 Welcome to the FeeCast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from your friends at the Foundation for Economic Education. As ever, I'm Richard Lawrence here with Brittany Hunter, Dan Sanchez, and Mary Ann March. And the very first question I have for you today is, is anyone thirsty? Always. Well, I mean, we always have our mugs with water or soft drink or tea or whatever, but if we were thirsty and we didn't have something to drink, it's possible we would just be able to go out to the street and find either a shop or maybe even someone who was there selling water or other types of beverages. And there's actually a story along these lines out of California this week where a young girl was caught by, I guess, an older person who decided that she didn't like what this person was doing. And this little girl was selling water on what I believe to be her property, or at least her parents' property. And this woman came out and started chiding her about the fact that she wasn't permitted to do this. And the internet has taken to calling this woman Permit Patty. And we have an article on Fee.org, and the link is actually just below, by Zach Slabak on Permit Patty. And the odd situation that we find ourselves in in 21st century America where children, kids are being chastised and stopped from being young entrepreneurs. Well, it would be one thing if she was chastising her directly and chiding her directly because at least then that would be like the respect of considering another person, a fellow human being who was worth addressing directly. But she was calling the cops. Yeah, she's there sort of hiding from the camera behind a brick pillar or something on the phone with the police. She tried, and then the mom, or I think it was the mom of the child came back and said, you can't hide from me. She kept recording, so that was actually pretty cool. Yeah, I think they live close to AT&T Park in San Francisco. It was a hot day. This eight-year-old girl decides to make a little money selling bottled water. Perfect opportunity. Yes. Well, I believe she actually was saving for Disneyland. She wanted to go to Disneyland. Her mom had just lost her job. And so instead of even doing like a GoFundMe or something, she actually made the decision to go out, you know, meet consumer needs and sell water. And all of a sudden it's turning into this big thing. But there was no shame on the part of Permit Patty when the mom was accusing her. She said, yeah, well, she's selling water without a permit, as if that was obviously not just a legal thing to do, but like a morally outrageous thing to do. And the fun thing, maybe not so fun, about Permit Patty, of course that's not her real name. The internet's just come to name her that, is that she is an entrepreneur herself. Yes. She's an entrepreneur of CBD oil, which requires a lot of permits and licensing. So this is something she's had to deal with firsthand. And instead of being empathetic towards someone else, she's calling the cops on an eight-year-old girl. But it's an interesting phenomenon because a lot of times you see entrepreneurs who do have to jump through regulatory hurdles, that they like those hurdles. Because if other entrepreneurs have to jump through them, and especially smaller entrepreneurs, then it gives them a competitive advantage. And so she might have that attitude towards others in her industry, and it may be just transferred over to just people in general. I was just about to say, this whole sort of notion that she came from a permitted place and that she wants this other person to be permitted may come from a place of envy. She had to do it, therefore other people have to do it as well. It doesn't matter if it's an eight-year-old kid. Why can't it be as hard for you as it is for me? Instead of why couldn't it just not be hard for everyone? Well, and so the other part of Zach's piece, which I encourage everyone to read, is that he talks about commercial culture and how we can begin to instill commercial culture back into the culture. So instead of calling the police first when we see something that maybe we find objectionable, but maybe doesn't quite require the police to come in, we could actually go up and talk to them like human beings. That's one idea. But then also we can begin to actually encourage interaction in the commercial sense, in the marketplace. We can begin to encourage people to become entrepreneurs, not to try to shut down kids when they try to do these new things. Well, and just thinking of profits as something worthy, as something to be respected and admired. So we have another article about bourgeois dignity on the website talking about Deirdre McCloskey's book by that name, where she really describes the rise of the West as not just being a function of capital accumulation or the rise of private property, but a moral change that people started looking at commerce as a noble venture. And as Zach points out, we don't have that now because we have people looking at it as suspect. And only under permission is it even allowable, let alone admirable. Deirdre McCloskey's work is brilliant. And it talks all about, like you said, the West. It wasn't Protestantism. It wasn't any of these other factors, but it was trade. It was commercial interactions that ended up bringing them to a sense of prosperity materially. And dignity, which I think is a big point too. Exactly. And you mentioned profits as well. One of my very favorite quotations from the economist F.A. Hayek is, profit is a signal that we're serving well people who we don't know. And that is, it goes against everything that I think people traditionally, at least today, are hearing about profits. That they're windfall profits, that they come at the expense of other people. But profit is actually something that shows us that we're creating value for other people. If the little girl wasn't selling something people wanted, she would have a whole thing of water bottles left, and that wasn't the case. She was selling them. Exactly. And so this isn't the only piece that we have on our website about kids being impeded from exercising entrepreneurial instincts. It happened last summer. Same thing. There's many, many stories about this. There was in 2015 a story out of Texas with kids getting in trouble and for not getting the $150 permit fee, not even including what it would cost for the health department's approval. Then in 2011 in Maryland, kids received a $500 fine for selling lemonade without a permit. It's outrageous. Well, last summer, these boys were actually put in handcuffs in front of people on the National Mall. So you want to talk about dignity. You have kids trying to actually go out there and earn a living for themselves or earn, you know, summer money, and they're sitting there in handcuffs while people are walking by. And they were also selling water bottles. They were selling water bottles without a permit. And so you have a couple pieces on our website. We'll probably put some links right underneath the video that kind of talks about that. It's funny because when we're looking at sort of these experiences of kids in 2017 and 2018, it reminds me of when I was a kid and we were selling, not lemonade on the street in front of my house, but those little wax beads that you could actually organize on a little template and then iron on top of a piece of wax paper. Artists and crafts. Artists and crafts. Exactly. The type of things that you could sell in Etsy today, probably. And we would sell these things in front of the house. And we actually had a cop come by once, just kind of rolling by. This was sometime in the early 90s and just kind of looking at us. With the sunglasses. The sunglasses kind of looking at us a little bit suspect and then went on. But I can't imagine how that would turn out today. It probably even scared you without him even stopping, you know, a little bit jarring. Oh, yeah. Am I doing something wrong just by selling something? Exactly. I think we all knew that kid from our school who was the hallway entrepreneur. In my school, there was a girl who sold blowpops for 25 cents each. And then she also rented DVDs. And her pitch was that she had more DVDs than Blockbuster and no late fees. Awesome. No late fees. Well, so you also ended up having some other enterprises when you were younger too. You were fixing. Oh, I fixed jewelry. Yeah. I had a pair of my dad's pliers and that's basically all it took for me to be able to make little loops and fix earrings and necklaces. Yeah. And we have a great article on the site by Derek McGill called My Childhood as a Renegade Entrepreneur. That's a great piece. And he was a serial entrepreneur where he was just always coming up with schemes of ways to resell. He talks about reselling Livestrong bracelets, going to Wendy's and buying like a whole bunch of $1 burgers and selling them for $5. Genius. $5 at a club fundraiser. And again, this should be commended. But in each of the cases, he talks about how the school teachers and officials just cracked down on him and told him to stop each time. Well, they make it seem like it's something dirty, that there's something wrong with children showing entrepreneurial spirit, finding a loophole, finding a way to... With making money, really. Right. Making money is dirty somehow. Yeah. I actually think you have an interesting story about a school experience around that too. Yeah. It was during the entrepreneurial unit. So each of us in sixth grade had to learn about Ben and Jerry's and how they rose to prominence. And we each had to start our own business, make a model, buy something from somewhere else and resell it. That was the whole purpose. So my group made shakes. We did candy bars and ice cream and you got to pick your candy bar, blended it. Well, after this whole unit had ended, we had all made, I think we made almost $200, which is a 12-year-old is a lot of money. And we were very excited. We were told we got to keep this money. Well, then the day came where they were supposed to pay it back. And the principal told us that we were not allowed to have that much money, that it was absurd to give this much money to kids, that we didn't have a right to that and the school kept the money. Wait a second. It's absurd not only to give that much money to kids, but for kids to make... To make money. Money. We were told that making money was not our right as children. Talk about cognitive dissonance there. That's nuts. And that we lost money. Our parents lost money because they paid for the supplies. So it was... What are they teaching us? I think part of the concern is also they think that, oh, well, if you're selling to other kids that those kids might get exploited. Because I remember one time I traded with another boy, like in elementary school. I had like a really complicated Transformers toy. And he had like this really simple, just like that lizard creature in Star Wars. And it was just like a cheap piece of plastic basically, like much worth much less. But I thought it was cool, so I traded it. It's a piece of plastic that you wanted. Right, right. And then an adult overrided that trade, forced us to undo it. And the idea was to protect me from my admittedly bad decision. But actually that kind of coddling makes... prevents kids from learning from those types of experience where you regret an exchange and then you adjust. And you are more savvy for future exchanges. Buyer's remorse. Yes. And you've got to learn from it. I at least have made purchases and then regretted it. I shouldn't have ordered that. I shouldn't have bought that online late at night. Bad decisions. You learn from them. Well, we're going to take a good decision now and we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back right after these messages. Hi. I'm Sean Malone, Director of Media for the Foundation for Economic Education. And I want to talk to you today about FEE's podcasts. You're currently listening to our wonderful FEE cast, but did you know we also have two other amazing podcasts for you to listen to each and every week. There's Words and Numbers featuring Anthony Davies and James Harrigan, where they talk about economics, political theory, and current events every Wednesday. We also have a brand new offering called the FEE Audio Experience where we bring you content from our seminars and events held all across the country. You'll get to hear fascinating talks from speakers and panelists, which we'll make available to you right after each event. So be sure to check out the FEE cast, Words and Numbers, and the FEE Audio Experience right here on our homepage at FEE.org slash shows, and also subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play. Thanks for listening. Welcome back. We've been talking about entrepreneurship versus a culture of permission that it seems to be is creeping further and further into our mainstream culture. And it actually bears saying that this article on Permit Patty that we were talking about in the last segment has been one of the most popular that we've had on the website in the last week. And so therefore, we've ordered a sequel, and that is coming out by Zack Slayback probably today, actually. And that one is talking a little bit more about this sort of culture that maybe we're picking up from some unlikely places. Well, he traces it to school. He traces this culture of a permission-based mindset to school where, I mean, you even have to raise your hand just to go to the bathroom. Yes. And he talks about, because he does professional consulting, and he talks about a lot of employers, like they're aghast when they hire someone fresh out of school, and they're actually asking for permission to go to the bathroom. And so just this attitude that there's everything, anything that isn't expressly permitted is forbidden, basically. And sort of the tattletale culture, too, because when everything is authority-based permission and permission-based, then it really cultivates this attitude of kids tattling on kids. They're actually encouraged a lot of times to tattle on kids when they're breaking the rules. And in some ways, our whole political culture, it's like a massive tattletale. If you see something, say something. Exactly. Exactly right. And so this piece by Zach, we have a link for it actually just underneath the video. It's entitled, Schools Have Created a Generation of Permit Patties and Barbecue Betties. And actually, Barbecue Bettie was... Becky, yes. Becky was someone who Zach had previously mentioned in the other article as well. And this was because of another case that happened elsewhere. Right. There was a barbecue area in a park where a group of people were barbecuing using a charcoal grill. And Becky comes along and has a big problem with the charcoal, calls the cops, and... But again, doesn't ask them first. There was no attempt to say, hey, I don't know that you're supposed to be doing this. Right. But also mind your business, Becky. That's another point that Zach makes in the article is that in... What schools are doing when they have this tattletale and permission culture is that they are depriving kids of dispute resolution skills. And so instead of working it out with other kids, it's just an instant recourse to authority. And it's dangerous. It's absolutely dangerous. If you can't talk with your peers at the very least or talk with other people in a commercial setting or in a social setting generally, are we always going to wait until the police show up at our door and we have a problem with our next-door neighbor? The thing that gets me is, do we not have enough to do that these people need to run around looking for permits like it's their job? Get something better to do with your time. All right, so we're talking about permits. Permits are something I think most of us are familiar with if we've ever had a driver's permit or a license or whatever, but permits are pretty widespread, right? Licenses are very widespread. And ostensibly, they're in place to protect the safety of the consumer, right? The safety and scare quotes, right? Right, well, okay, so let's talk about that. So one of the reasons that people might be against permits and against licenses generally is in economics we call these tools barriers to entry. And by that we mean barriers to going into a job or a career. I don't know, Mary, and you've got actually a more complete definition of barriers to entry. So we tend to think about barriers to entry when we're doing the costs or the obstacles for a newcomer to enter a market, enter an industry. And they can be more natural such as it's expensive to do research and development and it's hard to compete with Walmart when you're a little guy, but there's other barriers to entry as well. What's interesting about that too is that's also known as ease of doing business, I think, right? That's the opposite side, yeah. And we're not number one. We're not the easiest country to do business in and we're going down the more permits we put in. According to the World Bank in 2017 it took in the U.S. six calendar days to complete all the procedures to legally do business. You contrast that with a place like New Zealand where it takes one day. And then on the very other end of the spectrum in Venezuela, 230 days. 230 days to just get a license. Right, to complete all of the legal obstacles to legally running a business. Wow, incredible. So I mean, I think it goes without saying why these barriers to entry, these permits, these licenses could be an impediment, right? They don't only protect the consumer. At least, you know, that's the idea. But they also make it so that there are fewer and fewer people competing for the business. Protectionism. It's a type of protectionism. It's a type of protecting nascent industry. It's really retrograde because it really goes back to like the old regime before the Industrial Revolution and before capitalism where every employment, line of employment was a cast where you were born into your cast and it was protected from any kind of competition that, you know, you had guilds in the cities and nobles were protected. They didn't have any competitors. And what really led to the prosperity that we enjoy today is free entry. It's just fluidity of that. Anyone with enough pluck can, even without a lot of startup capital, can just be an upstart and the incumbents, incumbents aren't able to legally persecute those upstarts. But that's basically what these barriers to entry often are because they're often supported by market incumbents. Oftentimes, big companies like regulations that even they have to suffer because they know that they can bear them better than their smaller competitors. Right, mom and pop can't sort of bear those six days as easily as a giant conglomerate like Walmart. Yeah, well I hate to put Amazon under the bus but they were one of the ones lobbying for this internet sales tax. Were they lobbying for it? I thought they were lobbying against it. They were lobbying for it, huh? I'll have to check. I thought I read that they were lobbying for it. But it wouldn't be surprising because, again, so with this internet sales tax, basically now with the Supreme Court ruling every company has to collect sales taxes for every state regime as long as the business is coming from the customer is based in that state. And Amazon, you know, they've got a huge legal department. They can handle that easily. But all these tiny little internet companies, mom and pops, again, or individual companies, they can't handle such a burden. Let's take a step back real quick too because I think a lot of people tend to think, all right, if I'm going to hire an architect, I want a licensed architect. If I want to hire a plumber, I want someone who's bonded, insured and licensed, right? So there are possibly some reasons in the back of our minds why we think these roles and occupations should be licensed or at least there should be some kind of method to account for them if they mess up. But there are other ways to account for businesses or people who perform certain tasks and other ways to hold them to account, right? I mean, we in this world of, you know, pick up your phone and summon a person to deliver your food or a plumber or a gutter cleaner, whoever, we have all these different means to hold people to account. We're not living in a world anymore where there's one plumber in town, right? And so there are other occupations, of course, that are being regulated and licensed as well that might seem a little less necessary than the architect. Shampooing hair. And you've got hair braiding. Horse massaging. Their teeth need to be filed from time to time. That needs to be licensed. Coffin makers. And coffin sellers as well. There were some monks who were creating coffins and our friends at the Institute for Justice actually won a case that allowed them to continue to do that. And so floral arrangers in Louisiana specifically. And so it's kind of gone a little mad. Especially in modern day and age when there are so many, I mean, I would trust Yelp much more than I would trust any government agency in reflecting the reputation of a business that I want to do business with. We did mention protectionism a moment ago and I do want to make sure we dig into that because the real reason that that works as a protectionist thing, licensing, is because it freezes people out from joining. The barrier to entry prevents new entrants into that market. So for example, if you are a floral ranger and you only want to have those who are licensed people performing work in Atlanta, our hometown for example, you might want to make it extremely difficult for new people to actually get into that business. And so it makes it so that there is a smaller amount of competition because you've instituted this formal government-sponsored licensing regime. Right. Well, big is the question. Who is creating the test that people have to pass in order to become licensed? The boards which have a lot of these companies that are saying we only want you to hire from us, right? So it's all the circle of protectionism. Yeah. And it really hurts people who have a skill but maybe don't have a lot of capital to start their business. So we like to use the example of hair braiding because to be a hair braider, maybe all you need is a chair and your skill. There's not a lot of cost associated with starting that kind of business unless you're forced to go to a cosmetology school and pass the test where you have to learn how to do hair techniques that nobody does anymore. For example, pin curls. These waves. Oh, yeah. Perms. Perms. Nobody wears these hairstyles anymore, but to become a licensed cosmetologist, you've got to know how. So there are obviously many regrettable things happening, but in your home state of Utah, there's actually some reform happening as well. There's some great reform happening. So yeah, light in the darkness. There's a few things. The city of Riverton, which I've actually lived in, it's a great city, just actually outlawed permits. No more business permits. They're done. They're not going to do it anymore. They want to encourage business owners to come to Riverton and set up shop. So that's done. The next law is there's a childhood entrepreneur law, which protects child entrepreneurs from not having to get a license. Permits, nothing. In fact, Utah just this past weekend had a big child entrepreneur fair where all these kids got together, homemade items, selling. It was pure chaos to these protectionists, but everybody had a good time and everyone's safe. And friend of Fee Connor Boyack had something to do with that. Yeah, Connor Boyack, who spoke at FeeCon, he, uh, Libertas, the organization he runs has been integral in just demolishing these occupational licensing restrictions. Permit, Patty, beware, Utah. Your days are numbered. Well, we're going to take a quick break and we'll actually be back for the final segment of the FeeCast to talk more about this. We'll see you in a second. Hi, I'm Sean Malone, Director of Media for the Foundation for Economic Education and I want to talk to you today about Fee's podcasts. You're currently listening to our wonderful FeeCast, but did you know we also have two other amazing podcasts for you to listen to each and every week. There's Words and Numbers featuring Anthony Davies and James Harrigan where they talk about economics, political theory, and current events every Wednesday. We also have a brand new offering called the Fee Audio Experience where we bring you content from our seminars and events held all across the country. You'll get to hear fascinating talks from speakers and panelists which we'll make available to you right after each event. So be sure to check out the FeeCast, Words and Numbers, and the Fee Audio Experience right here on our homepage at fee.org-slash-shows and also subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play. Thanks for listening. Welcome back to the final segment of today's FeeCast. We've been talking about barriers to entry and occupational licensing, permitting, but there are many, many other forms of barriers to entry as Marianne, you defined them. One of which is my favorite slash least favorite and that is the minimum wage. It is my favorite because it has so many rich points to discuss and my least favorite because it blocks the poor and disadvantaged and young and inexperienced from being able to get jobs and that may be actually an unpopular opinion because the minimum wage appears to be a very popular kind of policy and there are efforts underway to get it to be nationalized to get the federal minimum wage to be $15 an hour. But the minimum wage is an extreme form of a barrier to entry. In fact, Dan, up to I think maybe this afternoon you were using this image of the ladder without the first few rungs. The person who is trying to get their start is not able to begin to climb because they are basically frozen out of the market. An employer can only afford to pay an employee the revenue that their contribution brings in and so if you set the minimum wage above that, then you make it a loss for an employer to do that and so it disincentivizes them from hiring in the first place. It is exactly where people are not yet able to provide very much value where they need that experience. It is not only the money that an entry level worker is getting paid, it is the experience and based on that experience they can climb up the ladder but when you are knocking out those bottom rungs of the ladder, you disable them from getting that kind of experience. You are basically making it impossible for them to work at a rate that it would make sense for someone to pay them. Exactly. Right? That actually reminds me of unpaid internships. It is a big deal for me. I got my start with my career because I took an unpaid internship where I learned a lot of things. Now they are trying to outlaw those unpaid internships. Unless you are in Congress. If you are a congressional office then you can intern or have someone as an intern with no fee. How do you get into this fear that you are trying to get into? Especially if you are not willing to do it to just get the experience. So they are icing people out of the market. Minimum wage is a tough one for me. It is an issue that my opinion has kind of evolved on. I used to advocate for more regional minimum wages not necessarily the $15 but ones that were based on the cost of living. Right, based on the locale. But I really have come away from that just for the reasons that although I hate the idea of people working really hard and not making a lot of money because I think of like dishwashers and retail workers and people of fast food who are making the minimum wages. It is not that they are not working hard and adding value. It is just that you can either have jobs without a minimum wage or you can have fewer jobs with a minimum wage when you install a minimum wage is that over time in the long run employers will switch out people for machines. And we are already seeing this at McDonald's and other kinds of restaurants where they are just putting kiosks instead of people with faces. You know the first time that I saw that I was in Poland with my husband Colin this past August and everywhere in Poland at McDonald's which we patronize probably more than we should have when we were abroad. There would be a kiosk that would have a touch screen that he could select he is a very picky eater. Sorry Colin but you are. You can select exactly what you want. So there is no room for human error, right? The cashier can't select mayonnaise when no mayonnaise should be there, right? And then we went to Denver about probably three months ago they are in Denver. They haven't yet appeared here in Atlanta so far as I know maybe so. Airports but not nowhere else, yeah. But you are right that when you impose a minimum wage you freeze certain entry level jobs from people from going into jobs then you make it more and more likely that we are going to begin automating and moving the human equation out of it all together. And it is probably not a good thing for people who are just beginning to start out. I think what is especially problematic is when you couple the two. When you have minimum wages then you also have occupational licensing so I don't have maybe a lot of lucrative skills that nobody is going to pay me to be a brain surgeon but perhaps I have the skill of braiding hair blow dry somebody's hair. And if there wasn't this obstacle of occupational licensing perhaps I could be making a lot of money in one area but I can't so I just have to take a what is the current minimum wage 7.25 I think federally. Georgia. Right. How much more money could people be making if they were free to pursue other opportunities. And that comes in with re-entry. I mean you have people getting out of prison where recidivism rates are astronomically high because they can't find jobs. People end up going back into prison. They go back to prison but if you eliminated these licenses a lot of people want to get out and be barbers or paint nails be you know makeup artists things that you really don't need an formal education for but they're barred from doing it and then where do they go? They end up selling drugs again or doing whatever it is that got them in there in the first place and the whole cycle continues. You know there's actually a really good video part of our Common Sense soapbox series that's on the minimum wage and actually not only the minimum wage where there were actually parts of the American society that actually wanted to freeze certain types of people out of work including African Americans including the elderly what they would call invalids at the time of the early part of the 20th century Women as well. Women as well. And so you begin to think how this seems well intentioned right but what other purposes might it be serving a minimum wage In partide South Africa that was an motivation for the minimum wage. You know another breaking story this week aside from Permit Patty is this new decision coming out of the Supreme Court on Wednesday it was Janus vs. AFSCME and AFSCME is a conglomeration of local labor unions. In Chicago right? Well they're all over they're they're all over the country amalgamated federation of state and local unions it's something like that. State county and municipal employees there it is. So everybody I catch all. Everybody and it's all government unions and this goes to not quite barriers to entry like we've been discussing but something related it's kind of in the same gene pool and that is once you take a job can you be forced to pay a part of your salary back to another third party organization namely a labor union in order to keep your job so not quite a barrier to entry but a barrier to sticking around and so what the court ruled on Wednesday is that if you don't want to join the labor union you don't have to pay these what they're called agency fees and that was codified law for decades that you had to pay even not as a member of a labor union you had to pay sometimes 40, 50, 60 dollars a month a particular plaintiff Richard Janus actually paid 45 dollars a month to keep his job he paid that to the labor union and that's gone now that was ruled in a 5-4 decision on Wednesday. I mean that's gone for the first time I think Wagner accurate depression this goes back this is huge for the rights of association workers and correct me if I'm wrong I think in the case of Janus those agency fees are sometimes used for lobbying efforts and so that's why I think the court ruled that it was violation of the First Amendment. Alright well let's take a minute let's talk about that because money is fungible right just because you take money in for a certain purpose as agency fees and you have another stream of money coming in through union dues doesn't mean it can't intermingle right and so labor union survives off of the cash flow it gets from both labor union dues as well as agency fees and you're right Marianne even if they say that they can't use that for lobbying for electing any type of favor of political action exactly all that money helps them right and so this is going to be a big deal for labor unions now government labor unions where they don't have that predictable cash flow from these non-members anymore they're going to have to figure out what they're going to do and this is labor unions I think in a lot of ways have had a lot of good things to do especially in the private sector but with government or public sector labor unions and compulsory labor unions that's a different story altogether and so we're going to see a very different kind of outcome given this ruling. Which is interesting to see because in this era of I believe Zach Slade called it was entrepreneurial decay I think was the term which is great but what are we fostering and maybe there is going to be a switch people are mad about permit cavity people are mad about labor unions maybe we are on the cusp of something big here interesting to see I think a lot of different things have changed in the past few decades we have the ability to communicate instantaneously share stories buy things from anybody whether it's an Etsy seller or eBay seller even this big thing like Amazon kid on the street absolutely and so there are a lot of different opportunities that have emerged that make us begin to wonder whether this regulatory regime that we've lived with for decades actually still makes sense it would be interesting to see so a few other things from barrier to entry standpoint we have taxes right we have regulations generally there's a new data regulation out of Europe that we're all having to follow now and that's why actually you probably got three weeks ago a barrage of emails from various places that you've signed up for bought things from got emails from and this is the general data protection regulation from Europe that requires a huge amount of compliance and smaller places maybe not as well equipped to take those on as Amazon or as Walmart and even if it's not a European company as long as they have customers who are resident in Europe that they have to comply with this and so that's why you've got every service that you've ever encountered it seems like they were spamming your inbox and part of the justification was to prevent spam and you're getting even more spam because of it and presumably one resident would be enough if only one person lives there then that's justification so we want to make sure that you don't have any barriers to entry to find out what kind of cool economic ideas we're talking about in the comments below the video please check them out and we'll see you next week on the FeeCast