Sunday roundup

 Why can't you get an Uber ride in Boston? Because the city council outlawed surge pricing:

Boston is one of the cities that passed a law banning what’s known as “surge pricing” among gig-economy companies. That allows ride-share rates to be raised during high-demand hours. It’s a good system because it provides a greater incentive for drivers to log on, reducing wait times while allowing the drivers to earn more than they normally would.

But Boston outlawed that, so some of the drivers are asking why they should bother working during the worst traffic conditions if there’s nothing extra in it for them. One driver told the Globe that he’s been making one-third less during peak hours since the law went into effect. The City Council originally claimed that they were passing the law to protect consumers from “outrageous” prices during peak demand hours. But in reality, as we’ve seen in so many other cities run by Democrats, they were doing whatever they could get away with to damage Uber’s business model. This was done on behalf of the traditional taxi companies and their unions who provide plenty of donations to primarily Democratic political campaigns.

Scott Hubbard at Desiring God takes a look at the matter of sin still showing up in our lives even after we've said yes to Jesus.  

Andrew T. Walker at Baptist Press on what a Christian response to Pride Month looks like. 

Carolyn Moore explores just what it was about a cartoon she ran across that bugged her so much:

I saw this cartoon online a few weeks ago, and I can’t shake it so I’m going to have to write about it. Just in case it doesn’t show up on your screen I’ll describe it. It’s Jesus schooling a group of religious leaders. “The difference between me and you,” he says, “is you use scripture to determine what love means and I use love to determine what scripture means.”

When I saw it online, it had all kinds of “amens” in the comment section. And I have to admit: it sounds good. What could sound more anti-bad-religion and pro-Jesus than the idea of letting love be our filter for understanding what the Bible says? The wording is so slick and catchy that it’s a shame it is such bad theology. 

And it is. 

Jason Riley, writing at Quillette, looks into how Thomas Sowell's Harvard years were when rumblings indicative of his ultimate direction as a thinker could first be discerned. 

I'm currently reading The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman. My interest was therefore piqued by this piece by him at Deseret News:

“Others” do not exist for “our” satisfaction or self-actualization. Rather we all exist for the sake of one another. And that, of course, has implications for sexual morality and behavior. To those who acknowledge their bodies as who they are, not simply the raw material of self-creation, and who understand the rational, dependent nature of our life, sex can never be simply a means of personal pleasure whereby others are reduced to being mere instruments of our own satisfaction. Nor can it come to occupy a central place in how identity is understood. It is not sexual desire that defines us but the relationships of which sexual activity is a meaningful part.

Danielle Pletka, writing at The Dispatch, makes clear the it would be a supremely bad idea for the Biden administration to enter into a revived JCPOA-type agreement with Iran.

Republicans' most recent fool's errand - harboring any kind of hope that the Very Stable Genius would focus on policy and knock it off with the stolen-election nonsense - ought to be one more learning experience for them, but it seems the party has become impervious to learning experiences. Gosh, maybe he'll clean up his act for the next rally:

Former President Donald Trump dashed the hopes of Republicans on Saturday who spent the weeks leading up to his public reemergenceencouraging him to keep his focus on policy and Democratic shortcomings, rather than re-litigating his 2020 election loss once again. 

In a nearly 90-minute speech to North Carolina Republicans gathered for their annual state convention, Trump baselessly claimed that his defeat by President Joe Biden last November was "the crime of the century" and likened the 2020 presidential contest to a "third-world" election. 

"Remember," Trump told the crowd after repeating numerous falsehoods about widespread election fraud, "I am not the one who is trying to undermine American democracy, I am the one who is trying to save it." 

"What happened to this country in that last election is a disgrace," he continued, noting that he has been pleased with Republican-led efforts in Florida and Texas to impose new legislative restrictions on voting. "I would like to see Georgia be much tougher," he noted.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial on Mitch Daniels's commencement address at the school he presides over, Purdue University.  

Barney & Clyde - Season 2, Episode 16

 It's here!

Pour yourself something bracing, pull up a stool and join us at the virtual libation station for an hour of examination of 

NOT QUITE A BUSINESS, NOT QUITE A GOVERNMENT AGENCY - The US Postal Service: the upcoming hearings on its current predicament, Trump’s bluster about its role in the upcoming elections, a bit about the service’s history (with a particular focus on Nixon making it quasi-autonomous in 1970), the role of the union, and its unfunded liabilities. 

I’LL DECIDE THAT FOR MYSELF, THANK YOU - Uber’s announcement that it will suspend operations if it’s forced to regard its drivers as employees.

TURNING DOWN THE TEMPERATURE IN A PERENNIAL HOTBED - Could the Israel-UAE deal be a harbinger of a new era in the Middle East?

I DON’T NEED THIS KIND OF GRIEF - Law-enforcement morale in mid-2020 America.

The economic cost of regulation zealotry

Austin, Texas may think of itself as that state's hippest metropolitan area, but it just took a big step in the direction of economic decline. Not only is an income stream that until last week was enjoyed buy thousands of Austinites no longer available to them, the effort to court the kinds of industries that are set to thrive in the next few years ha taken a big hit.

Courtney Powell at Austin Startups.com looks at the full impact of Prop 1, the city-council legislation that insists that Uber and Lyft have to conduct fingerprint checks on drivers.

Let's start with the aggregate income loss to those residents who have been driving:

If we estimate the total wages earned by part-time Uber and Lyft drivers in 2015 using the numbers above — 10k drivers in Austin multiplied by 60% part-time drivers, multiplied by 5 hours per week (as the only data I have says 60% of drivers work less than 10 hours per week, I‘m using this as a safe estimate), multiplied by $19 per hour — that’s $29 million in part-time yearly earnings alone that will no longer be fed right back into the local economy in the form of income, spending, and taxes.

Powell points up how private organizations that need to make a profit view economic activity and what the proper role of government is as it relates to that:

Many have said that the resulting job loss is Uber and Lyft’s fault. I disagree. The inherent role of a business that has taken on (in this case massive) outside funding, is to produce a financial return for their shareholders. This doesn’t mean funded businesses shouldn’t operate ethically, care deeply for their employees and customers, or contribute to the communities they do business in, but at the same time, they are bound by a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.

The City of Austin, however, has no such constraints. The Office of the Mayor and City Council is beholden to the people, and people alone. Their job is to protect the interest of the city and it’s citizens. I know of no greater interest for Austinites than enabling every opportunity for as many citizens as possible to earn a living.

In the course of her piece, she examines other aspects of the issue, such as safety (Drunk-driving crashes were reduced by 12 percent in 2014 and 2015), and the above-mentioned harm to Austin's reputation in the tech start-up world. She also links to an Atlantic article that demonstrates the complete lack of correlation between fingerprinting and rider safety.

Just as with the Wendy's chain's food-ordering kiosks as a response to minimum-wage idiocy, this is a case of utterly unsurprising consequences arising from the intentional hobbling of the free market.

H/T: Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media