerald green trim. A little way down the gravel road from there in a cluster of tiny, similarly colorful homes is a purple "A" frame with yellow walls. The front yard garden features a six-foot scarecrow in a pink pinafore. It's head is a stuffed blue trash bag. It has no face.

   

There are no aesthetic police to compel the locals to paint their houses gray or white. There is no commission of busybodies with impeccable good taste to whip the philistines into line. What ever will we do?

   

In

San Jose

jugglers perform at stoplights. They have forty seconds to wow you sufficiently for a twenty cent tip.

Unlicensed   street

artists work in everything from chalk on concrete to spray paint on cardboard. The public decides whether they are good enough to continue working by either giving them money or not. The notion that there should be an official board of citizens to decide whether their work is really art would be considered ridiculous beyond comprehension.

   

It may be that

Costa Rica

is simply too poor to concern itself with regulating every trivial detail of their lives. I prefer to think they are too smart.

   

That is not to say there is no useless public sector charged with collecting small fees to stamp reams of papers. A day at immigration is enough to pry a confession from the most hardened criminal. The line at the National Bank of

Costa Rica

is an excellent place to practice deep breathing. The country is deeply socialist and has all the problems attendant upon everyone trying live at everyone else's expense. But in the details of daily life and selecting an occupation, officialdom pretty much leaves you alone.

   

Not so in Key West, where even the city manager is not too busy to involve himself in protecting the public from faux art. How the city manager must have agonized over the tattoo guy's status as a genuine artist. It must have been hell to follow his conscience and revoke permission for Unvar to earn his living. But what could he do? No self-respecting public official could allow a fake artist to bilk a gullible public. We're not living in the Wild West where anyone with a paintbrush and some henna can plaster a design on an unsuspecting forearm.  Don't try this at home! Allow only officially sanctioned artists to paint stuff on your body!

   

It must have been equally difficult for the wise and thoughtful members of the Art in Public Places board to deny Mr. Unvar his right to feed his family. I'm puzzled as to why the board was consulted at all. My understanding is that the board's job is to deliver tax loot to their friends and colleagues, not to decide whether anything is or isn't really art. 

   

And what a tough call the art/not art question is. Does the board's decision mean the silver stand-still-as-a-statue guys are artists? I haven't seen any silver guys in museums. And what about the jugglers, the cat trainers, the orange juice squeezers? Are they all artists? Do you have to be an artist to earn your living in public? Does the APP board have to declare you an artist for you to be one?

   

I admire Commissioner Verge's efforts on Unvar's behalf. The problem is that he, and everyone involved, thinks we'll just fix things up to get Unvar a license and everything will be OK. The good commissioner implies that if the APP people or the ethically challenged Code Enforcement agents do not approve Mr. Unvar, that would just be too bad for him. Without official approval he will simply have to find some other line of work.

   

Commissioner Verge said, "It's all a misunderstanding and we can fix it." The good commissioner means we will threaten, cajole and kiss the right rings to get a license for the tattoo guy. Unfortunately that is simply more of the same corrupt logrolling and rent seeking that set the system up in the first place. It wouldn't fix anything.

   

A real fix would recognize that everyone has a right to earn an honest living. A real fix would acknowledge that rights cannot be taken away at the whim of corrupt officials or of the self-serving, the arrogant, the ignorant, or the ego-maniacal who have wormed their way into positions of power over their competition. A real fix would eliminate licensing or relegate it to a simple tax for an undeniable license available for the asking. A real fix would fix a corrupt and absurd system, not Mr. Unvar's problem.

Technorati Tags essays • licensing • Key West • Costa Rica

Shotgun Wedding

An AP article last week announced the conclusions of a Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sponsored study of American's restaurant eating habits. The FDA thinks restaurant owners should help the FDA improve our health by cutting portion size. Not satisfied with the hundreds of thousands of deaths every year from official meddling in the drug market, the FDA now wants to regulate the three basic food groups, pizza, burgers, and fries. Can rationing of beer, ice-cream, and chocolate be far behind?

In modern America do-gooders, busybodies and world improvers are everywhere leading the march to government control of every detail of our lives. In my own hometown the Key West City Commission offers a model of government for which nothing is too trivial or silly to remain unregulated.    

The Commission has blessed an apparently grateful electorate with laws controlling such minutia as shrubbery species, house color, roof covering, and people who paint themselves silver. Such laws feed a growing swarm of enforcement pests while accomplishing little. In the end, however, they are only wasteful and silly. 

The FDA, on the other hand, with control of our food and medicine, is much more dangerous than local busybodies ever will be.    

The FDA's desire to make rules for burger weight and pizza diameter is a classic example of an agency rooting around like a truffle snuffing pig in the forest of our private affairs, looking for hidden nuggets of power. It would be justifiable if the FDA's work so far had any measurable benefit. Unfortunately, a look at the agency's record shows the opposite to be true. The FDA has caused much more harm than it has prevented.

It is a well-known axiom of bureaucratic butt covering that nobody gets in trouble for saying no. Following this imperative the FDA has created an approval process for new drugs that efficiently generates red tape, flawed science, and rich opportunities for collusion with the regulated. The process fails to generate drugs that are any safer than unapproved drugs available elsewhere in the world. The Tufts Center for Drug Development estimates it costs on average $800 million to bring a new drug to market in the U.S. The average time for approval is over 15 years.    

Even when you spend almost a billion dollars getting official government approval, you can't know everything. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine stated, "Overall, 51% of approved drugs have serious side effects not detected prior to approval." Worse yet, with such hefty sums on the line, the further into the process a drug goes the more powerful are incentives to ignore any unpleasant side effects that are discovered.

More than one hundred thousand people die every year from adverse reactions to prescription drugs. That doesn't count the screw ups that kill people who receive the wrong drugs.   

FDA approved drugs like Viaoxx, Trasylol, Zyprexa, Bextra, and heaven help us, Viagra, have cause thousands of deaths. Although Viagra patients who have nearly died generally agree that, "it was worth it."

At nearly a billion dollars a throw for approval, is safety too much to ask?

As bad as they are, however, unexpected side effects from approved drugs are not the biggest killer. The more impressive death toll is among those who cannot get lifesaving drugs while they are lost in the labyrinthine FDA approval process.    

The FDA isn't just in the business of warning citizens about potential trouble and then letting them make their own decision. To avoid the risk that people would ignore the medical recommendations of bureaucrats, the sick are forbidden to seek unapproved treatment, even at their own risk. The FDA forces patients not only to risk death, but fines and imprisonment as well. Even the terminally ill may not make treatment decisions without FDA approval. As a consequence, thousands die waiting for drugs that are available and successful in other countries.

Here are two examples. There are many, many more. The first beta-blockers were used in
England in 1965. Between 1965 and 1976, when the FDA finally approved them, an estimated 10,000 Americans per year needlessly died of hypertension and angina. This delay alone could be responsible for more deaths than all the drug mishaps in this century combined.    

For over 10 years the FDA has banned a simple device called The Sensor Pad, two sealed plastic sheets with a lubricant between. The pad reduces friction during a breast cancer exam making detection of small, early lumps much easier. The product is sold throughout Asia and Europe. The FDA wants the pad to undergo the same $800 million process it uses for drug approval. The item costs less then ten bucks. It is no more complex than a coolie cup. The number of women who died in the last 10 years because they missed a lump when it was small and harmless is impossible to know. But our protectors at the FDA can take the blame for at least a few of those deaths.   

Additional sickness, death and heartache have resulted from FDA censoring of health information. The FDA has actively suppressed information on the health benefits of vitamin C, aspirin, folic acid (which prevents the horrific birth defect known as spina bifida), calcium, and the herbal no-calorie sweetener, stevia. The FDA demanded that a U.S. company destroy cook books featuring stevia recipes. Do we want an agency that sponsors book burnings to control the junk food supply?      

One simple change in the law would save many lives. We should make the drug and medical treatment market as free as the junk food market. Let patients and doctors decide what drugs and treatments are best for them. If FDA approval were simply one more piece of information in deciding medical treatment, rather than a shotgun wedding to Typhoid Mary, lives would be saved.

Real Disaster Relief

Like a Pope Gregory granting dispensation from sin to Crusaders, our local government has suspended the need for building repair permits in our flood ravaged city. In doing so our leaders admit what they never would in normal times. Permitting and building inspection are not public safety issues. Building permits simply keep track of property improvements for tax purposes. Building departments are like shepherds weighing and counting the herd.

If building permits benefited the public, a natural disaster would hardly be the time for their suspension. The only thing permitting protects us from is building inspectors. If there were any advantage in them, people would apply for permits voluntarily.

Eliminating the need for permits is a good idea. Local officials could help even more with recovery by suspending other wasteful regulations as well. Licensing comes to mind. On the way into town yesterday I saw a sign tied to a tree like a lynched horse thief. It said: “Unlicensed Contracting is a Felony in Florida.” That seems like fair warning to unordained tool bearers and their potential customers.  Hire a worker without official permission and both your and whomever you hire face heavy fines and jail time. A hanged dummy wearing a tool belt and an “UNLICENSED” T-shirt might work better than the sign. Public floggings better still.

Like permitting, licensing is sold as protection for the public. Everyone knows the world is full of crooks, quacks and con men. Licensing is supposed to offer protection that laws against fraud do not. In reality research shows that licensing punishes the public while rewarding licensees.

Most prosecutions for unlicensed activity start with complaints by licensees. Except for those involving vindictiveness or spite, there are almost no complaints from members of the public who are supposedly enjoying lavish regulatory protection.

This is understandable when you realize that licensing is promoted by those who will be licensed. Nearly every private trade group vigorously lobbies for strict licensing of its own members. Regulators are usually members of the regulated profession. There is no surer way to limit competition. It’s an easy matter after licensing laws are passed to increase requirements, while exempting current licensees.

Most violations of licensing laws are minor civil matters. Many licenses are easy to get. After all, such jobs as training falcons, braiding hair, reading palms and breeding ferrets require licenses. Even the most reckless ferret breeding is no great danger to public welfare.

The more senselessly restrictive the law becomes, however, the more severe the penalties must be to scare people away from the protected profession. You’ve hit the big time when you can treat your unlicensed competitor like a murderer, rapist or thug. In Florida, real estate agents and building contractors (and probably others I don’t know about) have reached this lofty status. Licensing violations in those professions are felonies. I remember the gleeful mood in the real estate trade press when unlicensed activity achieved felony status. Whoopee, they wrote, now the public is really safe from us.

Unfortunately there is little in any licensing course to protect the public from rapacious greed or vaulting ambition, from sloth, incompetence or ethical indifference. I’ll never forget the 100 hours of training I took to become a licensed auctioneer. I spent most of my time chanting numbers in a sing-song faux-southern drawl. The interminable chanting often transported me to a vast astral plain of commercial absurdity but I never understood how my growing ability to babble numbers protected the public.

Licensees are no more likely than anyone else to be honest, loyal or even competent. The higher costs that result from restricted entry into licensed professions could be justified if there were any real quality benefits but most of the evidence shows no increase in the quality of work. Often consumers suffer real harm. For instance, more people get rabies where veterinarians are strictly licensed and more people are electrocuted in states where electricians enjoy heavily restrictive licensing protection.

Licensing also inhibits innovation. Often the crackpots and quacks that licensing seeks to exclude are an industry’s innovating pioneers. Thomas Edison, with no formal education, would never be licensed as an electrical engineer today. Frank Lloyd Wright would not even qualify to take the exam to be a certified architect. Clerics like Cotton Mather fought for inoculation against smallpox while doctors led the opposition.

Coping with disaster requires the best we have to offer one another. Suspending building permits is a great help. Suspending licensing laws and repealing price controls would help even more. There is little that would aid our recovery more than three month’s paid vacation for the entire city building department. The only real danger would be the depression, both economic and psychological, that would accompany their return.

Price Gouging Laws Punish Hurricane Victims

Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage. — Robert Heinlein

It’s summer again in Florida. Weathermen are in their glory. Floridians are wondering how the patio doors will hold up in a 200 mile an hour breeze. The Florida legislature granted a brief sales tax holiday to help us prepare for hurricanes. Smart move. Letting us keep a little of our own money shows an understanding of economic incentives that is rare in politicians.

Hurricane supplies are plentiful and cheap now when we don’t need them. The tax holiday encourages us to prepare early. Well stocked cupboards ease panic buying and tend to stabilize prices.

It’s hard to believe the authors of the tax holiday, who obviously understand price incentives, are the same economic pinheads who proudly outlaw “price gouging” during emergencies. Disaster brings out the Joe Stalin in public officials. Politicians love free enterprise and free markets when trolling for votes but mysteriously morph into Soviet commissars when the lights go out.

That is because politicians respond to incentives just as consumers respond to prices. Widespread public fear provides a powerful incentive for political action, no matter how dumb the act. For governments large and small catastrophe means opportunity. There’s nothing like a disaster to expand a public agency’s influence and budget. Smoldering ruins are the perfect foundation for political power. 

For a good example, look no further than the explosion in budgets and bureaucrat counts that followed the 9/11 attack. Governments grow by spreading fear and selling protection. Life is dangerous. It always will be. As long as there is something to fear we will always need more protection.

After an attack we need protection from terrorists. After natural calamities we need protection from unscrupulous businessmen. The same, irresistible, seamless logic that persuades us we are safer when numbered like cattle, frisked like felons, and watched like toddlers also convinces us we can escape the cost of hurricane recovery by simply banning high prices.

We believe such nonsense because we desperately wish it were so. If you are happy with “price gouging” laws, there are smiling bridge salesmen who want to talk to you as soon as the lights are back on.

Laws against “price gouging” may save us a few bucks but they cost us dearly in time, taxes and dignity. They delay or prevent the arrival of supplies, equipment and labor, punish victims with prolonged suffering and transfer power to public agencies.

After last year’s storms, Bubbas and Juniors all over the South made plans to rent big trucks, load them up at the local Wal-Mart and head on down to make a fortune helping hurricane victims — until they heard about the price gouging laws. Then they stayed home. 

Scores of contractors from nearby states stayed home with their equipment and men because the cost of working hundreds of miles from home would mean they had to charge higher than normal prices. The risk of prosecution for “price gouging” wasn’t worth it.

Without higher prices wholesalers had no incentive to divert disaster supplies away from regular markets where they were selling just fine at their regular prices and without risking fines and confiscation.

Price gouging laws affected the locals, too. A report in the August 30, 2004 St. Petersburg Times described a local restoration company that refused to bid on hurricane projects. A spokesman explained that expenses would be much higher than usual. The company would have to charge much higher prices. They would be an easy target for unhappy homeowners who would expect a new roof in 24 hours for a price they would have paid before every roof in town had been blown into the next ZIP code.

Artificially low prices encourage hoarding and do not protect the poor. Without higher prices Junior and Bubba are not trucking the batteries down here anyway. With no supplies at all, those who can afford to buy them not only can’t help themselves, they can’t help anyone else either. Price controls just make sure everyone suffers equally while filling out forms for a welfare handout.

Price gouging laws punish victims by making shortages worse and delaying recovery. They do so in exact proportion to the severity of the laws and the magnitude of the disaster.

If Florida’s lawmakers really wanted to help Floridians cope with hurricane disasters they would repeal all “price gouging” laws, then declare sales tax, licensing, and permitting holidays for 90 days after any hurricane. Entrepreneurial relief would flood into disaster areas faster than you could say “unconscionable profits.” Mountains of supplies, equipment and labor would quickly force prices back to normal or even sub-normal levels. There is no way Junior and Bubba are going to truck all those batteries and blankets back home.

Civics Lessons from The Mob

"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." — P. J. O'Rourke

A victory for fair play and the free market has put local politicians and bureaucrats in a tizzy. A jury has brought in a verdict here in tiny Key West that will probably end one of our city government’s most blatant protection rackets.

The spectacle of dissembling hogwash that city officials are using to justify the monopoly they granted to a local tour company is almost worth the price of having to pony up to pay the winner.

Many years ago the Key West City Commission sold a monopoly for motor tours on city streets for a 5% cut of the action. The tour business prospered. Some time in the ninety’s city leaders put police and code enforcement officers to work to drive a competitor out of business. Key West’s finest succeeded and the competitor sued. After ten years of legal wrangling the case arrived in front of a jury. The jury decided the city had gone too far, confirming that Americans prefer to be fleeced by politicians equally, with favoritism toward none. They awarded the plaintiff something north of $13 million, which is a substantial cut of the $32 million the city is scraping by on this year.

“Where on earth will we get the money?” exclaimed one of our representatives. Where, indeed. Where did we get the money to drive the man out of business? Where did we get the money to fight him for ten years in court? Where will we get the money to appeal? We get it from the usual sources — other protection rackets. Licensing, permitting, inspections, and, of course the mother of all protection rackets, property taxes are the traditional and reliable sources of local government resources. Charging rent on someone else’s property under threat of legally stealing it just can’t be beat for steady, growing income.

In the tour monopoly case, the City of Key West pursued the wrong extortion model. The city’s sale of a profitable privilege to a single company which they were then obligated to protect from other companies is a perilous model for small governments. The “pay for privilege” model works better at higher levels of government, where “access” is granted for “campaign contributions” and no victim is likely to be strong enough to wrestle with Leviathan.

With enough power, lawmakers can generate protection money literally for doing nothing. The cash flows when they threaten to pass bills that will damage selected private businesses — specifically, businesses that can pay enough to stop them. These legal strawmen are so common they even have nicknames. In California they call them “milker bills.” Politicians draft legislatively useless “milkers” to threaten some private group who will pay to defeat it. “Juice bills” is another term for laws designed to squeeze cash from the private sector. In Illinois they call them “fetchers,” as in “Go fetch us up some money, boy, or we’ll hurt you.”

City governments can’t squeeze much juice out of their limited markets. They have to stick with the traditional protection racket. It is always easier and more certain to sell protection from yourself than from some unpredictable third party. It’s the reliable business model used by street punks who offer to watch your parked car, “... so nothing happens to it.”

Even after their crushing defeat, however, it still isn’t clear whether our city officials have learned the lesson taught so well by Al Capone and Bugsy Siegle. It is a lesson that forms the basis of modern government finance. You don’t have to own the cow to get the cream.

Just recently one of our commissioners suggested the city break its deal with a trash container advertising business. The business is paying the city protection money. The company performs the public service of placing and maintaining trash containers. They earn money selling advertising on the containers. The commissioner suggested the city could make some easy money by running the company out and starting an identical business with city staff.

Clearly he doesn’t have a clue about how government works. Confiscating a cow and then keeping all the other cows out of the field won’t make you rich. This is especially true if you don’t know anything about cows. In a month Bossy could be dead. Instead you milk every cow you let into the pasture, or maybe just the biggest ones. Then take in all the cows you can. If the farmers don’t pay, you sacrifice a fatted calf or two. You won’t lose many before you’re hip deep in whipped cream.
That’s the democratic, free market extortion that Americans prefer. After years of being herded and protected we’re used to being milked. But when local governments favor one farmer over another we can get a little surly.

Doing the Wrong Thing

Like a drunk driver fleeing the scene of an accident, the Key West City Commission careens wildly toward its next inevitable collision with unintended consequences. The speeding City Government Hummer, drivers giddy on lawsuit fumes, the wreckage of the short-term rental ban trailing from its grille, motors on. The short-term snitch squad has only run down one felon. Funds to pay the winners of the Truman Annex lawsuit are still in taxpayers’ pockets. But the engine roars as the Commissioners suddenly swerve toward hotel operators who naively believe they own the property they’ve been paying all those taxes on.

Commissioner Scales, representing the city’s “Special Monopoly District,” has suggested banning the conversion of hotel rooms to condominiums because he suspects it might mean fewer customers for his Special District. That the conversions are significantly driven by the Commission’s ban on short-term rentals is an irony lost on its members. The ethics of the Special District Commissioner’s idea to punish hotel owners for the benefit of his employer will probably not come up at all.

The Commission has been handing out privileges to the politically adept for so long now that it takes its mission for granted. City government exists to reward those who whine the loudest at the expense of those who do not realize they are being fleeced or who do not have the political influence to stop it.

Government claims to act for the benefit of the public. Everyone agrees that market competition benefits the public. Why then does the City act to limit competition at every opportunity?  The City limited competition for cabdrivers when they showed up in a mob whining about how little money they made. When hotel owners disingenuously expressed concern for our “quality of life,” the City squashed their competition with a short-term rental ban. The building department vigorously protects contractors from competition. A tour operator has been granted a local monopoly in exchange for a small cut of the action. The Commission even plans to limit competition among street performers by holding auditions to decide who gets permission to sing, dance, juggle or paint themselves silver in public. Is there anything sufficiently trivial to escape official notice by the Commissioners?

The Commission is dutifully seeking democratic consensus on its condo conversion ban. A modern civics lesson. Democracy in action. Consensus is all they need to pick one citizen’s pockets for the benefit of another. Whether doing so is legal or ethical is meaningless to a truly democratic decision making body.

The Commissioners are looking for opinions from anyone with a rooster in the ring. Innkeepers who righteously approved stifling other property owners with a rental ban are more ambivalent on the condo issue. They might like to sell their own rooms into this historic credit bubble. Restaurant owners have a say, too. The assumption is that if you own an eatery your friends on the Commission stand ready to bully hotel owners into managing their property for your benefit.

The no-growth lobby at Last Stand, though generally in favor of banning anything, for once has no particular opinion. In a flash of unexpected candor a spokesman remarked, “It just depends on whose ox is being gored.” Take that as an admission from an experienced activist that the object of participation in modern public policy debate is not to promote justice and the rule of law but to make sure the gored oxen belong to someone else.

One question the Commission never asks is, “Can we do that?” They never ask because the Commissioners believe they can do anything they want. As long as there is the flimsiest thread from which to hang an assertion of public benefit, anything goes. Wafer thin majorities grant power that kings could only dream of.

The answers to questions surrounding hotel-to-condo conversions require speculation on an unknowable future or predictions of market effects equally unpredictable. When we peer into the future most of us see only our own doubts and fears, hopes and ambitions staring mutely back at us. God does not whisper his plans in our ears.

When an elected official does the same, carefully considering whose ox to gore, watching intently for a sign, listening for a murmured hint of tomorrow, what he hears most often is “I don’t know.” To a private citizen those words usually dictate attentive inaction. But city officials, fortified by the knowledge that most of those offering advice share their bewilderment, never hesitate to “do something” — usually the wrong thing and often the very thing that will make the problem worse.

String 'em Up!

The dirty little secret of environmental protection in the Florida Keys is not “lack of commitment on the enforcement side” as your editor maintained in the editorial of February 7, “Weekend clear-cutters should pay higher price” but a failure to admit that condemning private property without paying for it is simply theft with a high-toned environmental coating. The only difference between condemnation and confiscation is that the owner of condemned property still has to pay rent in the form of taxes.

Your suggestion of jail terms to end illegal lot clearing is an idea that both “got-mine” environmentalists and power seeking officials will support enthusiastically. Once we accept the fascist notion that problems we can’t solve with fines, forfeitures or prison terms are not worth solving, we are ready take the transcendental leap to bureaucratic Nirvana where everything not forbidden is compulsory.

Following the logic of government by threat and intimidation, one must wonder if increased fines and penalties are enough. Owners have powerful financial incentives to protect their property from confiscation. Heavy fines are seldom paid. The county ends up taking the land and losing the tax revenue. Where’s the profit in that?

If jail terms will bring back the snails, rats and bunnies, summary executions should bring back dirt roads, outhouses and yellow fever. Let’s mobilize the county’s often idle paramilitary forces, the Sheriff’s Special Response Team, for nighttime and weekend raids on the offending taxpayers. Let’s send a message even a knuckle dragging landowner can understand. Let’s blow away a few sneaky habitat wreckers and nip this problem in the bud. Hanging their remains from environmentally sensitive trees in front of the property should prod the most callous, greedy developer into the embrace of the nearest endangered hardwood.

Ninja raids would also clarify the relationship county property owners now have with the local authorities, clearing the smoke screen of “Special Masters” and “sensible regulations.” Ignore the commands of your “Masters” special or not and ultimately you will have to deal with an armed public employee.

But wait a minute, maybe we could change the regulations ― regulations which even the eloquent, entertaining editor of Solares Hill, a man who has never seen a tax or regulation he didn’t like, said were “strange.” How about regulations that offer incentives for preservation rather than destruction. The present clear cutting is a direct result of laws that make it easier to build on cleared land. If the rules favored building on treed lots, people would plant trees.

Or, hey, maybe those who are wringing their hands over the fate of snails, rats and rabbits could raise some money and buy the land they want to preserve instead of urging the county to steal it.

Naa, you’re right. People will never do the right thing without being threatened. Environmentalists will never willingly pay for what they want. Forget voluntary solutions. Way too complicated. Way too expensive. Fines, forfeitures, prison terms and raids by masked gunmen are the way to go. Why pay for what you can just steal? It’s for a good cause. The pack rats are counting on us.