Busting the protection racket

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:22 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED FEB. 19, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Busting the protection racket

And so -- after years of delays caused by the way Nevada allows prospective competitors to intervene and drag out the proceedings -- the 1998 lawsuit by independent taxi and limousine drivers seeking a chance to compete in Las Vegas finally rolled out in the court of District Judge Ron Parraguirre Tuesday.

The state Transportation Services Authority -- and the intervening cab and limo firms who benefit from the protection racket run by that agency -- argue the plaintiff drivers are scofflaws who simply refused to subject themselves to the reasonable procedures required to obtain Nevada licenses.

But Clark Neily, staff attorney for the Washington-based Institute for Justice, which is representing the independent drivers, characterized that licensing process as a mockery.

Even the Authority's own commissioners have described the application process as "onerous, arduous, burdensome and expensive," Neily told the court in his opening remarks. The drivers didn't bother frittering away any more time and money on that process because the procedure routinely denies licenses to anyone held by existing firms to represent "potentially harmful competition."

Indeed, this is the underlying absurdity of the existing licensing law -- which the court should indeed throw out.

Deputy Attorney General Brent Michaels , representing the TSA, shrilled that the plaintiffs are attempting to challenge a bedrock constitutional principle -- a state's right to regulate its highways.

In fact, courts have widely held the states do indeed enjoy power to license and regulate commercial, for-profit activities on the tax-funded roads. (It's the "public safety" justification for states to run lucrative revenue programs collecting "license" and "registration" fees from private citizens who engage in no such commercial activities, merely "travelling" on roads they've already bought and maintained with their excise taxes, that would be well worth some further Ninth Amendment study.)

But the limo drivers are not arguing they should be allowed to operate without drivers licenses, registration plates, or even some minimum level of liability insurance coverage. They merely oppose a protection racket which allows existing firms to veto new applications on the mere assertion that licensing a new operator will hurt their bottom line.

Of course it will. That's the idea. If some hypothetical state or county "Hamburger Services Authority" had allowed McDonald's to veto the licensing of any fast-food operator whose presence might damage the McDonald's bottom line, what are the chances this valley would ever have seen its first Burger King, Wendy's, or Jack-in-the-Box?

If Las Vegas ended up with "too many taxis," so what? We clearly have "too many" pizza places, since new ones keep opening and closing all the time. But somehow, customers keep the best ones in business, and the resulting competition guarantees us that those who try to charge too much for a lesser product will soon bite the dust.

Besides which, if members of the Nevada Transportation Services Authority -- or Deputy Attorney General Brent Michaels, for that matter -- think this valley has "too many" taxi cabs, let them emerge from any restaurant more than three miles from the Strip at 9 p.m. next Saturday night, find their cars won't start, and start telephoning the dispatchers of this city's major taxi and limo firms. Assuming they don't give up and walk home after 10 minutes of listening to "music on hold," when they finally do reach a dispatcher and report they need a cab for the two-mile run back home, what do you suppose they'll be told?

Unless they lie outright, claiming to represent a backfield full of big-spending bachelors out for a night's tour of the city's more brightly-lit girlie attractions, they'll be told, "No way."

Try it.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 1475 Terminal Way, Suite E for Easy, Reno, NV 89502. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair