Legislators should mind their own business

Make-work measures
Legislators should mind their own business

Most of the nanny-state measures churned out by legislators at the state and federal level are based on an insulting premise — that most Americans are mindless Bozos who can’t think for themselves or act in their own best interests. A nanny-statist, as we define the term, is someone who purports to care more for people than people care for themselves. And with statists firmly in charge at the Statehouse, there’s no shortage of such measures still in play, according to “Bills would provide business oversight,” a report in Monday’s Gazette.

“Oversight,” of course, means licensing, regulating and more barriers to entrepreneurship. And most of the trades or businesses in the crosshairs don’t need more of this, if we assume — as we do — that Coloradans are competent consumers. An argument might be made — might — for state licensing of naturopathic doctors, since they can have a direct impact on public health and safety. But most of the other trades on the regulator’s wish list — including sports trainers, landscape architects, plumbing contractors, interior designers, luxury limousine operators and moving company workers — are best regulated not by the state, which has better things to do with its resources and people, but by the market, which can sort the wheat from the chaff with ruthless efficiency, assuming consumers exercise a modicum of due diligence.

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