Legislators Should Be Economists or Statisticians - Not Lawyers
by Johann Robert Riet

I had my car inspected yesterday. The laws vary from state to state, but the state in which I live, forces you to inspect your car once a year. Actually that is down from twice a year in the past. The state I used to live in, until five years ago, required you to have it inspected once a year also. However, that state did it "free of charge". They established state-run inspection stations, to which all car owners went for a free inspection. I know, I know, "there is no free lunch," but that is not my point. By making it free, they accomplished inspection more efficiently than my current state, although more inconveniently because lines tended to form, which is not the case in my current state where you take your car to a mechanic so he (or she - in a diversity world) can really rip you off. But these are not really my points either. My point is going to have to do with the government's ability to do by law, what the free market would never do. It will have to do with absurd utilization of precious resources, and to some extent the power of a lobby - probably auto mechanics. And finally it has to do with what most articles on this site will have to do with: The stupidity of, or the lack of interest, or the lack of information by the average American who gets to pull a voting lever.

A little background: My car is one year old and has less than 10,000 miles on it. It is of the highly reliable Japanese variety. It is one of many I have bought from the same manufacturer, so I know from experience how reliable and maintenance-free this brand is. In my previous state, where I lived for 30 years, I would not have had to present my car for inspection yet, because the legislators in the old state are not fools (well they are, but the are not as big a fool as the legislators in my current state), nor do they have a car mechanics lobby nipping at their heels. They are well-aware of the infinitesimally small number of cars that require inspection in the first few years of their life to insure they are safe and clean to drive. In my old state, at the end of the first three years, my car could even avoid inspection for another two years based on mileage. In short, the legislators in my old state, who were also none too bright, at least were not stupid about the safety of cars that were three to five years old. They also counted on reasonable people to repair their cars, and weren't willing to cost all people millions to catch the few who weren't reasonable.

In my new state, the laws are considerably different. Yesterday, I had to take my car to a private mechanic, and submit it for inspection even though it is just shy of one year old, and has only 9,742 miles. This private mechanic probably knew better than to pull the scam, about which I hear often. When someone owns a fairly old car, they charge $1,000 plus, to repair everything in sight, because you don't get a sticker unless you fall for their scam. No, in my case, they merely charged me $75.50 to affirm to the state and all of my fellow drivers that I had a car that was safe to drive, and by the way, did not pollute the atmosphere. I thought as I looked at my bill, and saw the $49.00 charge for emissions inspection, about how many people fork over $49.00 for a completely useless activity. I also did not like the $26.50 I paid for the safety inspection, but I have limited time and space. Not being terribly afraid appearing rude anymore, I asked the counter guy (sorry, Service Advisor) if he thought many one year old, 10,000 mile cars failed emissions. He said, "Probably not many." I said, "How about NONE." He responded that I was probably right, but then again, maybe he was just trying not to anger me, because at this point, he would have had to be unconscious to not realize I was upset.

I thought back to my old state, after they made emissions inspections mandatory, and how the process worked. I would drive up, a "technician" would put a probe in my tailpipe (boy does that conjure up a metaphor), and I would get a piece of paper showing the results. The readout always showed the standard, and my reading. I noticed two things over time: One, how far below the standard that my car's emissions always were, and how my readings never, never went up over time. Now I must say that I do not keep my cars until they are very old, but I do keep them for five or so years, and the readings never went up. Incidentally, my new state gives me a read-out also, but oddly, it simply says passed. I wonder why??

Well look, there are a hundred things I would like to say about this millionth or so needless and costly infringement of my liberty by my government, but the editor of this site says that I have to keep it short. So I will try. Are there cars on the road that add pollution to the atmosphere over and above the "standards"? I am sure there are. I am also equally sure that they are an extremely small fraction of the total number of cars on the road. If a car is old enough, it is exempted from the tougher standards. The vast majority of cars on the road are probably new enough and reliable enough to easily pass "emissions tests". They are designed to pass emissions unless they need repaired. Should one of the newer cars have a problem, or a defect that would temporarily render it incapable of meeting standards, the "Check Engine" light would come on, and the vast majority of drivers will get the car fixed. The bottom-line is that of the entire cohort of automobiles on the road at any one time, only an extremely small fraction is composed of polluters. In order to deal with this problem, the big-government types, and the-people-are-inherently-stupid-irresponsible-or-careless types and the I-know-what-is best-for-all-of-society types, somehow get legislators to pass programs that cost probably billions of dollars, just to catch the odd polluter here and there. No businessman or woman would ever spend so much to achieve so little. After all, how much damage is this polluter causing anyway? Certainly not billions of dollars worth. I know, I know. It is the sentinel effect that we are paying for. That's BS. Manufacturers must design their cars to not pollute by law, and reasonable people get their cars fixed with the "Check Engine" light comes on.

In an economic sense, the economy produces that for which we plunk our money down, regardless of whether we are doing it voluntarily, or whether we want the product. In this case, I wasted $49.00 employing a mechanic, who can't remember the last time a car failed the emissions test. His service facility, and a thousand others in the state, have to buy expensive emissions machinery to ferret out the one or two polluters out of a hundred thousand cars, which is why we have to pay the $49.00 (the state probably gets a cut also). At least the last state I lived in had only four or five emission machines for a million in population. Lines? Yes. Millions of wasted dollars? No!

What is the harm you say? Well, get out the never-ending list of things that liberals want me to spend my money on, other than what I want to spend it on, such as Aids in Africa, universal healthcare, repairing each and every dollar of damage that any weather phenomenon or terrorist inflicts and so on. Well here is $49.00 that was not well spent, and cannot be extorted from me again for another of their pet projects. "Well," they say, "You can't spend it the way you wish either dummy." Oh by the way, I had to pay 6% sales tax on the $49.00. Maybe that is how they will get money for the homeless and the mentally ill, which I am fast becoming as I look at this insanity everyday.