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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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Zoning laws. I hate, hate, hate them. They're also mostly a Democrat thing, so there's an example of me being appropriately mad at "my side" for acting against my interests.

Aside from that--

Other tariffs. Excessive FDA regulatory burden. The existence of patent law. The Jones Act.

I could go on.

Zoning laws are more bipartisan than you let on, and, given that most local governments are saddled with many state and federal mandates, are unfortunately necessary. In a more libertarian world you might be right, but I can't say I've ever lived in that world.

But consider this, town of 20k people with mostly or all high income single family units plus a quaint downtown. Now, the school district is "awesome" (in other words it contains children who are intelligent and nonviolent/disruptive). Some developer decides to knock down 10 houses and build a 40 story slum. This just absolutely blows up the finances for the town. They now need a whole new plumbing system, double the cops, and, most expensively, their school now sucks. These kids pay way less per capita in taxes, plus they run around stabbing other kids. Libertarianism has many good aspects, but far too many on that side dont understand you need to do things in order. You cant have no zoning laws without repealing the CRA and eliminating the public school system. It just doesn't make sense.

Other tariffs. Excessive FDA regulatory burden. The existence of patent law. The Jones Act.

Tariffs are another similar case. When you think about it, it is objectively unfair to American workers that we have the FDA, EPA, NLRB, OSHA, etc and then they have to compete against someone who can burn coal and dump arsenic into rivers.

I'd be very interested in your patent law take. I've worked in it extensively and it mostly works well outside of pharmaceuticals and a few "innovative" patent categories (which IMO the patent acts as written shouldn't ever have applied to. To get an idea of those categories of what IMO are fake/illegal patent categories see Bilski v. Kappos, Mayo v. Prometheus, and Alice Corp.

I don't actually think I, or anyone actually knows what the Jones act does. It outwardly seems fairly stupid.