More College Prof Wingnuttery

“Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be…” college students in any of the "institutes of higher learning" in San Diego.

First we had the wingnut prof at SDSU who was horrified that the university authorities were cooperating with the DEA in busting up a major drug selling ring that was operating on campus. To her that meant that they would also turn in tax protesters to the IRS in violation of First Amendment rights. Then we had the USD nutcase that was aghast, simply aghast that he smelled pot being smoked at a rock concert and that there were no hordes of cops in pursuit of the offending pot smokers. Pot at a rock concert, forsooth. There was something about the length of the legs on chairs, too, but…

Now we have another editorial published by our local rag, the San Diego Union Tribune, who’s interest in the current economic crisis consists of this professor’s assertion that price gouging during times of emergency is actually a good thing, and that banning it is malfeasance by government.

Price gouging in a free market by Matt Zwolinski, Sept 18, 2008

All economic regulation is bad, including banning price gouging in the aftermath of a major hurricane. You can read it at the link above, but don’t do it while drinking a cup of coffee. He says of price gouging laws,

But these laws are a mistake. They are a mistake because price gougers, as morally repugnant as they we may find them, are doing something that provides real aid to people in desperate need.

Um, so does the Red Cross, but the Red Cross does it for free. And this,

This is why all state anti-gouging laws should be repealed. Instead, the law should allow prices to rise freely in the wake of a disaster. This may seem callous and cold, but there are two reasons why such a policy would dramatically improve the condition of disaster victims.

I'll let you go read the reasons, but you can probably imagine... And, yes, it does seem callous and cold because it is callous and cold, to the point of being inhumane.

One of the advantages of government that has been drowned in a bathtub, for professor Matt Zwolinski, is that with no FEMA or any other government agency to provide generators, blankets, tents and all of the other things that will keep people alive after a major disaster there is a vast opportunity for the “free market” to do so instead. At, of course, a huge profit to those who are selling and to the detriment of those in need.

That is, of course, what the free market is all about.

Once again I am trying to figure out which is more insane and stupid; that this idiot nutjob professor would write such drivel, or that our disgraceful rag of a newspaper would publish it.