This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 31st, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The mindset of the regulator is one that wants to compel private sector actors to seek permission to serve their fellow man.

So how should supporters of the right to earn an honest living push back?

Clark Neely is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, we spoke this week.

I was recently talking with Peter Van Doren on the occasion of the 40th anniversary

of Regulation magazine, and Regulation started about the same time

a pretty massive deregulatory effort

got underway during the Carter administration,

trucking, oil, rail shipping, all sorts of things that are contributing to our economy today.

And we've had continued regulating and deregulating of various industries.

Where now do people face the biggest threats to their economic liberty.

Yeah, so it's not one particular industry or vocation.

It's more from the mindset from legislators, particularly state legislators that essentially every occupation

you can imagine might need to be regulated, which is to say by licensing the practitioners because essentially you can come up with

you know a rationalization for any occupation you know by definition if it's

interacting with the public if it's interacting with consumers

there's a possibility for consumers to get hurt or ripped off or whatever it might be that

opens the door for for potential regulation and somewhere in that vocation pick any

vocation you want there is some group that would like to see more regulation for

the purpose of sandbagging potential competitors. So it's a mindset among legislators that occupational regulation is a good thing and it's growing

like wildfire.

...