{"id":4412,"date":"2008-05-06T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T11:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4412"},"modified":"2017-11-09T11:49:25","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T17:49:25","slug":"great-moments-in-the-command-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/06\/great-moments-in-the-command-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Moments in the Command Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let me know if you&#8217;ve heard this before: Government meddles in free market because it can.  Prices rise.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/news\/stories.nsf\/stlouiscitycounty\/story\/ACB68E95FD54817B8625743E000A1167?OpenDocument\" target=\"_blank\">Government investigates price gouging<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>St. Louis County officials plan to ask the state attorney general to investigate whether some trash haulers have gouged residents by drastically raising rates in recent weeks.<\/p>\n<p>The county&#8217;s chief operating officer, Garry Earls, said some residents in the county&#8217;s unincorporated areas have received bills that are almost double their previous rates.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This price gouging is tantamount to unscrupulous contractors ripping people off after a major storm,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The county is moving ahead with plans to divide its unincorporated areas into eight trash collection districts. Through competitive bidding, it would hire a single hauler for each district, except in subdivisions that opt out of the program. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The government&#8217;s action leads to a rise in prices that justifies, in the government&#8217;s mind, more government action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me know if you&#8217;ve heard this before: Government meddles in free market because it can. Prices rise. Government investigates price gouging: St. Louis County officials plan to ask the state attorney general to investigate whether some trash haulers have gouged residents by drastically raising rates in recent weeks. The county&#8217;s chief operating officer, Garry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17363,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412\/revisions\/17363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}