Arbitrary Laws: ex US President John F. Kennedy on Cuban Cigars

Here is an example of how politicians make use of, or arbitrage regulations to their advantage.

From the Daily Mail, (hat tip Professor Russ Roberts)

President John F Kennedy ordered an aide to buy him as many Cuban cigars as he could just hours before he authorised the U.S. trade embargo - which subsequently made them illegal.

Kennedy asked his head of press and fellow cigar smoker Pierre Salinger to obtain '1,000 Petit Upmanns' on February 6, 1962, so he could have them in his hands before they were deemed contraband.

Then, seconds after he was told the next morning that 1,200 of Cuba's finest export had been bought for him, he signed the decree to ban all of the communist state's products from the U.S.

As Edmund Burke once said

Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity