How Overregulation Burned Out Competition in the Fire Retardant Industry
https://reason.com/2025/08/07/how-overregulation-burned-out-competition-in-the-fire-retardant-industry/
Tag: regulation
Rent Prices Are Falling Fast in America’s Most Pro-Housing Cities
“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/
You Shouldn’t Need a License to Talk
“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/
America’s Baby Formula Rules Are Due for an Update
“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/
3-Parent Babies Born Healthy in the U.K.
“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.”
…
“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/
Under the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Car Companies Won’t Be Fined for Failing To Hit Arbitrary Fuel Efficiency Goals
“No vehicle is currently anywhere close to meeting these standards: According to data from the Energy Department, motorcycles come closest, at just shy of 45 miles per gallon, while cars average less than 25 miles per gallon. But the standards are fleet-wide, meaning the average for all of an automaker’s output needs to fall below the minimum. In practice, this means manufacturers must rely heavily on low- or zero-emission vehicles, like battery-powered electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, to get on the right side of the average.
…
The Senate version of the “big, beautiful bill” sets both of these dollar amounts at “$0.00,” effectively rendering it moot: Automakers making cars that don’t adhere to CAFE standards will still technically be in violation of the law, but they would face no reprisal.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/02/under-the-big-beautiful-bill-car-companies-wont-be-fined-for-failing-to-hit-arbitrary-fuel-efficiency-goals/
With Environmental Regulatory Reform, California Gov. Gavin Newsom Finally Does Something Substantial
“Without Newsom’s efforts, major CEQA reform would have died on the vine. Another late-breaking housing bill was under consideration as part of the budget, but not subject to Newsom’s ultimatum—but the Legislature caved in to union demands. The Sacramento Bee reports this bill was roughly based on another measure that “allows developers to bypass CEQA review if they agree to pay a certain minimum wage to construction workers.”
Mandating wage boosts drives up the cost of housing construction and weakens the usefulness of these deregulations, but it was an attempt to lessen the degree to which unions use CEQA to slow construction projects to extract concessions. Newsom’s failure to overcome union opposition here is a disappointment, but doesn’t tarnish an otherwise noteworthy effort.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/04/with-environmental-regulatory-reform-california-gov-gavin-newsom-finally-does-something-substantial/
Trump Just Revoked California’s EV Rules. How Much Is California To Blame?
“California may have gone too far this time in nudging the industry to ever-higher sales of zero-emission vehicles. The rules would have required automakers to hit increasing percentages — 35 percent by model year 2026 and 68 percent by model year 2030 — before reaching 100 percent of new-car sales in 2035.
Maybe that would have worked if it were just about California. But a dozen other states are signed on to California’s targets, and they have been slower and less generous with incentives and EV charging infrastructure. Where California has more than a quarter of its new car sales coming from EVs, New Jersey is at 15 percent, and New York is under 12 percent”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/14/mary-nichols-trump-california-clean-car-air-rules-00344370
Will Trump’s Regulatory Reforms Do Enough To Unleash Nuclear Energy?
Will Trump’s Regulatory Reforms Do Enough To Unleash Nuclear Energy?
https://reason.com/2025/05/27/will-trumps-regulatory-reforms-do-enough-to-unleash-nuclear-energy/
More Government Intervention Won’t Make Concert Tickets Cheaper
“Antitrust laws can be enforced as rigorously as possible, but their enforcement will not change the fact that popular performances with limited runtimes, few seats, and many fans bidding for them means the market-clearing price is often above that set by artists, venues, and retailers.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/27/more-government-intervention-wont-make-concert-tickets-cheaper/