David Boaz

The violent death of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia set off the Arab Spring. Could the killing of Eric Garner lead to a springtime of police reform — and regulatory reform — in the United States?

Bouazizi was a street vendor, selling fruits and vegetables from a cart. He aspired to buy a pickup truck to expand his business. But, as property rights reformer Hernando de Soto wrote in the Wall Street Journal, ”to get a loan to buy the truck, he needed collateral — and since the assets he held weren’t legally recorded or had murky titles, he didn’t qualify.”

Meanwhile, de Soto notes, “government inspectors made Bouazizi’s life miserable, shaking him down for bribes when he couldn’t produce licenses that were (by design) virtually unobtainable. He tired of the abuse. The day he killed himself, inspectors had come to seize his merchandise and his electronic scale for weighing goods. A tussle began. One municipal inspector, a woman, slapped Bouazizi across the face. That humiliation, along with the confiscation of just $225 worth of his wares, is said to have led the young man to take his own life.”

“The more laws we pass, the more chances there are for people to run afoul of the police.”

Bouazizi was a poor man trying to engage in commerce to make a better life. His brother Salem told de Soto the meaning of Bouazizi’s death: “He believed the poor had the right to buy and sell.”

It was a story that resonated across the Arab world — a government that stifled freedom and enterprise, unaccountable bureaucracy, arbitrary enforcement, official contempt for citizens, a man who just couldn’t take it any more.

Eric Garner’s story is surprisingly similar. He had been arrested more than 30 times, for such crimes as marijuana possession and driving without a license, and most often for selling untaxed cigarettes on the street.

Why sell untaxed cigarettes? Because New York has the country’s highest cigarette taxes, $4.35 a pack for New York State and another $1.50 for the city. A pack of cigarettes can cost $14 in New York City, two and a half times as much as in Virginia . So a lively black market has sprung up. Buy cigarettes at retail in Virginia or North Carolina, sell them at a big markup in New York, and you can still undercut the price of legal, taxed cigarettes.

Patrick Fleenor reported in a 2003 study for the Cato Institute that New York’s cigarette taxes had created a thriving black market, with rising levels of street crime, turf wars and increasing organized crime. He found that from 1990 to 2002, as the city and state repeatedly raised taxes, New York’s sales of taxed cigarettes relative to the national average plummeted. But reported smoking rates fell only slightly, in line with national trends. Obviously a lot of New York smokers were getting their fix from the black market.

A 2013 study by the Mackinac Center found, not surprisingly, that New York had the highest rate of cigarette smuggling, totaling 61% of the state’s cigarette sales.

Eric Garner was a small part of that black market. He sold individual cigarettes — “loosies” — on the street to people without much money. It’s easier for police to apprehend street sellers than interstate organized crime. Thus his long record of arrests. And the more laws we pass, the more chances there are for people to run afoul of the police. Especially when we outlaw peaceful activities, such as smoking marijuana, selling untaxed cigarettes or feeding the homeless.

Eric Garner’s last words could have been said by Mohamed Bouazizi. We’ve all heard that his very last words were “I can’t breathe,” which he told the police eight times. But before his encounter with the police reached that final, fatal point, cellphones captured his frustration:

“Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. … Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me (garbled) Selling cigarettes. I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone.”

Mohamed Bouazizi’s death after he was disrespected and impeded by government officials set off a wave of protests, first in his native Tunisia, then across the Arab world. Governments toppled, Time magazine proclaimed ”The Protester” the Person of the Year for 2011, and people talked hopefully of an Arab Spring. Reform has been more successful in Tunisia than anywhere else.

Eric Garner’s death has also set off protests, not just in New York but in Boston, Chicago, Washington, and other places. Many protesters held signs reading “I can’t breathe” and “This stops now.” They should add “I’m minding my business. Just leave me alone.”

Let’s hope this coming spring brings a wave of police reform in the United States, and also a reconsideration of the high taxes, prohibitions, and nanny-state regulations that are making so many Americans technically criminals and exacerbating police-citizen tensions.

At NBCNews.com, I make the case for term limits in a video sidebar to Meet the Press.

For those who prefer print, I summarize my argument here (not all of which survived NBC’s editing):

Only 15 percent of Americans approve of Congress’s performance. Yet we’re about to have another election where more than 90 percent of incumbents are reelected. In fact, the most common reelection rate for House members over the past 30 years is 98 percent.

98 percent reelection—that’s what you expect to see in Russia, not in a democracy.

Americans don’t want a permanent ruling class of career politicians. But that’s what the power of incumbency and all the perks that incumbents give themselves are giving us.

We want a citizen legislature and a citizen Congress—a government of, by, and for the people.

To get that, we need term limits. We should limit members to three terms in the House and two terms in the Senate. Let more people serve. Let more people make the laws.

And let’s get some people who don’t want to make Congress a lifelong career.

Some say that term limits would deprive us of the skills of experienced lawmakers. Really? It’s the experienced legislators who gave us a $17 trillion national debt, and the endless war in Iraq, and a Veterans Affairs system that got no oversight, and massive government spying with no congressional oversight, and the Wall Street bailout.

Politicians go to Washington and they forget what it’s like to live under the laws they pass. As we’ve seen in some recent elections, they may not even keep a home in the district they represent.

The American Founders believed in rotation in office. They wanted lawmakers to live under the laws they passed—and wanted to draw the Congress from people who have been living under them.

For more on term limits, see the Cato Handbook for Congress, Ed Crane’s 1995 congressional testimony, or this very thoughtful article by Mark Petracca, “The Poison of Professional Politics.”

The 2014 midterm elections are being held at a time when libertarian ideas are ascending. But will more influence and media attention translate into electoral victories? Will the makeup of the next Congress be conducive or detrimental to the advancement of free markets and individual liberty? Join us for an election recap and discussion of the state of libertarian ideas in various races and prospects for the next Congress.

Cato’s David Boaz (@david_boaz) and John Samples (@SamplesatCato) discuss the 2014 elections and prospects for a more libertarian public policy in the coming years.

Video produced by Caleb O. Brown, Austin Bragg, Kevin Sennett and Tess Terrible.

Cato’s David Boaz and John Samples evaluate the 2014 elections and prospects for a more libertarian public policy in the coming years.

The Gallup Poll has a new estimate of the number of libertarians in the American electorate. In their 2014 Gallup Governance Survey they find that 24 percent of respondents can be characterized as libertarians (as compared to 27 percent conservative, 21 percent liberal, and 18 percent populist).

For more than 20 years now, the Gallup Poll has been using two questions to categorize respondents by ideology:

Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?

Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?

Here’s a graphic depiction of the number of respondents who gave libertarian answers to both questions in the Bush-Obama years: 

Libertarians, who disagree with both Democrats and Republicans on major issues, have not been reliable voters for either party. They generally tend to vote Republican by about a two to one majority. But as David Kirby and I wrote in our 2010 study, “The Libertarian Vote in the Age of Obama”:

In 2004 libertarians swung away from Bush, anticipating the Democratic victories of 2006. In 2008, according to new data in this paper, libertarians voted against Barack Obama. Libertarians seem to be a lead indicator of trends in centrist, independent-minded voters. If libertarians continue to lead the independents away from Obama, Democrats will lose 2010 midterm elections they would otherwise win.

And of course the Democrats did have a bad 2010. If libertarian-leaning voters react against Obamacare, overregulation, endless wars, and the surveillance state, then Democrats are likely to have a bad 2014 as well. But Republican positions on immigration, gay marriage, and marijuana push libertarian voters, especially millennial libertarians away; that might account for the surprisingly weak showing of many Republicans in polls in a year when President Obama is unpopular and the economy remains dismal.

Read more about the libertarian vote in our original study or in our 2012 ebook.

Hat tip to Lydia Saad for the data and to Derek Lee and David Dewhurst for the chart.

As we hear the usual frenzied concern about big money in politics, Cecilia Kang and Matea Gold offer an interesting fact in today’s Washington Post:

Total political advertising in 2014 is expected to reach a record $2.4 billion, up $100 million from four years ago, according to estimates by the Kantar Media research firm.

That sounds like a lot of money. But the first thing I notice is that the increase from 2010 is only about half the rate of inflation. Given the increasing scope of government, it might be surprising that the increase has been so minimal. But divided government may have caused some potential donors to see fewer opportunities and/or risks in the next couple of years.

The Institute for Justice offers another timely way to look at the magnitude of political spending:

The New York Times launches a series of investigative reports on corporate lobbying of state attorneys general. But you have to read fairly far down in the story to find the “nut graf” on why this is happening now. Radley Balko summed it up in a tweet: “As prosecutors get increasingly powerful, lobbyists will increasingly spend money to try to influence them.” And the article does note that: 

A robust industry of lobbyists and lawyers has blossomed as attorneys general have joined to conduct multistate investigations and pushed into areas as diverse as securities fraud and Internet crimes….

The increased focus on state attorneys general by corporate interests has a simple explanation: to guard against legal exposure, potentially in the billions of dollars, for corporations that become targets of the state investigations.

It can be traced back two decades, when more than 40 state attorneys general joined to challenge the tobacco industry, an inquiry that resulted in a historic $206 billion settlement.

Microsoft became the target of a similar multistate attack, accused of engaging in an anticompetitive scheme by bundling its Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system. Then came the pharmaceutical industry, accused of improperly marketing drugs, and, more recently, the financial services industry, in a case that resulted in a $25 billion settlementin 2012 with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicing companies.

The trend accelerated as attorneys general — particularly Democrats — began hiring outside law firms to conduct investigations and sue corporations on a contingency basis.

I wrote about this 30 years ago in the Wall Street Journal, citing Hayek’s assessment from 40 years before that:

Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek explained the process 40 years ago in his prophetic book The Road to Serfdom: “As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power.”

As the size and power of government increase, we can expect more of society’s resources to be directed toward influencing government.

Those who work to increase the size, scope, and power of government need to recognize: This is the business you have chosen. If you want the federal government to tax (and borrow) and transfer – and reallocate through prosecution – $3.8 trillion a year, if you want it to supply Americans with housing and health care and school lunches and retirement security and local bike paths, then you have to accept that such programs come with incentive problems, politicization, corruption, and waste. And that special interests will find ways to influence such momentous decisions, no matter what lobbying restrictions and campaign finance regulations are passed.