Expel These Vultures
By Robert Higgs • Saturday June 4, 2011 2:17 PM PDT • 11 Comments
If a buzzard were to fly about three miles to the southwest from my home in rural St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, he would come to St. Joseph Abbey and Seminary College, a monastery and seminary maintained by Benedictine monks. When he arrived, however, he would find other vultures already hovering over the abbey.
These vultures are funeral directors whose cartel privileges are legally enforced by the Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, one of the countless predatory bodies the state legislatures have seen fit to create during the past century and a half in order to protect unscrupulous sellers from honest competition and, along the way, to grease the palms of the co-conspiring politicos, all at the expense of consumers.
A few years ago, seeking a new means of supporting the abbey and themselves, the monks began to produce and sell simple yet entirely serviceable wooden caskets. Where’s the crime in their doing so? Well, some people are willing to take any despicable action whatsoever to suppress competing sellers. One such despicable party was Boyd L. Mothe, Jr., vice president of Mothe Funeral Homes, who brought a formal complaint against the abbey’s casket sales in 2008, based on the state’s restriction of the trade.
On Monday, June 6, a trial will take place in U.S. District Court in regard to the abbey’s plea for declaratory and injunctive relief from the state’s enforcement of its law that only licensed funeral directors may sell “funeral merchandise.” The monks are being represented pro bono by the Institute for Justice.
Let us pray that the court sees fit—if only to do something out of the ordinary—to reach a just decision in this case. The monks surely deserve relief from the menacing presence of the vultures hovering over their beautiful monastery.
Tags: Business, Economics, Free Market, Law, Liberty, Property Rights, Regulation, The State 
Here are additional news accounts of the lawsuit:
“Coffins Made With Brotherly Love Have Undertakers Throwing Dirt,” by Jennifer Levitz (Wall Street Journal)
“Benedictine Monks Sue for the Right to Make Caskets” (WGNO-TV, ABC, New Orleans)
“Benedictine Monks Sue for the Right to Make Caskets,” by Ramon Antonin Vargas (New Orleans Times-Picayune)
“Monks head to court to keep building coffins” (Fox 8 News)
David Theroux | Jun 5, 2011 | Reply
I have just spent a frustrating but enjoyable hour trying to find a particular Adam Smith quotation about goups of tradepeople meeting together and how these meetings (almost?)invariably involve discussions as to how to prevent fair trade and thus increase profit. The nearest I can find is “The interest of the dealers in any particular branch of trades or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public”.
Can anyone find the other quote I’ve been searching for?
John Harrison | Jun 7, 2011 | Reply
Ya gotta be kidding, huh? Only licensed funeral directors can sell boxes sized to put dead bodies in?
How about body bags? Shrouds? Shirts and suit coats with open backs (to save cloth)? Guest registers?
What a racket. How much did they have to bribe the legislators to put this on the books?
Al | Jun 7, 2011 | Reply
John, the quotation is: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.”
—Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Robert Higgs | Jun 7, 2011 | Reply
I agree that vultures hover. As your former student, I hope that the Courts, and my profession, the legal profession, can see the wrong headedness of the restraint on an open market.
James K. Adams | Jun 7, 2011 | Reply
Dr Higgs,
Many thanks. I’ll try and memorize the quote for future reference.
John Harrison | Jun 8, 2011 | Reply
Robert Higgs: 6/11/2011
Unbeknownst to many,there is a very comfortable relationship between the Church/State complex.The appearance of being separate is synthetic and a spectacle.They work together in creating unity among people(with opposite views)yielding,a balance of power and control over the people.
Thanking you for your attention to this matter – #6
James deLaurier | Jun 11, 2011 | Reply
Mr. deLaurier,
In my view, the relation of the state and the church(es) is enormously more complex than your statement suggests. The relation has varied tremendously from time to time and from place to place. On some occasions, the church has served as a powerful constraint on the state; on other occasions, it has been completely in league with the state. Many states have sought to destroy or neuter the church, whereas, for various reasons, other states have encouraged people to exercise their religious faiths. I do not subscribe to a Marxist view of religion as mere superstructure or to a view that regards it as always or normally co-conspiring with the state to keep the people in line, although I do recognize times and places in which this description fits fairly well.
Robert Higgs | Jun 11, 2011 | Reply
Dr. Robert Higgs: 6/12/2011
Thank you for your prompt reply to my post. My comment was intended to be brief for the sake of brevity.
I respect your opinions on this and other matters of which you write about.
Again, thank you -
James deLaurier | Jun 12, 2011 | Reply