ליברטריאנים בישראל

News media report that the Knesset Committee for Education, Culture and Sports had approved new sub-regulations for the Motor Sports Law – paving the way to finally legalize car racing in Israel. For those keeping score at home: the original law passed in 2005, and the process of working out regulations for it had taken the government five years. Sports fans had been struggling to legalize racing since 2001.

For years, the Israeli government had promoted policies hostile to the private automobile – taxes on cars range from 73% and up, fuel is taxed at punitive rates, and the very importation of cars has been transformed by regulatory processes into a cartelized, non-competitive industry – yet once more raising the price of cars.

With racing, the process is entirely the same. Once more, the government – within the five years it took to do so – was entirely incapable, it appears, of looking up the safety rules used in other parts of the world to regulate racing. It was not possible – unthinkable, even! – to let private sports associations set safety rules, like those that govern stock car racing in the United States. Simply translating Florida or Kansas law and applying it to stock car racing in the Negev desert would be completely unbelievable – radical, in fact!

Instead, the government appointed a committee – does anybody know who the members of the committee are? – and made their best effort to regulate motor sports to be as expensive as possible.

Shavit added that the approval of the regulations will not necessarily lead to races in the near future. “We are not in a position to easily hold races,” he said. “For organizers, it is hard to conform to these regulations… Furthermore, the regulations make the sport more expensive, and will hurt amateur enthusiasts.”

Such a thing, of course, would be impossible to pull off with a popular sport. Were the government to pass regulations to make it more difficult for amateurs to play soccer or basketball, the public would be outraged – and absolutely correct to be. Yet it appears that when a sport is unpopular and obscure, the government is completely free to assault it to the best of its ability.

One can only hope that our racers learn from this experience, and continue standing up for their right to engage in their favored sports – and that our citizens will stand up for each other’s freedom to engage in their hobbies, even if these hobbies are not always popular.