foster … Capitalists use handsoap, too.

One of my old Scottish socialist golfing friends sent me an email this week with the subject line “I am sure you approve of this anti-regulation stance.” It came with a link to a BBC story headlined “U.S. senator questions forcing food workers to wash hands.” My friend clearly thought he had scored a killer point.

I have, over the years, attempted to convince my old Scottish socialist friends, during our symposia down at the Duke of Kent, that regulation is often both unnecessary and counterproductive. I am invariably faced with the strident claim that “You can’t have unbridled capitalism.”

The notion of “unbridled capitalism” is itself intriguing, because it suggests that capitalism, instead of being an overwhelmingly benign system, is like some rampant wild beast. Indeed, many of my old Scottish friends have a conviction that all businessmen are rip-off merchants at heart. You just can’t trust them. However, as my colleague Bill Watson pointed out so trenchantly in this space on Thursday, we can trust businessmen to pursue their own interests and respond to the discipline of the market.

The story to which my friend sent a link aroused much socialist/liberal glee this week. It referred to a claim by Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican Senator, not that restaurant employees shouldn’t wash their hands, but that this was one of the areas where regulation wasn’t necessary.

It is obviously in the interest of any food service business to enforce hygiene standards on its employees, and reassure its customers that it does so. Mr. Tillis went on to suggest, surely tongue in cheek, that any restaurant that chose to opt out of hygiene regulations would have to post a sign pointing that out.

He was instantly excoriated not merely for suggesting that hand washing wasn’t necessary (which he didn’t) but for recommending a new regulation! That is, the compulsory posting of “We don’t require our employees to wash their hands” signs.

The liberal media had a field day. A headline in the Washington Post read “Restaurant workers shouldn’t have to wash their hands, senator argues.” A comment piece in the same paper ran under the snide headline: “Where some see dirty hands, others see liberty.” The Associated Press Story heading was: “U.S. sen-

Attempts to cover all contingencies creates a mentality that does not ask “Is this right?” but instead asks “Is this legal?”

ator: Give firms more leeway on sanitation.” According to the New York Times, Senator Tillis had defended “the freedom of restaurant employees who don’t want to wash their hands.” CNN’s contribution was “The invisible hand might control the free market — but it also might not be washed.” All, significantly, missed the point, most likely because they are incapable of grasping it.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart also falsely claimed that Senator Tillis wanted people not to clean up after going to the bathroom. Thus, according to Mr. Stewart, the Senator reflected the utter barminess of right-wing utopian ideologues. The fake newsman projected a possible free-market price spike in cholera medication. Then came the fake serious bit. Sure, said Mr. Stewart, some regulations might be too onerous, but people obviously had to be forced to “de-poop.” After all, these regulations didn’t come about because government was in the pocket of “big soft soap.” Hilarious. Back in the land of sober sanity (and sanitation), hand washing regulations are impossible to oversee, at least by government, which is too busy misregulating other areas. All they lead to is those signs that read “Employees must wash their hands,” which create the discomforting suspicion among customers that kitchen staff and servers might really be too dumb to wash up without graphic instructions.

One of the many dangers of regulation that attempts to cover all contingencies is that it creates a mentality that does not concentrate on serving customers and asking “Is this right?” but instead asks “Is this legal?” It also creates the far more dangerous false impression that governments can protect people from all dangers and hardships. I have no doubt that Greece has comprehensive, EU-approved rules about hand washing in Tavernas.

Frederic Bastiat, the great French economic satirist, who lived at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Mr. Stewart, pointed to the fundamental flaw of the mentality on display here.

“Socialism,” wrote Bastiat in his classic, The Law, “like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

Bastiat lived in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the germ theory of disease, and related sanitation measures (such as the great capitalist innovations of cotton clothing, soap and mains sewage) were being developed. In his day, even surgeons didn’t wash their hands. Nevertheless, he would have had no problem understanding the “socialist” mentality of somebody who claimed that because a fan of free markets suggested that hand-washing regulations weren’t necessary, she was against hand washing.

I must remember to bring that up at the next symposium.