Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

If there’s a genuine, long-term good to come out of the virus crisis, it’s the number of laws and regulations governments have suspended – and how those actions have increased choices, opportunities…while harming no one.

As Charles Blain writes:

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott waived oversize and overweight restrictions for commercial trucks and suspended requirements to register under the International Registration Plan or to obtain temporary registration, as long as the truck is registered in one US state.

Gov. Abbott also waived regulations allowing doctors to receive the same payment for over-the-phone telemedicine visits that they would for in-person visits for patients on state-regulated insurance plans.

Most notably, he waived state laws that prohibit alcohol industry trucks from delivering supplies to grocery stores saying, “by removing these regulations, we are streamlining the process to replenish the shelves in grocery stores across the state.” All of these moves allowed for the market to identify the needs of the public and fill them as quickly as possible.

In Boston, restaurants typically need a specific permit to provide carry-out service, but Mayor Marty Walsh lifted that requirement to allow for every restaurant to offer the service. Even New York City suspended its enforcement of illegal e-bikes during the crisis to accommodate for the influx of delivery orders, the state also moved to allow liquor-to-go.

We’re in the midst of a massive social experiment. One component is seeing how we do without inane regulations that serve the narrowest of interest while penalizing everyone else.

And if we can come out the other side of this mess and still have “liquor-to-go”? Then the future may indeed be a little bit brighter.

Image Credit: By St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons