So here is a story about the "infrequent inspections, deficient safety requirements, and low hiring standards" of day care operations around the country. We need federal regulations! Or so says the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.
Two questions.
Why isn't is obvious that if any industry can be self-regulating, it is this one? No one has more of an incentive to inspect the quality of daycare than parents. Left to the competitive forces of the market, the industry can only improve with time. How can anyone posit a systematic market failure in an industry in which every paying consumer is constantly breathing down the provider's neck?
Second, why does the media not smell a rat here? I mean, if the Mises Institute were to release a report about the low quality of Misesian bloggers, and demanded federal regulation to keep out bloggers who are less than the ideal, wouldn't people suspect that we were seeking a monopoly privilege? One would assume so. So why don't people immediately see what the NACCRRA is up to? It seeks a kind of federally protected union status among child-care providers. The heck of it is that this outfit is funded by you.
