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Harassing Teachers
Of course any student can change teachers at any time.What’s the FTC got to do with it? Well, early in 2016, the agency took it upon itself to intervene heavily in the market for piano teaching.The FTC sent a small nonprofit – the Music Teachers National Association – a letter accusing it of promoting anticompetitive trade practices. This is all because their manual discourages teachers from aggressively poaching students from other teachers.
The code is not a mandate, but a statement of a common practice in the industry. It is a matter of courtesy, really. It's never been enforced. It doesn't have to be. These teachers depend on the support of the community for recitals, ideas, referrals, and general support. They are a happy community and this kind of behavior, by tradition, is regarded as unsporting.
Of course any student can change teachers at any time, as you might know if you have ever been part of this community. You can leave one teacher and go to another. If you do that, however, you must be nice about it, just so that you can keep peace in the community. Another factor here is that every teacher has his or her own method and pacing. Hopping from teacher to teacher isn’t always the best way to learn.
In any case, the FTC seized on the sentences in the Association’s manual and declared it to be incompatible with the bureaucracy’s version of what constitutes genuine competition. Their economists have models, don’t you know, and these models determine what is good for students and teachers. The Association – which no piano teacher has to join in order to teach – immediately offered to take the sentence out of its code. That wasn’t enough.
As Kim Strassel reports in the Wall Street Journal:
With a dozen employees and a $2 million budget...the MTNA staff still had to devote months compiling thousands of documents demanded by the agency, some going back 20 years: reports, the organization's magazines, everything Mr. Ingle had ever written that touched on the code. Mr. Ingle estimates he has spent "hundreds upon hundreds" of hours since March complying with this federal colonoscopy.
This October, MTNA signed a consent decree—its contents as ludicrous as the investigation. The association did not have to admit or deny guilt. It must, however, read a statement out loud at every future national MTNA event warning members against talking about prices or recruitment. It must send this statement to all 22,000 members and post it on its website. It must contact all of its 500-plus affiliates and get them to sign a compliance statement.
The association must also develop a sweeping antitrust compliance program that will require annual training of its state presidents on the potential crimes of robber-baron piano teachers. It must submit regular reports to the FTC and appoint an antitrust compliance officer. (The FTC wanted the officer to be an attorney, but Mr. Ingle explained that this would "break the bank," so the agency—how gracious—is allowing him to fill the post.) And it must comply with most of this for the next 20 years.
Yes, this is what bureaucracies do. To make work for themselves, they have these models on their desks and scrounge around for instances of reality that do not conform. Maybe they are just googling around and find something objectionable. They flex their muscles by issuing menacing letters. They completely disregard the normal course of human interaction (and human decency too) to force behavior into their preferred path. Once they are finished, and lives and whole institutions are wrecked, they call it a success. They then move on to the next victim.
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Originally Posted by Ron Paul
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