Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
A Texas ban on cell-cultured protein is anti-freedom protectionism. If people want to eat fake meat, let them.
https://reason.com/2025/09/04/the-new-texas-ban-on-cell-cultured-protein-is-an-unconstitutional-interstate-trade-barrier-a-lawsuit-says/
Trump is making it very difficult to regulate cryptocurrencies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD4OcMygky8
“There are indeed many weird rules that drive up the cost of housing that could be safely eliminated. Yet it’s inaccurate to say, as Ossé and Glazer imply in their video, that the elimination of a few weird rules will meaningfully combat the yawning shortage of units they identify as making New York City unaffordable.
Much broader deregulatory reform that goes beyond the elimination of a few “bizarre rules” would be required to eliminate that shortage.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/26/americas-housing-shortage-wont-be-fixed-with-one-weird-trick/
“Denver’s high minimum wage, especially its low tip credit, has unintentionally undermined the financial viability of full-service, labor-intensive restaurants. As costs outpace revenue and margins evaporate, once-thriving independent establishments are closing in droves, eroding the city’s cultural fabric and economic diversity.
…
Restaurant operators and advocacy groups agree that Covid sparked the decline, but rising costs since have continued to cripple the industry. Property taxes, utilities, insurance, food and drink prices, rent, and one of the highest minimum wages in the country — higher than in Los Angeles or New York — are straining already razor-thin margins.
The city’s low tip credit, which results in a high minimum wage for tipped workers, is a particular pain point.
Denver City Council unanimously passed a minimum wage increase in November 2019 — just four months before the pandemic hit — and it was fully implemented citywide by 2022. Today, the base minimum wage is $18.81 an hour and the tipped wage is $15.79 — increases of about 70 percent and 95 percent, respectively.
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Per 2019 legislation, wage increases are uncapped and rise annually with the Consumer Price Index. In 2026, the base wage will be $19.29. For operators like Ms. Tronco and Mr. Seidel, who said that labor now consumes more than half his revenue, the math no longer works.
“When you force an operator to give raises every January 1 to the group of people who’s already making the most money, it chokes our ability to give a salaried person or an hourly cook a raise,”
…
To keep her business alive, Ms. Tronco has cut the hosts and bussers she hired when opening and reduced weeknight server shifts. She raises her menu prices every six months to keep up with costs. Her numbers have taken a hit: Sales are down an average of 10 percent this year.
“It just feels like whack-a-mole,” Ms. Tronco said. “Inflation has affected everyone … Now we’ve got a tariff situation and all my wine importers are telling me that everything is going to go up $3, $4 a bottle.”
…
Mr. Padró said the small tip credit is the industry’s biggest burden. He supports a higher base wage, even up to $25, because most of his employees already earn above that. He said that his servers and bartenders average $38 and $44, respectively. Expanding the tip credit would alleviate some of the burden faced by operators.
“I have 17-year-old kids pouring coffee for their teachers, making more than them,” he said.”
https://www.slowboring.com/p/denver-piece
“A wind power farm in the mountains of far-Northern California was the first through the door of a new permit streamlining program that came with a lofty promise to renewable energy developers: Once a permit application was complete, the California Energy Commission would make a final ruling on the project within 270 days.
It’s been more than 650 days since Fountain Wind completed its application. But the agency still hasn’t made a final ruling, after fierce local opposition successfully derailed the permit review.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/17/california-promised-wind-and-solar-developers-a-270-day-permitting-process-theyre-still-waiting-00510674
https://reason.com/2025/08/07/how-overregulation-burned-out-competition-in-the-fire-retardant-industry/
“Rental prices in some of the country’s largest cities are falling—some by almost 45 percent, according to new data from Five Star Cash Offer, a real estate investment firm that operates as a direct cash homebuyer. The dataset, which includes the top 65 metropolitan areas in the United States, reveals that cities that have recently enacted pro-housing policies have experienced the most significant year-over-year decline in rental prices nationwide.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/22/rent-prices-are-falling-fast-in-americas-most-pro-housing-cities/
“Michelle Freenor, a tour guide in Savannah, Georgia, gets good reviews from customers.
But her business almost didn’t get off the ground because local politicians said, “No one can be a tour guide without first getting a government license!””
https://reason.com/2025/07/30/you-shouldnt-need-a-license-to-talk/
“It’s crucial that more types of formula be available, not only for infants with dietary complications, but also to strengthen the supply chain. Despite American regulators’ past hard line on foreign formulas, they opened the door to European formulas during the 2022 formula crisis. If that door can be opened during a crisis, it can stay open to give parents more options for caring for their babies.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/13/americas-baby-formula-rules-are-due-for-an-update/
“Many more families might have benefited over the past couple of decades from similar treatments pioneered a quarter of a century ago, except that handwringing bioethicists helped to persuade the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to essentially ban them.”
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“Had the FDA stayed out of the way, many more families would have had the opportunity to use these and similar assisted reproduction technologies to have healthy children over the past 25 years.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/17/3-parent-babies-born-healthy-in-the-u-k/