Bad Ideas

This is the card I recently handed out to several students.

The back of the card referred to some "bad ideas" that can hurt your chances for getting the kind of career -- and life -- that you probably prefer.

What are those "bad ideas"?

Here is one:

No such thing as a free ride?

This fellow started a service giving free rides home from bars to those who had too much to drink, keeping potentially unsafe drivers off the road.

This is a bad idea?

No.

The bad idea is quoted in the linked article:

[He was arrested for offering this service because] "Taxi companies, thinking Jonathan was taking their money, lobbied that he was operating a Taxi service without a license, and won." (emphasis added)

The bad idea is the notion that the provider of a service -- in this case, the taxi companies -- somehow owns the right to not only keep providing that service but to control potential competitors.

An even broader -- and possibly worse! -- idea is illustrated here by the fact that peaceful, voluntary exchanges between Jonathan and potential riders were prevented, potentially violently, by others. Inevitably justified as "protecting the public," note that one group -- the established taxi companies -- benefits while Jonathan and his riders lose out.

The belief that some individuals have the right to control voluntary transactions among others, while benefiting certain privileged groups, has done incalculable harm to careers and overall prosperity for millennia. And it is still happening: just ask Jonathan.