Stigler’s casket
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article tailor made for anyone wishing to defend free-markets from overreaching regulation. The story details the legal battle between the monks of St. Joseph Abbey in Louisiana with the Louisiana state funeral regulatory board. As is typical with such boards, the Louisiana version is dominated by the industry. Of course this is just what Stigler would have predicted 40 years ago in his classic article on regulatory capture. Two things struck me about the story however. First is how the “captured” funeral board doesn’t even make a pretext of some sort of health or safety motivation for its actions. In what might be the most honest statement ever made by a cartel member to a newspaper one of the monks’ competitors states…
