This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 28th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The profit margins for optometric services is goost by the fact that they also tend to sell you the glasses and the profession

doesn't like new competition. A law in South Carolina may end the provision of

so-called online eye exams there. Robert McNamara, the Institute for Justice, has taken the case.

We spoke earlier this month.

So walk me through the process of getting a pair of glasses.

You and I both wear glasses and ever since I was a child I understood the process.

Just go in talk to the optometrist, get your eyes checked, go out into the lobby, pick out some frames you like, and a few weeks later you get a pair of glasses that you then wear to school and are either made fun of or...

In our case, made fun of.

Perhaps so.

So what is wrong with that process and why is that process something that ought to be challenged?

So what's wrong with that process is that for a lot of people it's too

inconvenient, it takes too much time, it requires too much travel. The way it

traditionally works is you walk into a brick and mortar store and they

put the big space age thing over your face, it's called a faux-roctor, and they show you

show you different images and you tell a guy standing in the room

what you see.

Is this better or worse?

Is that better or worse?

You self-report what you see and that's the industry standard.

And the thing is in the modern era with modern technology, with the internet, with smartphones,

...