The cost of government regulation: this seems to large to believe

A new study by Theo Eicher at the University of Washington finds:

"Fully $200,000 of that [$226,000] increase [1989 and 2006] was the result of land-use regulations"!

Thanks to Sonya Jones for sending me this link.

Washington State Supreme Court Says People can Shoot Wild Animals in Self-Defense

Sonya Jones sent me this link from the Washington State Supreme Court. The court reaffirmed the notion that people are allowed to defend themselves and their property from wild animals.

[I]t may be justly said that one who kills an elk in defense of himself or his property, if such a killing was reasonably necessary for such purpose, is not guilty of violating the law.

The only sad thing is that such a common sense ruling requires someone to go to court and fight the issue all the way up to the state Supreme Court. In this case, the guy engaged in "repeated requests" for help from the state and still had to go through this long court battle. Sonya Jones posted her own discussion of the decision posted here.

New Op-ed in National Review Online on Defending Property Rights

Sonya Jones and I have an op-ed that follows up on our previous piece on the International Boundary Commission:

What can be done to stop a presidential appointee who views himself as above the rules? Can the president fire him? A Seattle court heard motions on such a case this week. What began as a seemingly trivial property-rights dispute has quickly become a constitutional quagmire. The judge is demanding answers on the limits of presidential power, on whether the government must compensate property owners for regulations restricting their property’s use, and on the power of international government agencies. . . . .

New Op-ed in Washington Times: Property-rights dispute

Retirees Shirley and Herbert Leu had a problem. Part of their backyard was collapsing into a ditch that ran along the U.S.-Canadian border. Before building their 4-foot-high retaining wall, the Leus made sure they were in compliance with all local regulations related to improvements made on private, residential property. It never dawned on the Leus that this would lead to an international incident and an ideological battle over private property. The debate became one of whether an international commission could simply come onto their property, remove their wall and then send them the bill. . . .

A comment tread can be found here.

Steve Jobs on Eliminating Digital Rights Management

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Steve Jobs has a very provacative posting at Apple.com today asking for the elimination of digital rights management (DRM) that is used "to protect its music against theft." The most interesting part of the discussion to me was way Apple doesn't license its FairPlay DRM to others because it would be difficult for Apple to control information about the program and these leaks could be used to disable the protection. He suggests that is part of the reason that Microsoft has moved to the Apple model of having one company control both the hardware and software.

The other issue is ending DRM. Obviously Jobs would support this only if he believes that he has the best online music store and best hardware. Many economists have argued that Apple had locked customers into using iTunes once they had bought an iPod and that then the fact that they bought songs on iTunes would lock them into buying iPods in the future. The numbers that Jobs provides makes it clear that the investment the people make in songs bought by iTunes is so small that it is hard to think that there is much of a lock-in effect. He claims that the average iPod owner only has 3% of their songs from iTunes. The implication that he draws that this DRM hasn't stopped piracy. That last part seems like a big jump in logic to me, at least with the evidence that he has provided. These songs could be from people's legitimate CD collections. I also wonder about how much of this other space is due to podcasts, movies, audio books. It is because I have problems with this last step that I also have problems with his conclusion that the big four record companies would be better off junking DRM. Doing so could greatly increase piracy, which is what the record companies fear. I appears Jobs believes that he would benefit, but all that goes to show is that people aren't being locked into the iPod world. iPod and iTunes are both doing well because they are the best out there, not because people are locked into them.

There is one other possible interpretation to all this. It is possible that Jobs is reacting to recent pressure from multiple European countries to share its DRM. Apple might believe that it is easier for the music companies to defend this and at the same time Apple can make it look like it is in agreement with the Europeans. This interpretation depends on the reasonable assumption that the music companies are willing to fight hard to defend their property rights.

UPDATE: Well, others have picked up on this last point. "But several industry executives said they viewed Mr. Jobs’s comments as an effort to deflect blame from Apple and onto the record companies for the incompatibility of various digital music devices and services."