Tour Guides

You know why regulating tour guides is worth the effort?  Because the people who make use of their services are, generally speaking, from out of town and are not going to be in a position, more often than not, to wait around and file complaints and then come back to testify at the trials of those who have engaged in "abusive practices."  This means, it seems to me, that the abusive practices will be in play for much longer than they ought, if not forever.  If the regulators are underfunded, regulations rarely enforced or badly written this is an argument for funding, enforcement, and rewriting not for babies and bath waters.

Furthermore, it seems to me that if you want to make the argument that neither the state nor the tour guide industry has an interest in seeing to it that visitors to the seat of the Federal Government in these United States are not screwed, blued, and tattooed by incompetent tour guides, you might maybe want to consider the importance of visiting the seat of the Federal Government in these United States as it concerns continuing education in matters of some relevance, to say nothing of the blow to the Federal Government of these United States' reputation by those who were screwed, tattooed, and blued as well as those they related the tale of being screwed, tattooed, and blued.

You might also consider that, oddly enough despite their general failure to be like Olive Garden, our non-Olive-Garden institutions of higher education have been busy training individuals in public history for lo these many years, almost as if these institutions of higher learning were aware that there was a need for individuals trained in providing accurate, assessable, and interesting histories of the various sites of historical interest scattered hither and yon.

Granted, of course, that if the tour guide industry were to set about recruiting well-trained and well-educated tour guides their bottom lines might suffer, which is to say it might not be economically efficient to hire well-trained and well-educated tour guides, but, then again, having well-trained and well-educated tour guides might prove to be a boost for the tour guide industry. And, additionally, when did economic efficiency become the be all and end all of life on earth?  1976? 1980?

Attacks on regulatory regimes that rely on the "universal acid" arguments of Cato, AEI, etc, legitimate the universal acid of Cato, AEI, etc. The topic under consideration here is the need and ability of the state to intervene in the market to reduce abusive, incompetent, or dangerous practices and, in so doing, protect workers as workers and citizens as consumers. Should an industry capture the state, which oddly enough seems almost never to result in regulations that provide protection for either workers or citizens, then -- by golly -- let's rewrite the regulations.

Then again in a Ygelsian world retrospective prosecution is better than prophylactic regulation because the free market might work and if it doesn't other underfunded enforcement agencies might maybe prosecute. Unless, of course, they have been captured by the wealthy and the powerful, which -- of course -- won't happen.

And, relatedly, economic efficiency is not the proper measure of the rationality of having more than one, two or even three quality quarterbacks or nearly anything else of importance.  Consider, for example, the Pittsburgh  Steelers or poets. Indeed, it is possible to argue that focusing on economic efficiency when it is inapt, which it almost always is, is a Neoliberal, Reaganite, and (perhaps) Glibertarian attempt to convince folks that all issues are best debated and understood in terms of economic efficiency when, in fact, many, if not all, issues large and small have nothing whatsoever to do with economic efficiency. Consider the death penalty or whether your butt looks big in those jeans.