[From article]
Kentucky, however, like some other states, requires movers to obtain a CON. Kentucky's statute says such certificates shall be issued if the applicant is "fit, willing and able properly to perform" moving services — and if he can demonstrate that existing moving services are "inadequate," and that the proposed service "is or will be required by the present or future public convenience and necessity."
Applicants must notify their prospective competitors, who can and often do file protests. This frequently requires applicants to hire lawyers for the hearings. There they bear the burden of proving current inadequacies and future necessities. And they usually lose. From 2007 to 2012, 39 Kentucky applications for CONs drew 114 protests — none from the general public, all from moving companies. Only three of the 39 persevered through the hearing gantlet; all three were denied CONs.
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"The principle is imbedded in our constitutional system that there are certain essentials of liberty with which the state is not entitled to dispense," including "the opportunity to apply one's labor and skill in an ordinary occupation."
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socialism's knowledge problem: For government to supplant markets in the efficient allocation of wealth and opportunity, governments must have infinite information to make them clairvoyant.
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Judicial tolerance of CON laws is a result of judges embracing the "rational basis" excuse for retreating from judging. Such judges are either confessing that they cannot fathom basic political processes or they are saying that they cannot trust themselves to recognize brazen, unapologetic rent-seeking when they see it.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will010115.php3
A strike against rent-seeking
By George Will
Published Jan. 1, 2015
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