May 5, 2011, 10:25 am
From my column today at Forbes.com, this week on Donald Trump and campaign finance reform. An excerpt:
Have you heard the news? Apparently Donald Trump is running for President. Of course you would have to be living in a hole not to know that. Over the last couple of weeks, based just on media stories tracked by Google News, there have been over a thousand news stories a day mentioning Trump’s potential run for the White House. In fact, there are more than double the number of articles on Trump’s potential run than their are on the actual candidacies of Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, and Tim Pawlenty combined.
Do you like candidacies by crazy populist billionaire reality TV stars? If so, then by all means, let’s have campaign spending limits.
May 14, 2008, 3:53 pm
So much of government regulation boils down to the protection of politically connected incumbent competitors against new competition. This is an astonishing example, sent in by a reader:
BEMIDJI, Minn. - Assistant House Majority Leader Frank Moe says people
who rent out their lakefront homes may be hurting the state's resort
industry.
The Bemidji DFLer has authored a bill ordering the
state's tourism agency to study whether the increased competition is
hurting resorts. It's now awaiting Governor Tim Pawlenty's signature.
If you are willing to make up your own bed, there are a lot of reasons why private home rentals are a more attractive vacation option than resorts, particularly when you consider the high price of those ancillary resort services. Why the government needs to be involved in what is, to my eyes, just a normal consumer preference is beyond me. This last line caught my eye:
The state's resort industry is struggling as lakefront property values
soar but the market restricts what they can charge for cabin rentals.
Uh, OK. I have the same problem -- land for cabins and campgrounds in areas people want to spend the weekend is really expensive, labor costs are up, but rental rates remain low. So what? Through their preferences and how they translate to prices, consumers are saying that there is better uses for prime land than lakefront rental cabins. I can accept that.
