Government regulation is often framed as protection for the consumers at the expense of big companies. That’s what the regulators want you to think. What is usually missed is that regulation is a way to protect big companies from competition created by smaller companies.

In 2003, Congress enacted the “Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act,” which granted the FTC a regulatory franchise over sellers of contact lenses. Additionally, in 2005 Congress decreed that decorative (non-medical) contact lenses were “restricted medical devices” subject to the regulatory monopoly of the Food and Drug Administration. Because of these two decrees, anyone selling decorative contact lenses must, under FTC rules, obtain and verify prescriptions from a government-licensed optometrist or ophthalmologist for every consumer who wishes to purchase such “restricted medical devices.”

Read more about the woman who was car jacked by the FTC

The FTC is forcing a woman to sell her car to pay the fines for daring to sell decorative contact lenses for theatrical and other uses like Halloween costumes. No one was hurt. There was no fraud. She just had the nerve to supply a product to an adult without the proper government meddling.

The federal government is too big and out of control.

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