Bottleneckers. William Mellor
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© 2016 by William Mellor and Dick M. Carpenter II, PhD
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601, New York, New York, 10003.
First American edition published in 2016 by Encounter Books,
an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc.,
a nonprofit, tax exempt corporation.
Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Mellor, William H., author. | Carpenter, Dick M. (Dick Michael), author.
Title: Bottleneckers: gaming the government for power and private profit / by William Mellor and Dick M. Carpenter II, PhD.
Description: New York: Encounter Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016020839 (print) | LCCN 2016033220 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594039089 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Licenses—United States—History. | Trade regulation—United States—History. | Trade associations—United States—History.
Classification: LCC HD3630.U6 M45 2016 (print) | LCC HD3630.U6 (ebook) | DDC 381.30973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020839
Interior page design and composition: BooksByBruce.com
Dedication
We dedicate this book to Institute for Justice clients who have courageously and successfully stood up to bottleneckers and, in doing so, paved the way for countless others to pursue an honest living.
Bottlenecker (n): a person who advocates for the creation or perpetuation of government regulation, particularly an occupational license, to restrict entry into his or her occupation, thereby accruing an economic advantage without providing a benefit to consumers.
Table of Contents
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
How Bottleneckers Got Their Name
CHAPTER 2
Casket Cartels: Robbery without a Pistol
CHAPTER 3
When Licenses Creep
CHAPTER 4
Designed to Exclude: The Interior Design Cartel’s House of Lies
CHAPTER 5
To Speak Freely, Pee in This Cup
CHAPTER 6
The Regulatory Stone Age
CHAPTER 7
The Schnitzel King Is No More
CHAPTER 8
The Bottlenecking Vanguard
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Index
Some criminals begin at a young age.
Matt Molinari and Eric Schnepf of Bound Brook, New Jersey, tangled with the law at the age of eighteen.1
Nathan Duszynski of Holland, Michigan, was thirteen.2
Madison Root of Portland, Oregon, was only eleven.3
They are not unique. All across the country in recent years, teens, preteens, and children have had run-ins with police, health inspectors, security guards, and even zoning officials, all for the same crime. The circumstances have sometimes been so disgraceful that the stories made national news. In certain cases, community leaders have expressed outrage and even shame, while in other instances officials have noted the young ages of the offenders but concluded that the law had to be applied without prejudice.
The young criminals were all guilty of . . . conducting business without a license.
Amid record snowfalls on the East Coast in early 2015, Matt and Eric canvased neighborhoods and shoveled snow for money, until they were stopped by police. Nathan set up a hotdog stand to raise money to help his disabled parents—his mom has epilepsy and his dad has multiple sclerosis. Within ten minutes of opening his stand, a zoning official closed him down because he was competing with nearby restaurants. Madison sought to sell Christmas mistletoe in a local park to pay for her braces. She was told that while she could not sell her wares without a license, she was free to beg for money.
“I don’t want to beg!” Madison exclaimed. “I would rather work for something than beg.”4 “People should be able to work for a living,” she argued.5 “The city laws are supporting begging and are against working.”6
Madison didn’t know how right she was. In that one statement, the eleven-year-old