The Big Mistake They Made
You’ve probably heard about the turf war between the federal government – Donald Trump – and the state of California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) over who gets to decree “emissions” requirements for motor vehicles sold in California.
And not just in California.
CARB is a state-level bureaucracy that operates effectively as a national one by emitting regulations for California that are followed by the vehicle manufacturers because so many other states have aped CARB’s regulatory emissions that they are effectively obliged to manufacture only “California compliant” vehicles. It would be too expensive to make cars for California and the dozen other states (including New York and most of the New England states as well as western states such as Oregon and Washington) that have aped California’s regulatory regime and then make another batch and sell those in the other states that have not aped California’s regulatory regime.
It would have been much better for the manufacturers if they’d not kowtowed to California in the first place, which is just what they did a long time ago.
CARB began emitting regulations back in the ’70s. The regs required additional hardware be added to new vehicles in order for them to be legal to sell in the state. The regs also limited what could be sold in the state. For example, while GM’s Pontiac division could sell you a
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
