In her first economic policy speech as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris rightly criticized Donald Trump for favoring steep tariffs, saying her Republican opponent "wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries." But in the same speech, Harris pitched a half-baked idea that is just as economically dubious, promising to crack down on "price gouging" by the grocery industry.

That proposal is so misguided that it provoked undisguised skepticism from mainstream news outlets such as CNN, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, along with criticism by Democratic economists. It showed that Harris joins Trump in pushing populist prescriptions that would hurt consumers in the name of sticking it to supposed economic villains.

"If your opponent claims you're a 'communist,'" Post columnist Catherine Rampell suggested, "maybe don't start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls." Harvard economist Jason Furman, who chaired President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, was equally scathing.

"This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality," Furman told the Times. "There's no upside here, and there is some downside."

That downside stems from any attempt to override market signals by dictating prices. High prices allocate goods to consumers who derive the greatest value from them, encourage producers to expand supply, and spur competition that helps bring prices down.

Without those signals, you get hoarding and shortages. This is not some airy-fairy theory; it reflects bitter experience since ancient times with interventions like the one Harris proposes.

Consider what happened when President Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls in the 1970s. "Ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets," Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw note in their 1998 book on the rise of free markets.

Or consider what happened more recently with eggs. Thanks to avian flu, Furman noted, "egg prices went up last year" because "there weren't as many eggs," but the high prices encouraged "more egg production." If federal regulators had tried to suppress egg prices, they would have short-circuited that market response.

Harris, of course, says she would target only unjustified price increases, the kind that amount to "illegal price gouging" by "opportunistic companies." But as she emphasizes, there currently is no such thing under federal law, and any attempt to define it would be plagued by subjectivity and a lack of relevant knowledge.

The fact that Harris pins the sharp grocery price inflation of recent years on corporate greed suggests that her judgment about such matters cannot be trusted. Economists generally rate other factors—including the war in Ukraine as well as pandemic-related supply disruptions, shifts in consumer demand, and stimulus spending—as much more important.

High profits, in any event, are another important signal that encourages investment and competition. By forbidding "excessive profits," Harris' proposed price policing would undermine the motivation they provide.

According to the most recent numbers, the annual inflation rate dropped below 3 percent as of July. With inflation cooling, this might seem like a strange time for Harris to resuscitate an idea that was already proving disastrous thousands of years ago. But as the Times notes, her message "polls well with swing voters."

The broad tariffs that Trump favors, which Harris condemns as "a national sales tax" that would "devastate Americans," also poll well in the abstract. But they are popular only until voters consider the consequences.

In a recent Cato Institute survey, for example, 62 percent of respondents favored a tariff on "imported blue jeans," but that number plummeted when they were asked to imagine the resulting price increases. Harris likewise is counting on voters who like what she says but do not contemplate what it would mean in practice.

© Copyright 2024 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

The post Kamala Harris' 'Price Gouging' Ban: A New Idea That Has Failed for Thousands of Years appeared first on Reason.com.

Lost amid the drive to expand alcohol delivery in the wake of COVID-19 has been the corresponding push—actually starting even before the pandemic—to allow more types of stores to sell alcohol. While more and more states have allowed grocery stores to sell booze in recent years, these efforts have been fiercely resisted by independent liquor store owners who claim that their small businesses will be forced to shutter if large chain retailers are suddenly able to sell alcohol.

Up until now, these debates have largely been devoid of actual data, but new empirical research has been published showing that grocery store alcohol sales don't really impact mom-and-pop liquor stores after all. At long last, this is one protectionist argument that can finally kick the bucket—if only policy makers will let it die.

Currently, 11 states still forbid wine from being sold in grocery stores while four still prohibit beer. In recent years, states as politically diverse as Mississippi, Connecticut, and Maryland have considered bills to expand wine and/or beer to their grocery store outlets, only to be met with a tidal wave of opposition. Any place where such reform legislation appears, it is immediately opposed by liquor stores in the state—sometimes called "package stores"—which already sell wine and beer and want to prevent any grocery store from becoming their new competitors in the market.

The impact of this protectionism extends far beyond the alcohol market, as well. It is why less populated states that restrict grocery store booze, such as Mississippi, have only one Costco and one Whole Foods in the entire state—and zero Trader Joe's outlets. These stores often depend on their alcohol selections, including their private-label alcohol offerings, to make their business models viable in more locales. Restricting grocery store booze can actually lock entire food stores out of a state.

This setup works just fine for liquor store owners. As one store owner claimed when discussing a Mississippi reform bill: "out of state retail corporations harvest money that could be recirculating in our local economies….Big out-of-state grocery and box retailers have had years of practice of profiting off the destruction of public health in other states." He went on to note that alcohol markets are "unable to regulate themselves without being destructive to public health and safety" and that if alcohol consumption increased, it would put "undue burden" on taxpayers, public safety officials, and the health care industry. One would be hard-pressed to find a business owner who so loathes the very product he sells, but these arguments are sadly par for the cronyist course when it comes to blocking grocery store booze sales.

While it is unclear how one might go about "harvesting" money, it is clear what this package store owner is really concerned about: protecting his bottom line. Unfortunately, package and liquor store lobbying associations are extremely influential in many states, which leads to reform efforts silently dying in committee year after year.

That's why states like Oklahoma and Colorado have opted for ballot initiatives to expand grocery store alcohol sales, as consumers overwhelmingly are in favor of it. But even successful ballot initiatives have not ended the debate, as a group of Colorado legislators introduced a bill in this year's legislative session to overturn the state's wine-in-grocery-stores ballot initiative (which only went into effect in 2023).

The main argument in favor of this repeal bill? "I don't want to see the independent liquor stores put out of business. They are owned by diverse entrepreneurs—50 percent are women- and minority-owned businesses—and provide jobs," said Colorado state Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder area Democrat who cosponsored the legislation. 

In other words, Justice Antonin Scalia's famous quip about the notorious Lemon test in Supreme Court jurisprudence—analogizing it to "some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried"—could just as readily apply to antigrocery alcohol claims.

After years of scaremongering and anecdotal supposition about whether grocery stores will or will not kill off mom-and-pop booze stores, facts have finally been injected into the debate by FMI, a food industry group. A new FMI paper by Vincenzina Caputo of Michigan State University studies the impact of Tennessee's 2016 reform that allowed wine to be sold in grocery stores in the Volunteer State. The paper compared the number of liquor licenses in post-2016 Tennessee with a hypothetical "synthetic version" of Tennessee in which the reforms were never passed. (This was done via a weighted average of control states that did not pass wine-in-grocery-store legislation.)

The report—a copy of which I obtained from FMI—shows just 62 fewer liquor stores selling wine in postreform Tennessee compared to the nonreform synthetic version of Tennessee—a result which was found to be not statistically significant. Overall, the quantity of liquor stores selling wine in Tennessee increased from 505 stores in 2004 to 733 in 2022, and liquor stores still held the greatest number of wine-selling licenses in the state in the postreform years. 

Further, the Tennessee wine-in-grocery-store reform accounted for a 23 percent increase in wine sales tax volume for the state—undermining the idea that chain stores "harvest" away money from local economies and the tax base.

These results show that our favorite mom-and-pop shops can do just fine in the wake of grocery stores being allowed to sell alcohol. In fact, many of these smaller stores have found a niche specializing in craft beer or hard-to-find wines and liquor that grocery stores have little interest in carrying, a point that both independent store owners and economists have made.

This new research provides a much-overdue corrective to the protectionist claims that small liquor stores have been peddling for years. Now lawmakers just need to listen.

The post Grocery Store Booze Doesn't Hurt Mom-and-Pop Stores appeared first on Reason.com.

The government has a long history of using tracking technology to ascertain our whereabouts, our habits, and even our preferences. From cellphones and cars to snow plows and garbage trucks, governments seemingly want to track anything that moves—or moos.

The USDA recently finalized a rule—set to go into effect in a few months—that will require all cattle and bison being moved across state lines to be tagged with radio-frequency identification (RFID) ear tags. RFID technology uses radio frequency waves to transmit and collect data by way of a system of electronic tags and scanners. The technology is best viewed as a type of electronic or remote barcode, in which scanners can read an RFID chip anywhere from a few meters away to around 100 meters away. In some ways analogous to a shorter-range GPS system, RFID can track geographic location and also operate as a system of data collection and storage.

In the context of livestock, a quick scan of an RFID tag can pull up information like a cow's date of birth, weight, vaccine records, ownership history, what farms it has been to, and what movements it has made. The USDA is justifying its RFID mandate on public health grounds, claiming that it can help trace and eradicate potential disease outbreaks among livestock, such as mad cow disease or hoof-and-mouth disease. 

While plausible at first blush, it is far from clear that the mandate will accomplish its intended objective, and it is very clear that it will disproportionately hurt small and independent ranchers and cattle farmers.

For one thing, most ranchers already want to be able to identify their cattle and have used physical metal tags for years to do so. Electronic RFID tags are twice as expensive as traditional metal tags and also require an upfront investment in scanners and software, making the switch cost-prohibitive for many small farms. Farmers also complain that electronic tags are harder to identify visually from a distance, which matters during cattle drives and other large and quick-paced movements of livestock. Most farmers that use electronic tags therefore also still tag their animals with traditional physical tags, necessitating a double-investment in two types of tags.

There's also the issue of tag retention. "I've talked to many people who have used these RFID tags and their cows have lost 50 percent after five years," Ken Fox, a South Dakota cow farmer and chair of R-CALF USA's Animal Identification Committee, told Wisconsin State Farmer. "By year nine or ten only 14 percent of the tags were left; and our beef cows can be with us for 15 to 20 years, so that's a serious concern." Fox also notes that the RFID scanners often need to be replaced every four or five years.

Fox points out that not all livestock operations are created equal. For dairy farmers who keep their livestock penned up, frequent replacing of tags is more logistically feasible, if still expensive. But for cattle ranchers, tag replacement can be entirely impracticable. "That just doesn't work when we've got cattle on 10,000 or 30,000 acres of range land and we handle those cattle maybe twice a year," said Fox. "If they lose those tags, how are we going to know who those cattle are?" Amish farmers have also opposed electronic tagging on moral grounds given their opposition to technology.

Large cattle operations can afford to double-tag their livestock with physical and electronic tags, and in fact, many have already done so voluntarily—which means the mandate's burden will fall heaviest on small and medium-sized farms and ranches. The USDA rule also favors large cattle operations more directly, including allowing them to use so-called "group identification" for livestock herds of a certain size and continuity.

"The new rule also provides for large-scale cattle operations to use one ID per group of a certain size, instead of one ID per animal," writes Remington Kesten in a blog post for David's Pasture, a small-scale cattle operation in Missouri. "This means that the smaller farms will actually incur more cost per animal once the mandate takes effect, than the big players will." 

Worse yet, this group identification actually undercuts the USDA's entire disease-traceability rationale for mandated electronic tagging. "This intentional loophole also reduces the traceability for large farms and exporters, contradicting the USDA's primary reason for mandating RFID Ear Tags in the first place," notes Kesten.

The rule also fails on its own terms. While supporters point to the 2003 mad cow disease outbreak in Washington state as an example of a situation where electronic tagging could have allowed for quicker identification of where the disease originated, it's worth noting that the government was still able to track the original diseased cow back to its birthplace farm in Canada within 13 days.

It's also worth recognizing that livestock disease outbreaks are exceedingly rare in the United States. An article in Lancaster Farming, which takes a generally favorable bent toward the USDA mandate, notes that hoof-and-mouth disease was last found in America in 1929. Farmers such as Fox have also highlighted the successful combatting of brucellosis in the United States, which was accomplished without electronic tagging. 

If anything, it is large-scale commercial farms that are most responsible for disease outbreaks. "There is no data in over a decade showing that food borne illnesses have resulted from disease on small farms," writes Kesten. "All major disease outbreaks in recent years have occurred on large farms." In other words, small and independent ranchers are bearing the brunt of a new rule in the name of fixing a problem that they have nothing to do with.

Finally, the USDA rule creates significant data privacy concerns. RFID tags cannot distinguish between scanners—which are portable and easily carried in hand—so potentially anyone with a scanner could access the data contained in each tag. Ominously, the USDA rule opts to use the term electronic identification tags instead of the RFID acronym, although for now RFID tags are the only technology approved by the USDA for livestock tagging. 

This flexible language means that USDA is explicitly leaving the door open to even more comprehensive tracking technology. This could come in the form of "active" RFID tags (instead of "passive" ones as currently contemplated) that have a greater range of readability or even GPS tracking of cows via satellites.

One small beacon of hope for American ranchers is that Congress appears to finally be waking up to the USDA's overreach. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) recently introduced legislation that would prohibit the USDA from implementing any rule that mandates electronic tagging technology for cattle and bison.

The USDA is attempting to find a solution for a problem that has already been largely addressed through current practices. 

Fox puts it more colorfully: "Someone told me this story—NASA spent millions trying to develop a pen that could work in sub-zero temperatures and zero gravity. The Russians just used a pencil."

The post The Government Wants To Track Your Steak appeared first on Reason.com.

The question of why the chicken crossed the road is of secondary importance to who gets to claim the bird's carcass if it's killed while attempting the crossing.

For a long time, the rule in a majority of the country was the government got to keep the deceased animal. State laws prohibited drivers from claiming the meat of animals killed on public roads and highways for food. Instead, ownership of the corpses defaulted to whichever agency maintained the roads, wasting countless tons of farm-fresh, slightly battered flesh to rot.

In recent years, a growing number of states have been loosening their highway harvesting bans. The Associated Press reported in 2022 that "30 or so" states now allow people to harvest roadkill. The pace of reform doesn't appear to be slowing down.

Come July, a new Virginia law allowing anyone to claim roadkill all year round will go into effect. Current law allows only the driver who the killed animal to claim the carcass, and only if they hit the animal during hunting season.

Liberalizing roadkill harvesting also stands to unite animal rights activists and fiscal conservatives.

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has endorsed roadkill as superior to supermarket-sold meat.

"Animals killed on the road were not castrated, dehorned, or debeaked without anesthesia, did not suffer the trauma and misery of transportation," says the organization on its website.

Virginia Del. Tony Wilt (R–Harrisonburg), the author of Virginia's new law, advocated for the policy change as a way of reducing the burden on the state's transportation department.

"Currently, if nobody takes the animal, it falls back onto [the Virginia Department of Transportation]. There are certain times of the year when those things can stack up," he said during a committee hearing earlier this year, per reporting from WRIC.

Libertarians would obviously be on board with these policies as well. Under an ideal regime of privatized roads, it's possible that road companies might claim animal carcasses for themselves. But so long as the public owns and operates the highways, it seems only fair that the public be allowed to harvest whatever animals are killed on them as well.

The open road, and all it has to offer, has long been associated with a particularly American vision of freedom. Expanding that freedom to what lies on the side of the road can only be considered a win for individual liberty.

The post New Virginia Law Will Let Anyone Harvest Roadkill Anytime of Year appeared first on Reason.com.

Not one to rest on its laurels, the makers of Oreo cookies are following up the Sour Patch Kids Oreos with Star Wars Oreos. They actually look really cool.

Available in two unique packs made with classic OREO chocolate wafer cookies, each pack has either dark side cookies with red creme or light side cookies with blue creme.

— Read the rest

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Taking a look at the press, it is evident how to use it. And with a few photos and simple steps, I am thrilled to teach you how to make your own tortilla press. The best part- you can make your own incredible tortillas with it for years and generations to come.

The post Make a Tortilla Press appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

Alright, this one is going to get a bit convoluted, so stay with me here. There seems to be something going on in the foreign foodstuffs and restaurant industries lately when it comes to trademarking otherwise common phrases for niche foods in a way that pisses off other providers that operate in those same niche markets. An example of that recently came to be in the form of a “chili crunch” trademark granted to David Chang, after which he blasted out a bunch of cease and desists notices. Chang eventually apologized and promised to not enforce his trademark any longer, though that came only after some rather severe public backlash.

And now we have an interesting and somewhat similar situation out of the UK. Dishoom is an Indian restaurant chain that is seeking to revoke a trademark granted to another restaurateur, Tariq Aziz. That trademark is for “Ruby Murray” in the restaurant industry. Dishoom appears to be at least slightly misguided in its petition, in that it claimed that Aziz was not using the mark in commerce. He absolutely is, having a restaurant named Ruby Murray in London.

The restaurant group’s lawyers want the term to be revoked as a trademarked phrase because they believe it has never been used for commercial purposes.

A spokesperson for Dishoom said: ‘A third party has a trademark registration for Ruby Murray and we don’t believe that they have ever used it.

However, Aziz reportedly refused the application, claiming that he is using the name for a food premises in Islington and does not want the trademark to be revoked.

He said: ‘We have a premises in Islington, north London, called Ruby Murray. It’s closed for refurbishment at the moment, but will reopen soon’.

That certainly appears to be true, unless this website for the Ruby Murray restaurant in London is somehow wholly made up, which I doubt. If that really is the sole reason that Dishoom is seeking to invalidate the trademark, it seems unlikely to work.

Which doesn’t mean that canceling the mark isn’t something that shouldn’t absolutely be considered. Why? Well, it has to do with how the name Ruby Murray became associated with Indian food to begin with.

See, Ruby Murray is the name of a British musician from the 1950s. She was wildly popular at that time throughout the UK and elsewhere. And, in keeping with one of my favorite parts of British slang, where you refer to one thing by the name of a completely different thing that rhymes with the original thing, Ruby Murray’s name became a slang term in the 60s for Indian curry.

So, what Aziz actually did was to trademark a common, generic slang term for a common ingredient in Indian food that was also the name of a very famous person. That would seem to raise all kinds of potential problems for the mark and I would argue it never should have been granted. Its obviously considered a generic term, or you would have thought Murray’s heirs or estate would have challenged the mark themselves.

We’ll see if Aziz truly wants to defend this trademark, as he has until July 15th to state so. It would be better if this all went away and everyone just got back to making awesome Indian food.

The woman who runs the Facebook page and YouTube channel "June Cleavers Vintage Closet" shares vintage fashion and vintage recipes and has cultivated a community of folks interested in the cool, weird, and wacky clothes and foods from days gone by. — Read the rest

The post Man hilariously reacts to gelatin-forward vintage recipes like "spinach and sardine mold" appeared first on Boing Boing.

An Indiana court recently touched off a firestorm of media attention and online debate by ruling that burritos and tacos are sandwiches. The decision exemplifies a longstanding issue in legal interpretation: how to figure out the "ordinary meaning" of words in a statute or regulation. It also highlights the absurdity of zoning rules restricting the development and use of property.

The case arose because developer Martin Quintana wanted to use a property he owned in Fort Wayne, Indiana for commercial purposes. In order to be able to do that, he had to get the Fort Wayne Plan Commission (a local government agency) to "upzone" the area from allowing single-family residential housing only, to allowing some types of commercial uses. The Commission was only wlling to do that in exchange for Quintana signing a "Written Commitment" (required at the behest of a local NIMBY group) under which only certain types of restaurants would be allowed in the area.  The restrictions imposed by the Commitment became new zoning rules for these tracts. Specifically, the Commitment bars "restaurants, including fast food-style restaurants," except for the following:

A sandwich bar-style restaurant whose primary business is to sell "made-to-order" or "subway-style" sandwiches (which by way of example includes, but is not limited to, "Subway" or "Jimmy John's", but expressly excludes traditional fast food restaurants such as "McDonalds", "Arbys" and "Wendys"), provided that any such restaurant shall not have outdoor seating or drive—through service….

One of the businesses Quintana recruited as a tenant for the new development is a Famous Taco establishment—a Mexican restaurant that (as the name implies) serves tacos and burritos. The Plan Commission contended the Famous Taco should be barred because these food options are not "sandwiches." Indiana Superior Court Judge Craig Bobay rejected that argument, concluding that burritos and tacos are, in fact sandwiches:

The proposed Famous Taco restaurant falls within the scope of the general use approved in the original Written Commitment. The proposed Famous Taco restaurant would serve made-to-—order tacos, burritos, and other Mexican-style food, and would not have outdoor seating, drive-through service, or serve alcohol. The Court agrees with Quintana that tacos and burritos are Mexican—-style sandwiches, and the original Written Commitment does not restrict potential restaurants to only American cuisine-style sandwiches. The original Written Commitment would also permit a restaurant that serves made-to-order Greek gyros, Indian naan wraps, or Vietnamese banh mi if these restaurants complied with the other enumerated conditions.

In Indiana, as in most jurisdictions, courts are generally required to interpret laws  (or, in this case, an agreement that has the force of law, by virtue of being embodied in a zoning restriction) in accordance with their "ordinary meaning." The Supreme Court of Indiana recently reiterated that rule in its February decision in Spells v. State.

Do tacos and burritos fall within the ordinary meaning of "sandwich"? It's hard to say. I think most Americans would not usually refer to these items as sandwiches. On the other hand, it's not hard to see why a taco or a burrito would fall under what most ordinary people would understand to be the general concept of a sandwich: meat and/or vegetables encased in bread or some other similar wrap. Thus, it may be that Judge Bobay was right to conclude that tacos and burritos are "Mexican-style sandwiches," even if few people would actually refer to them in that way. It all depends on whether ordinary meaning depends on usage or on people's intuitive theoretical understanding of the concept in question.

This ruling diverges from a controversial 2006 Massachusetts state court decision, which held that tacos, burritos, and quesadillas do not fall within the ordinary meaning of "sandwich," because that term normally refers to a food item encased in two pieces of bread, while these Mexican foods usually only feature one. Judge Bobay does not cite the Massachusetts precedent, which—in fairness—isn't binding in Indiana. He also doesn't consider the issue of whether a sandwich must have two pieces of bread, as opposed to just one.

To my mind, food encased in a single continuous piece of bread (or tortilla roll) still counts as a "sandwich." The top and bottom of a hamburger bun or hot dog roll are sometimes connected to each other. But that doesn't mean hamburgers and hot dogs can't qualify as sandwiches. My wife (who is both a lawyer and much more knowledgeable about food than I am) points out there are "open-face sandwiches" that use only one piece of bread.

Perhaps these kinds of issues reveal the limits of "ordinary meaning" interpretive rules. Ordinary people (at least those who aren't lawyers) usually just don't think about these kinds of conundrums. Thus, when an issue like whether burritos qualify as sandwiches comes up, there may not be any unequivocal "ordinary meaning" answer to the question at hand.

Whichever way you come down on the definition of "sandwich," this case also highlights the absurdity of zoning restrictions on development. Barring some kind of significant danger to public health or safety (of which there is no evidence here), Quintana should not have had to get special permission to use his property for commercial purposes in the first place. It makes even less sense to allow restaurants that serve "'made-to-order' or 'subway-style' sandwiches," but not those that serve other kinds of food. This distinction appears to be based on little more than the esthetic preferences of the Covington Creek Association, the NIMBY group that pressured the Plan Commission into imposing this restriction on the development.

Such NIMBYism causes real harm to both property owners (who are deprived of the right to use their own land as they see fit) and consumers who wish to patronize their services. I don't especially like tacos and burritos, myself. But many people do, which is why there is a substantial demand for restaurants like Famous Taco.

In a forthcoming Texas Law Review article, Josh Braver and I argue that exclusionary zoning rules restricting housing construction violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Restrictions on commercial development are a more complicated case. But under the originalist theories discussed in Part II of the Article, such restrictions also violate the right to use property protected by the Takings Clause, unless they protect against a serious threat to public health or safety, and thereby fall within the "police power" exception (see Section II.C). Things may be different under the living constitution approaches covered in Part III of the article.

The post Indiana Court Rules Burritos and Tacos Qualify as Sandwiches appeared first on Reason.com.

On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill banning the sale or production of lab-grown meat in the state. While a press release framed the bill as an attempt to advance Floridans' freedom by protecting them from the "World Economic Forum's goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects," all the legislation really does is stile competition for the state's meat producers. 

"Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals," DeSantis said in a Wednesday press release. "Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef."

Cultivated, or "lab-grown," meat has been available in the United States on an extremely limited basis, generally limited to individual restaurants, since last year, after the Food and Drug Administration approved two different kinds of cultivated chicken for sale.

However, despite DeSantis' supposed fears about a lab-grown meat takeover, the small cultivated meat industry is struggling. The product isn't currently available anywhere in the United States, let alone in Florida.

Nonetheless, the governor signed Senate Bill 1084, which enacts a wide-ranging ban on cultivated meat, making it illegal "for any person to manufacture for sale, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat in" Florida. Violators of the law face misdemeanor penalties, and businesses caught selling the product could have their licenses suspended.

"We must protect our incredible farmers and the integrity of American agriculture," Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson said in the press release. "Lab-grown meat is a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity, and is in direct opposition to authentic agriculture."

However, it seems DeSantis is the real authoritarian in this situation. Instead of letting Floridians decide for themselves whether they want to try lab-grown meat, DeSantis is having the state step in, all in the name of protecting Floridians from an imaginary threat to their freedom.

Florida's lab-grown meat ban is a perfect marriage of protectionism and the culture war. By framing the tiny lab-grown meat industry as a left-wing threat, DeSantis can justify giving government kickbacks to the meat industry, all while protecting meat producers from a source of future competition. Wednesday's press release goes so far as to brag about a litany of recently passed legislation that "support[s] the state's agriculture and meat industry."

Unfortunately, Florida isn't the first state to ban cultivated meat. Alabama passed a ban on lab-grown meat last month, and legislation to ban the product is pending in Arizona and Tennessee. Italy banned it last year.

The post DeSantis Signs Bill Banning Lab-Grown Meat in Florida appeared first on Reason.com.

I finally got my hands on the elusive Trader Joe's frozen kimbap that exploded in popularity last fall after folks couldn't stop praising it on social media. Apparently, the hype was so extreme that folks were stocking up and even causing a ruckus at some stores. — Read the rest

The post Watch how kimbap is made appeared first on Boing Boing.

In an innovative move, a chain of New York City restaurants introduced virtual cashiers, who are taking customers' orders over Zoom from their homes in the Philippines. The approach has sparked heated debates, with some claiming it is a step toward a dystopian, impersonal future. But the technology might not be as bad as critics think. 

Customers at Sansan Ramen and Sansan Chicken in the Long Island City neighborhood in Queens are no longer greeted by a cashier face-to-face but instead interact with one displayed on a flat-screen monitor. Although physically half a world away, the virtual cashiers handle menu inquiries and take customers' orders just like in any other restaurant.

this is insane

cashier is literally zooming into nyc from the philippines pic.twitter.com/opAyS8AYUs

— brett goldstein (@thatguybg) April 6, 2024

The initiative, launched by New York–based Happy Cashier, has been under testing since October. It currently operates in several stores in Queens, Manhattan, and Jersey City, including the dumpling joint Yaso Kitchen. 

Yet since the virtual cashiers started trending on social media, the system has faced criticism. A New York Times reporter who visited a Sansan Chicken said the cashier had a spotty connection, making it hard to hear. Another reporter tried to order something off the menu at Yaso Kitchen, but the virtual cashier didn't seem to know what they were ordering. And a New York Post article seemed to care more about the system's tipping standards than the benefits of the technology.

Beyond technical glitches, the model has sparked broader economic and social concerns. Critics argue that virtual cashiers are taking away job opportunities from New Yorkers, especially amid the shrinking local fast-food work force. Meanwhile, others have come to the defense of foreign workers who are being "exploited" with a meager salary of $3 an hour—way under New York City's $16.

Despite these concerns, employing virtual cashiers could have several advantages. For struggling businesses, it offers a way to reduce operational costs and maintain lower consumer prices. 

Chi Zhang, the founder of Happy Cashier and a former restaurant owner himself, sees the model as a necessary adaptation. Facing high rents and operational costs, having "a virtual-assistant model, somewhat akin to that employed by overseas call centers, could help maximize small retail spaces and improve store efficiency," he told The New York Times.

"I simply cannot avoid discussing this topic," he told Fortune, referring to using outsourced labor to cut down costs. "The cost is admittedly cheaper than the U.S."

While the operational costs of virtual cashiers are lower for restaurant owners, the wages are also competitive by Philippine standards. According to Zhang, his virtual cashiers are earning over 150 percent more than the average cashier earns back home. It's a win-win situation.

The concept of virtual cashiers is not entirely new. Back in 2022, the Canadian food chain Freshii hired almost 100 workers from places like Nicaragua to take orders and payments through a video calling device after the company was left grappling with staffing shortages caused by the pandemic. 

With the technology still in its pilot stage, improvements are expected. Zhang hopes to quickly scale up the number of virtual assistants by the end of the year, positioning his venture as the leader of a transformative trend in the restaurant industry. 

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing back against claims that he sought to include a special exemption in a new minimum wage law to help a longtime friend and donor—but the governor's objections only underline how the entire law was a giveaway to his political allies.

Starting next month, fast-food chains operating in California will have to pay workers at least $20 per hour, even though the minimum wage for other jobs in the state will remain at $16 per hour. Newsom signed the bill to create that higher wage mandate, but the law includes a special carve-out seemingly tailored to exempt Panera Bread (and other chains that sell bread as a standalone menu item). Newsom had pushed for that exemption, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, as a favor to Greg Flynn, owner and CEO of the Flynn Restaurant Group, which operates 24 Panera locations in the Golden State.

After the story took off in the media, a spokesman for the governor's office claimed the allegation of favoritism was false. Newsom "never met with Flynn about this bill and this story is absurd," wrote Alex Stack in a statement to Reason and other media outlets that covered the story. "Our legal team has reviewed and it appears Panera is not exempt from the law."

The first claim might be true in only the narrowest sense. The Associated Press has confirmed that Flynn met with the governor's staff regarding the minimum wage bill and that he suggested exempting "restaurants like bakeries, bagel shops and delis" from the higher minimum wage law. Flynn denied speaking to Newsom directly, but it certainly appears that he attempted to exercise some influence over the lawmaking process.

Meanwhile, the governor's office's claim that the exemption doesn't apply to Panera only raises other questions—like, why is that exemption there at all?

That's a question that reporters in Sacramento have seemingly been trying to answer for months. Asked directly about the bakery exemption at a press conference last year, Newsom said it was "part of the sausage making" of the legislative process. In the wake of the Bloomberg story, Newsom's office has not offered a better explanation for the carve-out. Until that changes, the questions will persist.

"If [Newsom] is unable to provide a better justification for this carve-out, it raises serious questions about the integrity of his administration," a group of Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter requesting that state Attorney General Rob Bonta investigate the matter.

Newsom's explanations about the carve-out seem to be "falling apart in real time, particularly because Californians are accustomed to watching this administration hand out favors to its friends," Will Swaim, president of the California Policy Center, tells Reason. 

Swaim drew a parallel to the aftermath of the passage of California's Assembly Bill (AB) 5 in 2019, which effectively banned freelancing in many industries. After newspapers complained that the law would make it more difficult for them to use freelance labor, Newsom backed a short-term and then a longer-term exemption for the industry.

Of course, the debate over the narrow bakery exemption to the minimum wage law seems to miss the larger point: the entire law is a bizarre exemption from the state's existing minimum wage statute. Maybe a special interest and personal friend influenced that one section of the new law, but there is no doubt that other special interests—labor unions that give huge campaign contributions—are the reason why the rest of the law singles out fast food restaurants while effectively exempting other employers.

In short: Newsom's claims that special interests didn't influence one part of the bill would be more believable if special interests hadn't obviously influenced the entire bill.

"This was a bad bill to begin with—imposing an unsupportable minimum wage on businesses that operate on razor-thin margins has already raised menu prices and accelerated layoffs in the industry," says Swaim. "Its victims will be small franchisees who don't have Panera's pull and workers who are now facing mass layoffs."

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