Obama’s FTC wants to “protect” you from the unscrupulous business practices of …your local Music Teacher

Like a towering regulatory tsunami, our benevolent Federal Government is sending a huge wave of brand new regulations crashing across the nation. And getting to higher ground won’t help matters, I’m afraid.

It’s been a busy year for our Federal Busybodies. Among the hundreds of brand new directives, they’ve added the FDA’s proposed ban of trans fats, the FTC’s new rule on the Hart-Scott-Rodino procedures for pharmaceutical companies, and the EPA revealing that they’re planning on rolling out 134 new environmental regulations in 2014 (which was announced on the day before Thanksgiving, so it would go largely unnoticed. Nice…).

But for a taste of just how petty and nonsensical some of these new regs are, I’ve got a doozy that’s received scant attention from the media.

It seems that our government wishes to “protect” us from the unscrupulous business practices of …your local piano teacher:

From the Wall Street Journal:

“…The (Music Teachers National Association)’s sin, according to the feds, rested in its code of ethics. The code lays out ideals for members to follow—a commitment to students, colleagues, society. Tucked into this worthy document was a provision calling on teachers to respect their colleagues’ studios, and not actively recruit students from other teachers.

That’s a common enough provision among professional organizations (doctors, lawyers), yet the FTC avers that the suggestion that Miss Sally not poach students from Miss Lucy was an attempt to raise prices for piano lessons.

Given that the average lesson runs around $30 an hour, and that some devoted teachers still give lessons for $5 a pop, this is patently absurd…” 

Once again, the government seems intent on extracting their pound of flesh from citizens who are trying desperately to just go about living their lives.

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Ultimately, this is an economics issue as much as an issue of freedom. Every time the Federal Government creates new regulations, it puts more of a burden on citizens to comply accordingly. Such compliance takes time, money and energy, all of which could be spent on producing goods and services (like teaching piano, for instance) if the regulations didn’t exist.

Ultimately, regulations are limits, and no nation in the history of the planet has ever limited itself into prosperity.

In order to save ourselves from this regulatory suicide, we’re gonna need more politicians in the House and Senate (and eventually a president, too) who fully understand what’s at stake here. At this pace, we’re going to eventually run out of freedoms for them to limit.

And the reality is: if we don’t re-infuse our country with some basic, common-sense, economic wisdom in this area (and quickly), we may not have enough of a nation to bother with saving.