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  • California Entrepreneur Who Was Fined $1000 for Drawing Informal Maps without a License Takes Regulatory Board to Court

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Ryan Crownholm is a self-described “serial entrepreneur” and the founder of a California-based business called MySitePlan.com. Founded in 2013, the business creates unofficial “site plans” for various clients using publicly available imagery. Hotels and resorts will sometimes use the plans as maps for their guests. Homeowners and contractors often use the plans in their permit applications when they are preparing to make minor changes to a property, such as building a shed or removing a tree.

    Over the years, MySitePlan.com has built a strong reputation for itself, and customers are consistently impressed with the quality of the work and the short turn-around times (often within 24 hours).

    “I had the first draft within 8 hours and they made changes to accommodate what the city needed. Good service!” writes one recent reviewer. “Amazing service! So incredibly quick! I will recommend this company to anyone in need of a site plan,” writes another.

    Crownholm and his customers are certainly happy the business has been successful, but it seems not everyone feels this way. In December 2021, Crownholm was given a citation from the California Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists. The order demanded that he “cease and desist from violating” the law and pay a fine of $1,000.

    What was Crownholm’s crime? According to the Board, Crownholm and his company were illegally practicing land surveying without a license. In the Board’s view, “preparing site plans which depict the location of property lines, fixed works, and the geographical relationship thereto falls within the definition of land surveying,” and thus requires a license.

    It’s worth noting that MySitePlan.com never claimed to create official land surveys by licensed surveyors. In fact, a banner at the top of their website plainly states, “This is not a legal survey, nor is it intended to be or replace one.”

    Now, it’s tempting to say Crownholm should just get a license and move on, but it’s not that simple. Obtaining a land surveying license is an arduous process. In the state of California it requires six years of higher education and practical experience, passing four exams, and earning references from four existing licensees.

    So rather than getting a license or shutting down his business, Crownholm has chosen to take the Board to court. On September 29, Crownholm joined with the Institute for Justice to file a federal lawsuit against the Board, claiming that the regulation violates his First Amendment right to free speech.

    “California regulators are strangling entrepreneurs, like me, with red tape even though customers are pleased with the valuable services we provide,” Crownholm said. “Prosecuting my company hurts homeowners, contractors, landscapers, farmers, wedding venues and others who depend on my service.”

    “California’s regulations go far beyond what other surveying regulators think is appropriate,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Mike Greenberg. “This is yet another example of an established industry using the government to shut down popular, innovative competition. If read literally, California’s laws could harm services everyday people use such as Uber and Google Maps. It would even criminalize drawing a makeshift map on a napkin to help a lost tourist find the way to their destination.”

    The question on everyone’s mind, of course, is why? Why would this regulatory board go after an entrepreneur when he’s clearly not in the business of official land surveying?

    The simplest explanation is that they’re just really eager to enforce the law to the letter. That seems to be the argument they’re going with. But if that’s the case, why don’t they also crack down on the homeowners and contractors who regularly make identical site plan drawings? As the Institute for Justice press release notes, “California’s own building departments teach [unlicensed] homeowners and contractors how to make the exact same drawings Ryan makes.”

    So if litigiousness is the goal, why single out MySitePlan.com?

    Perhaps they think he’s taking safety shortcuts, but that makes no sense. There’s nothing dangerous about what he’s doing. Maybe they’re concerned he’s a fraud, and that the quality of his product doesn’t match what he promises? It’s possible, but a quick glance at his glowing reviews ought to set the record straight on that. Maybe they think he’s misrepresenting himself, pretending to have a license when he really doesn’t? Again, that makes no sense. He’s very explicit on the website that he doesn’t do official land surveys.

    Perhaps they just think it’s unfair that everyone else has to go through an arduous licensing process while he gets to avoid it despite doing very similar work. That would be understandable, but if it was really just about fairness, wouldn’t it make more sense to push for scrapping the burdens on everyone else rather than imposing those burdens on him?

    None of these motives make much sense.

    There’s another possible motive, however, and that’s the malicious one. Perhaps the regulators were simply looking to protect licensed surveyors from competition. After all, less competition means higher prices and more business for those who have jumped through the hoops. I’m sure many licensed surveyors weren’t particularly happy to see MySitePlan.com taking away potential clients.

    Even assuming the absolute best of intentions, one must admit the decreased competition would be at the very least a convenient side-benefit for the established special-interests.

    Oh, and did I mention that the the guy who issued the citation—Richard B. Moore, the Board’s Executive Officer—is himself a licensed land surveyor?

    This isn’t the first time entrepreneurs have been impeded by these kinds of regulations. Occupational licensing requirements like this are ubiquitous, not just for doctors and engineers, but also for jobs that have little to do with safety like hair braiding.

    Every industry has a similar story. Decades ago there was an accident, maybe a series of accidents, or some fraudulent practitioner. As a result, people pressured the government to “do something,” and the government responded by creating a licensing scheme.

    The thinking is pretty straightforward. We make it illegal for someone to practice a trade unless they have a government-approved license, and the government only gives licenses to people who can prove they are trustworthy and capable. Ostensibly, the system protects consumers. But that’s just the official narrative.

    Whether by design or by accident, licensing laws also have the effect of limiting competition, resulting in higher prices and fewer options for consumers.

    I say “by design or by accident” because it isn’t always clear what the intentions were of the people who promoted these schemes. Though it’s nice to think they were all motivated by an altruistic desire to help consumers, it’s more realistic to see this as a classic “Bootlegger and Baptist” alliance—a phrase that was coined by economist Bruce Yandle in a 1983 paper in reference to the Prohibition era.

    The “Baptists” are the true believers. They are motivated, in their desire for government regulation, by genuine—though often misguided—concern for consumers. The “Bootleggers” are the special-interest groups who stand to benefit should these laws pass. The strategy of the Bootlegger is simple and surprisingly effective: simply paint yourself as a Baptist and push for the regulations with altruistic arguments, even though your real goal is to hurt your competitors.

    “A carefully constructed regulation can accomplish all kinds of anticompetitive goals,” Yandle wrote, “while giving the citizenry the impression that the only goal is to serve the public interest.”

    In 2014, Yandle expanded on his theory in a book titled Bootleggers and Baptists that he co-authored with his grandson Adam Smith (not to be confused with the original Adam Smith). In a review of the book, economist Art Carden summarized the theory rather succinctly.

    “Public policies…emerge because a moral constituency (the Baptists) and a financial constituency (the bootleggers) come together in support of the same policies,” Carden wrote.

    Quoting the book, Carden notes that special interests looking to pass anti-competitive regulations often seek out “a respectable public-spirited group seeking the same result [in order to] wrap a self-interested lobbying effort in a cloak of respectability.”

    Carden goes on to identify occupational licensing in particular as a good example of the Bootleggers and Baptists theory playing out in real life.

    While the drawbacks of occupational licensing laws are difficult to deny, some may still have reservations about abolishing them. If we let just anyone practice these professions, wouldn’t there be a proliferation of fraudulent and dangerous practitioners? Isn’t that why these laws were needed in the first place, to protect us from the evidently disastrous results of free markets?

    This is a common line of argumentation, but it’s missing some key nuances. First, it’s important to keep in mind that the mental picture many have of the pre-license market is likely distorted. The special-interest groups pushing for these laws have a strong incentive to exaggerate how bad things used to be; it would be naive to simply take them at their word.

    Further, it’s important to remember that people were much poorer back when these laws were first introduced, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the general standard of living—including the quality and safety of services available on the market—was far lower than it is today. The fact that “things used to be bad” is much more a reflection of our ancestors’ relative poverty than an indictment of unregulated markets.

    For another point, clearly it’s tragic when people get injured or killed because of incompetent workers, but there is always a trade-off between cost and safety. Sometimes people prefer slightly less safe options (such as workers with less training) because those options are cheaper. And if that’s a risk they want to take, we’re only making them worse-off by taking that option away.

    The other thing to consider is that businesses that are downright dangerous or fraudulent get weeded out very quickly. As a business owner, if you don’t provide a reasonable level of quality and safety in your products, you’ll be out of business in no time. Since entrepreneurs know this, they have a strong incentive to avoid hiring dangerous and fraudulent workers. Economists call this the discipline of continuous dealings. This, not licensing, is the reason we can trust most of the businesses we patronize.

    Besides, there are plenty of ways to ensure product safety and quality that don’t involve licensing laws. Workers can get voluntary certifications and consumers can look at reviews to help them decide who they can trust. Just think about MySitePlan.com and their reviews we saw earlier. Did you really need them to have a license to know they were a trustworthy business?

    Though government licensing may seem like a good way to protect consumers, the reality is that these schemes unnecessarily restrict competition, with fewer options and higher prices being the inevitable result. In other words, they mostly end up hurting the very consumers they were supposed to help.

    The best way to help consumers is to give them lots of choices and a rigorously competitive market. And the way to achieve that is not by protecting established special interests from new players. It’s by letting the Ryan Crownholms of the world compete.

    This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.


    Patrick Carroll

    Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • California to Pivot to Fossil Fuels to Avoid Blackouts

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that energy grid operators across the US were bracing for rolling blackouts heading into the summer.

    “I am concerned about it,” MISO CEO John Bear told the newspaper, noting that green energy sources were struggling to produce enough supply to meet rising demand. “As we move forward, we need to know that when you put a solar panel or a wind turbine up, it’s not the same as a thermal resource.”

    Nearly two months later, it’s clear that grid operators were not crying wolf.

    On Friday, the Associated Press reported that California—a state desperately trying to “quit” fossil fuels—is seeking to tap fossil fuel to avoid blackouts.

    “A sweeping energy proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Thursday puts the state in the business of buying power to ensure there’s enough to go around during heat waves that strain the grid. But some critics say the method of getting there is at odds with the state’s broader climate goals, because it paves the way for the state to tap aging gas-fired power plants and add backup generators fueled by diesel.”

    Unlike most states, California gets most of its electricity—nearly 60 percent—from renewable sources. But the AP notes the state lacks the storage capacity to dispatch sufficient energy when intermittent energy sources are not producing, something Newsom’s proposal seeks to address.

    The governor’s proposal would help “keep the lights on in California,” The Los Angeles Times notes, “making it easier for solar and wind farm developers to sidestep local government opposition, and limiting environmental reviews for all kinds of energy projects.”

    The proposal would also likely serve as a lifeline to beachfront gas plants, as well as the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the Golden State’s largest power plant and only operating nuclear facility.

    At first blush, Gov. Newsom’s proposal makes perfect sense. But there’s more to the story.

    As I noted in May, energy industry leaders had made it clear that grids are struggling to keep pace with rising energy demands as plants shift from thermal energy sources to renewables.

    But California is already familiar with blackouts.

    In August 2020, the state experienced a series of rolling blackouts that captured national attention. (This didn’t stop lawmakers from banning gas-powered generators the following year, something many Californians turned to to keep the lights on during the blackouts.)

    Following the blackouts, the state water board agreed to allow gas-fired power plants in Redondo Beach, Huntington to continue operating for three additional years, even though they were slated for retirement.

    “We feel double-crossed,” Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand told the Times. “These retirement dates were set 12 years ago.”

    Brand has a point.

    Newsom has repeatedly called for the phasing out of fossil fuels and denied that doing so would have an adverse economic effect. His pivot to fossil fuels is prudent because it will reduce the dangerous possibility that Calfornians will again find themselves without power during the peak heat of summer, but it’s also a betrayal ideologically.

    For progressives, California is America’s energy blueprint, the model showing the way forward on “green” energy. Turning back to fossil fuels is a move that runs against Newsom’s own rhetoric and the progressive vision of our energy future. It’s an admission that fossil fuels aren’t just important but necessary to human survival.

    California is hardly the first state to realize that transitioning to renewable energy—which is not as green as many activists and lawmakers would like you to believe—is easier said than done.

    In its eagerness to retire coal plants, for example, Hawaii recently found itself using oil to charge the Kapolei Energy Storage Facility—essentially a huge battery designed to utilize green energy—after renewable energy projects were beset by problems.

    The revelation was an embarrassment for energy officials, but it revealed an important reality. While many today see fossil fuels as immoral or even evil, the reality is they provide most of the energy in the US and are vital to human existence and flourishing.

    This is not to say that renewable energy sources like solar power are not important and cannot serve a key role. They can (though the idea that they come with no environmental costs is untrue).

    But the discussion gets at a key lesson of basic economics: tradeoffs exist.

    “There are no solutions,” economist Thomas Sowell famously observed. “There are only trade-offs.”

    What we’re seeing in California is that the tradeoffs of “green” energy are getting real for politicians. Having $7 gasoline is painful, but bearable. Having the highest energy bills in the country is not desirable, but it can be endured. Blackouts are where politicians seem to draw the line, and it’s not hard to see why.

    Unlike many countries around the world, Americans are not accustomed to blackouts, and it seems the political price to them is simply too high—even for politicians who are green energy evangelists.

    This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.


    Jon Miltimore

    Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

    Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • NYT Explores What Happens When Democrats Have All the Power. The Answer May Surprise You

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Last week New York Times video journalist Johnny Harris asked a simple question.

    “What do Democrats actually do when they have all the power?”

    It turns out that 18 states in the US are effectively run by Democrats, who control both the executive and legislative branches. As Harris notes, Democratic leaders tend to blame Republicans for foiling their progressive plans, but that’s hardly the case in these 18 states where Republicans stand well away from the levers of power.

    To answer his question—what do Democrats do when they have power?—Harris teamed up with Binyamin Appelbaum, the lead writer on business and economics on the Times editorial board and author of The Economists’ Hour.

    What they found may surprise you.

    First, Harris and Applebaum drilled into the 2020 Democratic Party Platform to see which values were most important to Democrats. They then focused on a particular state: California, the “quintessential liberal state” where Democrats rule with ironclad majorities and control the government in most major cities. Finally, the journalists decided to look at one specific policy: housing.

    As Harris notes, housing policy is not exactly sexy stuff. But Applebaum stresses just how important housing is in battling inequality.

    “Looking at California, you have to look at housing,” Applebaum says. “You cannot say you are against income inequality in America unless you are willing to have affordable housing built in your neighborhood….The neighborhood where you are born has a huge influence on the rest of your life.”

    Moreover, Harris points out that Democrats overwhelmingly agree on its vital importance, noting that the word housing is mentioned more than 100 times in the Democrats’ platform. Indeed, Democrats are shown repeating a common mantra in the Times video.

    “Housing is a human right.”

    “Housing is a human right.”

    “Housing is a human right.”

    Democrats may say housing is a human right, but Applebaum notes their actions say something else, at least in California.

    “You know those signs where you drive into a state and it says ‘Welcome to California’?” asks Applebaum. “You might as well replace them with signs that say KEEP OUT. Because in California the cost of housing is so high that for many people it’s simply unaffordable.”

    As the Los Angeles Times noted in 2019, California has “an overregulation problem,” which is why nine of the 15 priciest metro areas in the US are in California and the median price of a house in San Diego is $830,000. In some cases, people have had to wait 20 years to build a pair of single family homes. (Applebaum, it’s worth noting, appears to misdiagnose the problem. He complains that “the state has simply for the most part stopped building housing.” Perhaps Applebaum simply misspoke, but it’s worth noting the state doesn’t need to build a single unit of housing; it simply needs to step back and allow the market to function.)

    Regulations, however, aren’t the full story. As Harris notes, Californians themselves have fought tooth and nail to keep higher-density affordable housing out of their neighborhoods. Palo Alto is cited as an example, where voters in 2013 overturned a unanimous city council vote to rezone a 2.46-acre site to enable a housing development with 60 units for low-income seniors and 12 single-family homes.

    “I think people aren’t living their values,” Applebaum says. “There’s an aspect of sort of greed here.”

    Housing isn’t the only area the Times journalists find where progressives fail to “live their values.” Washington state having the most regressive tax rate in the US is cited as another example, as are the “gerrymandered” school districts in states like Illinois and Connecticut that consign low-income families to the least-funded schools because of their zip code.

    The journalists are left with a gloomy conclusion.

    “For some of these foundational Democratic values of housing equality, progressive taxation, and education equality, Democrats don’t actually embody their values very well,” Harris says.

    Applebaum is even more blunt.

    “Blue states are the problem,” the economics writer says. “Blue states are where the housing crisis is located. Blue states are where the disparities in education funding are the most dramatic. Blue states are the places where tens of thousands of homeless people are living on the streets. Blue states are the places where economic inequality is increasing most quickly in this country. This is not a problem of not doing well enough; it is a situation where blue states are the problem.”

    Harris says affluent liberals “tend to be really good at showing up at the marches” and talking about their concerns over inequality. But when rubber meets the road, they tend to make decisions based on a different calculus: what benefits them personally.

    For some, the findings and claims of the Times journalists could be jarring. But they are likely no surprise to FEE readers.

    One of the pillars of public choice theory—a school of economics pioneered by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan—is that people make decisions based primarily on self-interest. (People act out of concern for others, too, but these interests tend to be secondary to self-interest.) Buchanan’s theory rests on the idea that all groups of people tend to reach decisions in this manner, including people acting in the political marketplace such as voters, politicians, and bureaucrats.

    Many believe that self interest is part of the human condition, something as natural as hunger, love, and procreation. Harnessing the instinct of self-interest in a healthy way—through free exchange—has long been considered a cornerstone of capitalism and a key to a prosperous society.

    “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest,” Adam Smith famously observed in The Wealth of Nations. “We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.”

    For many progressives, however, self-interest has become a kind of heresy. The idea that individuals should be motivated by such things as profit and self-interest is anathema; these are values to be found in Ayn Rand novels, not practiced in 21st century America.

    But as Applebaum notes, progressives are in fact making decisions based on self-interest—he uses the word “greed”—not altruism. This should come as little surprise, and it would be perfectly fine if progressives were acting on self-interest in a market economy; but they are not. They are using the law in perverse ways to their own benefit—all while maintaining the belief that they’re acting out of altruism.

    The Times article makes it clear that voters and politicians in progressive states still arrive at decisions like everyone else: on self-interest. The results are just far worse when those decisions are made in the political space, not the marketplace.


    Jon Miltimore

    Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

    Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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