How is state’s cold fist to be uncurled from the economy? What has to happen for personal liberty, free enterprise and innovation to flourish? Here’s an idea: how about nothing at all?
Government regulation it is forever playing catch-up. Directives, unless updated and renewed, become decrepit. Who cares, these days, about the laws controlling the manufacture and use of telegraphs or hansom cabs? Simply by screwing tight the legislative tap, we allow the private sector to outgrow the state – as happened in Belgium, which enjoyed unexpectedly strong growth as a consequence of going for nearly two years without a government.
Belgium, sadly, was the exception. Most places have cohorts of civil servants and ministers scanning the horizon for any new technology that has somehow escaped their notice. One example will serve to illustrate the problem.
Electronic cigarettes are a new invention. Instead of smoking tobacco, the user inhales a mixture of water and nicotine; instead of breathing out smoke, she breathes out vapor.
Are e-cigarettes bad for you? Yes, in the same way that half a bottle of Mersault is bad for you. But, if you were previously smoking actual cigarettes, they are unambiguously good news: the toxic mixture of combustibles with which you were previously coating your lungs and throat is replaced by a single mildly deleterious drug. For those who have tried and failed to quit smoking, e-cigarettes could be life-saving.
Información publicada originalmente en: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100226210/the-tobacco-lobby-the-eu-and-how-we-are-governed-by-corporatism/
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