The Power to Regulate Is the Power to Destroy

And some odds and ends

“One is Man Controlling Trade,” 1942 statue by Michael Lantz, at Federal Trade Commission. Credit: The George F. Landegger Collection of District of Columbia Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

In The Future and Its Enemies, published in 1998, I wrote:

The full reactionary package is a tough sell in contemporary America. Even trade protection, which enjoys support from interest groups that stand to benefit, has proven a consistent loser in presidential campaigns. And few people want to smash their computers, give up off-season fruits and vegetables, turn their backs on modern medicine, move in with their cousins and in-laws, or forgo higher incomes. Even fewer resonate to slogans like “Back to the Pleistocene!” But if, like Allen and Werbach, you want to stifle agribusiness and shut down Wal-Mart; if, like Schumacher and Sale, you want to make people less footloose and limit the size of cities; if, like Rifkin, you want to ban genetic engineering or, like Buchanan, you want to keep out foreign people and foreign goods; if, like Frank and Bennett, you want to rein in advertising and control popular culture, you can find powerful allies—and a friendly political system. If exhortation and polemics aren’t enough to rally the public to voluntarily adopt your favored form of stasis, government help is available. Ever since the Progressive Era, when Theodore Roosevelt defined the mission of public officials as “to look ahead and plan out the right kind of civilization,” technocrats have dominated American politics. And technocrats know how to stop things.

The rise of Trump-style populism and antiliberal intellectual movements like integralism and national conservatism has given new force to this argument. Suddenly people who assumed that the technocratic bureaucracy would be more-or-less on their side now have reason to fear it.

Earlier this month, the NYT ran a scary exposé titled “Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025.”

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

It sounds scary because more power for Donald Trump is a scary prospect. Any power for Donald Trump is a scary prospect. He’s an erratic bully.

On policy merits alone, however, the shock and terror with which sensible centrists like Damon Linker (in a paywalled post) greeted the plan is unwarranted. Regulatory agencies should not be free to wield unchecked power. The president is head of the executive branch of government. If Congress doesn’t want him to enforce regulations, it shouldn’t pass them—doubly so if they’re vague. The 20th-century conceit that a technocratic elite should replace politically accountable appointees is based on the myth of disinterested agreement about the “right kind of civilization.”

But, as in arguments over freedom of speech, you should never assume that your friends will always be in charge. You also shouldn’t presme that your side is coolly rational. FTC chair Lina Khan and Donald Trump both hate Amazon for reasons of their own. Neither should have the power to exercise their animus under cover of law. If the prospect of Donald Trump possessing a power scares you, consider the possibility that no one should have that power.

The power to regulate is the power to destroy.

Rainbow Pharmacy sign, Pulaski Street, Lincoln, Illinois. Credit: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Naomi Kanakia has an interesting mind. Check out her essay on the Great Books and this more complex one on political correctness as aesthetic mediocrity. I continue to be dumbfounded by how much she manages to read carefully, all the while writing, writing, writing, and thinking about how to write better. Look at this essay on Nietzsche. Oh, and she has a little kid too.

The least interesting thing about Kanakia is that she is a transwoman—the culture war’s current hard-for-me-to-fathom obsession.¹ Given her personal interest, she sometimes writes on the subject. That’s how I discovered that the Florida law that was sold as protecting minors from gender reassignment also interferes with transgender adults in a diabolically technocratic way.²

Florida patients can normally get prescription refills through a nurse practitioner or telemedicine. For years most transgender people have been doing that for maintenance hormones. But this law requires them to get physician prescriptions for refills. It’s a deliberate way of raising costs and limiting access. (Here’s a report from the Pensacola News Journal. The LAT also recently got around to covering the law.) Requiring physicians to write prescriptions for drugs is supposed to be a form of consumer protection. But it can easily be turned into a means of rationing and control.

Back in 1980, economic historian Peter Temin published a book on pharmaceutical regulation that challenged the way prescriptions evolved into restrictions on consumers.³ He pointed out that their sole original justification was, in the words of the then-FDA chief, “to make self-medication safe.” The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act required labels on over-the-counter drugs, but a prescription would free consumers to buy unlabeled drugs. Self-medication was the norm, and the law wasn’t supposed to prevent it. Once the act passed, however, the FDA changed the rules. “The agency moved within six months of the bill’s passage to curtail self-medication sharply,” Temin wrote, “and thereafter used a substantial and increasing proportion of its drug resources to enforce its imposed limitations.”

The power to regulate is the power to destroy.

The real downside of internet pharmacies

I recently discovered the real problem with internet pharmacies, which have morphed considerably since I was writing about them in 2000. Hims & Hers, founded in 2017, uses telemedicine consultations to dispense pharmaceuticals treating stigmatized (my word) complaints (e.g., erectile dysfunction or depression, not high blood pressure or diabetes). A few weeks ago I discovered that the debit card associated with my health savings account had been hijacked to make multiple Hims & Hers purchases, starting with a small one I didn’t notice and building up to well over $1,000. My guess is that someone stole the number out of a UCLA bill I paid by mail, then bought drugs for resale. It would be much harder to do that at CVS. Fortunately, H&H refunded the money.

Cool jobs

The “ecomodernist” Breakthrough Institute is hiring, mostly in DC.

The American Institute of Physics is looking for a Director of Research in History, Policy, and Culture.

1. I can tell you from experience that she’s right about electrolysis, especially on the philtrum. Without transwomen I think electrolysis centers would go out of business. Those of us who simply suffer from non-laser-friendly blonde fuzz won’t keep it up. Too painful and expensive.

2. We’ll leave to the side whether parents or state bureaucrats know best. (You can probably guess my preference.)

3. The political environment changed shortly thereafter and Temin doesn’t especially like to be reminded of this argument, as I did in this 2000 NYT essay about online pharmacies.