August 2, 2015

Gary Stein

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Praise Jesus! The wily Hound of Heaven has caught another sinner and returned him to the land of milk, honey, and Amazing Grace as told by you in today’s unlinkable Sun Sentinel.

Big Stein,

Uber charged you $38 to get from your house to the airport. The cab was clean and the driver was courteous.

Non-Uber charged you $83 to get you form the airport to your house. Plus, the cab was hot and smelled like a family of coyotes had just moved out. I am going to go out on a limb here but if the driver was in front of you in a line at the post office you would go to Fed-Ex.

Since modern American Liberals consciously and constantly conflate correlation with causation allow me some leeway here. 

Taking a cab form the airport puts you in the embrace of the python-like grip of the modern American Liberal Broward County Board of Commissioners. It matters not one whit what the good or service is. For the good of the consumer they regulate it. The trade off to the cab czar is simple. He gets a monopoly.

Maybe one of the reasons Johnny still can’t read is because the Educational side of the Educational/Poverty Complex gets to control entry into the business. Better for them is the simple fact that they have the force of law on their side. The follows the kabuki dance of getting a rate increase. Before the cab cabal asks for a raise they contribute to the candidates running for the Commission. Then they contribute to their re-election campaigns. [At this point I announce that as a proud alumnus of Bayonne, NJ – that’s at the good end of Hudson County – the gift of being able to tell the buttered side form the dry is given to all infants when they leave the hospital] “Happy Days are Here Again” always sounds better when it is preceded by “Whose Wine I Drink Whose Song I Sing.

The combination of cash coming in over the transom coupled with the insatiable mAL desire to regulate is too much to resist.

How much dough has been given to the pols who set the rates and run interference for the cab gang? Include their lawyers, their lobbyists, their insurance agents and all the people who benefit from this monopoly.

At least now we know that the price of this absurdity, as blatant an example of a combination in restraint of trade as you will find here today, is $45. Prorated over Big Stein, Little Stein, and Boss Stein it’s not that bad. 

The cab still sinks but it’s the price we pay for consumer protection. Where the Hell is Ralph Nader when we really need him?

Meanwhile, it appears that you have “walked out of the cave and looked up and seen the stars’. Who knows what other truths await? Who knows what wonders await? I suggest you curl up with some Bastiat, another Bayonne guy, Hayek, Friedman, and de Soto. You may be on the road to Damascus. 

I await the results of your trip. 

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS -Imagine if the do-gooder statists had gotten their mitts on the internet before it exploded?