A Stitch in Haste

This really annoys me:

Herb Vest believes that true love should come with a criminal-background check. Vest is the chief executive of True.com, an online dating service that pledges to verify whether your dream date is a convicted felon or, worse yet, already married.
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This would be an engaging but otherwise unremarkable business plan, except for one twist. Instead of competing head-to-head with his rivals in the business world, Vest has veered into the political world by pressing for new laws that would put True.com's competitors at a severe disadvantage.

Vest has managed to convince legislators in states including California, Texas, Virginia, and Michigan to sponsor bills that would target rival dating sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Spring Street Networks, craigslist and eHarmony.

Those sites would be required to stamp this stark warning atop every e-mail and personal ad, in no less than 12-point type:

"WARNING: WE HAVE NOT CONDUCTED A FELONY-CONVICTION SEARCH OR FBI SEARCH ON THIS INDIVIDUAL."
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True.com, of course, has ensured that it would be exempt from the warning requirement. So would any other Internet matchmaker -- not that any other company qualifies -- that "conducts a search for the person's felony and sexual offense convictions through a regularly updated database" that "contains more than 170 million criminal records and sex offender registries."

It used to be "build a better mousetrap." Now it's "buy a better politician."

But of course this is just new technology, not new tactics. Government-imposed barriers to entry (i.e., the politics of pull) are the quick and easy way to make a buck. Quality, variety, innovation and, of course, price cutting (i.e., capitalism) are the hard way. Go figure.

I've been somewhat silent and inactive on the whole topic of domestic trade barriers such as licensure and credentialing. If you want to learn about some other horror stories, the heroes at the Institute for Justice have plenty for you.

It's a sad point to concede, really. Licensing can, if implemented honestly, be an economically efficient operating framework within a jurisdiction. Consumers, in theory, not only know that the licensed practitioner has demonstrated a certain minimum quantum of education, training or competence, but also -- and this was why I was a holdout -- have easier recourse in the case of a dispute. If you're licensed, then the state knows where to find you (e.g., for service of process), making it easier for substandard practitioners to be sued, fined, barred, etc.

But I'm coming to the realization that these benefits are negated, by orders of magnitude, via the anti-competitive impact of reduced supply and innovation.

Oh well.

Hopefully this obnoxious maneuver by Vest will wither on the vine as its sheer stupidity, not to mention its fundamental unfairness, are exposed by the media and the blogosphere. If not, then perhaps some merry libertarian litigators will find the time to help all those looking for love -- non-felon or otherwise -- in cyberspace.

Hat tip to PrivacySpot.

"Gay white libertarian lawyer-banker; 38; literate, over-educated and rich with cute dog, seeks non-felon for..."