“Can the government throw you in jail for offering advice on the Internet about what people should buy at the grocery store?…When does the government’s power to license occupations trump free speech?”
- Blogger becomes overly hefty
- Researches / picks a “Paleo” diet
- Works fabulously
- He blogs it
- Natural extension: answers questions about his diet
- North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition gets wind – starts to protect its turf
I started programming back in high school, got a degree in it, and once getting out into industry, discovered that there were programmers far more skilled and creative than I (not that I was half bad at the time). What hit me in the face was that a degree was not needed to be good at what one did. I also found out there there were folks out there with much more prestigious degrees from more prestigious places than where I went that were wrong more often than I. A degree basically says “I probably took the classes you think I do – and I passed the majority of them.” While it does intimate that a basic level of competence exists, it does not tell if one is living up to that standard or exceeds it. Only the results matter.
Upon getting politically active, I started to realize that at the local, county, state, and federal levels that were about controlling who could participate in what kind of commerce. Oh, I keep hearing that it is all about protecting the consumer (the adult versions of “it’s for the children!”). Instead, most seem to be using the force of government to keep out further competition (really, like eyebrow threading which the AZ Cosmetology Board was threatening fines if such practitioners, that only used cotton threads, didn’t take over 600 hours of training). At a cost of $10K, that was a barrier to competition to rather poor folks just trying to make a living.
Well, the Institute of Justice has become active in defending diabetic blogger Steve Cooksey in protecting his free speech on the Internet from the claims of that NC Board:
(H/T: InstaPundit)
