By Daniel Bobinski
A recent story at the Epoch Times quoted California’s Dear Leader Gavin Newsome talking about new legislation that will control California’s oil companies. This legislation creates new regulations and extensive oversight for oil companies, and states that an appointed commission will be created to issue fines and penalties for oil companies earning profits beyond state-imposed limits.
After the legislation passed the Senate in late March, Newsome said, “For decades, oil companies have gotten away with ripping off California families while making record profits and hiding their books from public view. With this proposal, California leaders are ending the era of oil’s outsized influence and holding them accountable.”
The bill not only limits profits, it limits what kind of petroleum processing activities the companies can do.
Let’s parse that.
- A company will be told by the government how much profit it can make.
- An unelected commission appointed by those holding power will monitor the companies and fine them / penalize them if they make more profit that is allowed by the state.
- A company is limited by the government how much of each type of activity it can do.
Anyone with a knowledge of the different types of governments knows these things do not occur in a Republic, the type of government required by the U.S. Constitution. No, through this legislation and Newsome’s comments, California is now operating as an oligarchy. Specifically, California is now an interventionist oligarchy, in which a ruling elite uses their power to favor certain industries or businesses to protect their own interests, as well as suppress opposition.
Other industries have already encountered the heavy hand of government restrictions. The ride-sharing industry (e.g., Uber and Lyft) have been burdened with multiple restrictions and extra requirements. The healthcare industry has been micromanaged to the nth degree with regard to medical billing and coding. These plus the construction, finance, and agriculture industries are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to business sectors constrained by oligarchs flexing their muscles.
If it hasn’t occurred to your yet, this can now happen to any industry.
Just for fun, let’s see how other interventionist actions could play out.
What if people in California’s government decided to limit the number of nail salons allowed per population, as well as the number of activities allowed at nail salons? For example, what if people were allowed only so many mani-pedi’s each year? Using their interventionist approach, unelected commissions could temporarily or even permanently close nail salons if they provided services to people beyond their annual allotment.
What if the manufacturing of makeup products were deemed unsafe for the environment, and people were restricted to purchasing only so many ounces of cosmetics annually? With digital currency enabling governments to track all purchases, what if stores were financially penalized for allowing people to purchase more than their annual limit?
What if mobile phone companies were deemed to be making obscene profits, and an unelected commission penalized phone companies if they exceeded those profits? At first glance, people might cheer such actions, but after companies scaled back their services, how would the public respond when features they love started disappearing as a result of government restrictions?
As our Republics dissolve and Oligarchies replace them, this formerly great country becomes that what so many millions died fighting against in the last century.
In private conversations I have with many high-profile patriots, the consensus is that the Republic is gone. The framework for it still exists on paper in the founding documents of just about every state and municipal government, but unless people get active at the local level to restore operations to how these governments were designed, the cities, counties, and states of this country will continue to morph into what our Founders and grandfathers fought against.
As with all things, the choice is up to us.