Musings on the "Do Not Call List"

I know that telemarketers are annoying (and that they drive my wife, in particular, crazy), however as I watch this “do not call” brouhaha emerge I have to ask myself, “is this really the kind of the thing that the federal government ought to worrying about? (Indeed, it has been a trifecta, with the legislative, executive and judicial all getting involved here). Is this the proper way to spend the time of legislators, bureaucrats, and judges?

I am sufficiently libertarian (and capitalistic) in my leanings to think that a market-based solution is sufficient—if enough people don’t buy things from telemarketers, then the whole thing will cease to exist. Don’t buy products from companies who call your house, and tell them so over the phone. I just hang up on them. Or, just use call waiting or your answering machine to screen calls. Heck, my brother has a set up now where your number doesn’t ring through if it isn’t on a list (kind of like a spam filter for the phone). On the one hand, one might say “I shouldn’t have to go to such extremes”—but on the other, is it the proper role of government to keep us from being annoyed? The whole thing smacks of “there oughta be a law syndrome” which ultimately does nothing more than expand, over time, the reach of the government over our daily lives. While there is nothing nefarious about a “do not call” list, per se, there is something that I don’t like about using the government to deal with a minor annoyance.

Overall I simply get itchy when the government at any level gets overly involved with the minutiae of our daily lives, or attempts to micromanage inconvenience.