OpenMarket: Business and Government

The question of the minimum wage is a hot topic this week, as the voters of the District of Columbia just approved Initiative 77,  which will change how tipped workers, like restaurants servers, are paid and require their employers to provide a $15-an-hour wage by 2025, whether the workers in question also earn substantially more in tips or not.

Thanks to the great Nick Gillespie of Reason for Friday’s exciting announcement that the Competitive Enterprise Institute short film “I, Whiskey: The Human Spirit” has been nominated for the 2018 Reason Video Prize. We’re proud of the recognition that the film has received since its initial release, including Best Editing for Erin Michelle Kruger and Lucas Abel at the Southern Shorts Awards and an Excellence in Commercial Filmmaking award at the 2017 Anthem Film Festival.

Last week I was in Atlanta enjoying the excitement and intellectual ferment of FEEcon, the annual conference held by the Foundation for Economic Education. On Friday I posted some of the content that the FEE team has produced on the long, sad slide of Venezuela into socialist chaos, and now, fortunately, some additional—and more optimistic—video content is available from the conference itself.

Every summer there are news stories about local authorities shutting down children’s lemonade stands over lack of licenses, permits, a lack of restaurant-grade kitchen or cleaning facilities, a zoning violation...the list is long. I wrote about this outrage back in 2011 here, and Iain Murray and I wrote a Townhall column here. Regulators are still at it, though. But now, junior entrepreneurs have gained a powerful ally.

I’m attending FEEcon, the annual conference held by the Foundation for Economic Education, this week, and there’s an overwhelming number of great speakers and presentations available. This afternoon, for example, panelists Jared Meyer, Javier Garcia, Jorge Jraissati, and Luis H. Ball examined the roots and possible solutions to the economic crisis in Venzuela. 

When an American company wishes to merge with or acquire another company, reaching an agreement that satisfies both firms’ owners and managers is not always enough. For most mergers and acquisitions valued at over roughly $80 million, companies must submit tons of paperwork and pay a sizable fee to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice before they can finalize any deal. Once these filings are complete, the companies can’t finalize their transaction until a waiting period of up to 30 days has elapsed.

When putting together a chapter on entrepreneurship and regulation for the Fraser Institute’s new book “Demographics and Entrepreneurship: Mitigating the Effects of an Aging Population,” one of the things that struck me was noticing again how entrepreneurial creative destruction needs less than a generation to execute a high-profile rise and fall.

Today, the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank, released a new book on worldwide barriers to entrepreneurship, Demographics and Entrepreneurship:  Mitigating the Effects of an Aging Population. In the book, CEI expert Wayne Crews offers a chapter that examines regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship—a concern in countries around the world.

The future has arrived, and it is a radically different economy. Havas Media’s Tom Goodwin pointed out in 2015, “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.” 

I’ve been interested over the last several years to see Dave Rubin’s metamorphosis from stand-up comedian to podcast co-host to serious public affairs interviewer and host of The Rubin Report. This week he has released a pair of conversations with one of my favorite academics, Prof. Rajshree Agarwal of the University of Maryland.