No Coercion

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, had a great column in the Wall Street Journal a couple days ago:

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

Mackey lists eight things government should do to reform health care that don’t involve increasing government control, power, and spending (including a couple I’ve mentioned before).

The only one I might take issue with is his recommendation to “make costs transparent.” I’m not sure what he means by that. It gives the impression of some kind of government regulatory agency imposing transparency as is done in some other sectors. That, of course, I would argue strongly against as government aggression. Of course, he may simply mean that government should halt particular actions it currently takes that actually prevent cost transparency, in which case I heartily support the idea.

Also (and this may just be an issue of imprecise wording), he mentions that the “right” to health care “has never existed in America.” This is true, of course, but logically speaking, there can be no such thing as a “right” to a certain level of health care, regardless of your particular country. As I point out regularly, a right to a certain level of health care (or housing, or wage rate) would imply the necessity of Peter robbing Paul to pay for it, and that violates the fundamental right of all sentient beings–the right not to have force initiated against your person or property. And when that fundamental right is not recognized, we’re no better than animals fighting over scarce resources under a regime of “might makes right.”

At any rate, a generally outstanding piece by the wise Mr. Mackey.

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Obama and the more leftist Democrats in Congress are bound and determined to “fix” American health care with some form of massive federal involvement in health insurance coverage. As with the financial crisis, the government is purporting to fix a problem that stems from too much government interference in the market…by imposing even more government interference in the market.

In industries burdened far less by government tampering consumers get products of ever-increasing quality at ever-decreasing prices. In a free market we would especially expect to see such a pattern in health care, but we don’t. And the reason has nothing to do with “greedy” doctors or drug companies or insurance companies–unless of course you think that greed (that is, the natural human desire to improve one’s circumstances) is limited to the health care industry and that all those cell phone, computer, and coffee maker companies are giving you better and cheaper products out of a sense of charity. No, the reason has everything to do with government actions hindering a free market.

Here are just a few of the ways, in no particular order, that government (often in the name of “protecting the consumer”) keeps you from enjoying the benefits of a free market in health care:

1) Professional licensing. Every state government requires health care providers (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, chiropractors, etc.) to be licensed by the state. This is simply a barrier to entry that existing providers tend to favor because it reduces competition and allows them to charge higher fees. Rather than protect consumers, it leaves them with fewer (and more expensive) choices.

2) Pharmaceutical and medical device regulation. The FDA regulates drugs and devices and imposes massive costs on their development. The result is that many drugs and devices that could help people never make it to the market, and those that do are delayed by many years, are much more expensive, and usually are restricted even further by being prescription-only.

3) Tax code. The federal tax code creates an incentive for employers-provided health coverage (a practice that originated as a result of totalitarian WWII-era wage controls), thus encouraging extensive third-party medical payments. When consumers pay less for something, they use more of it. Medical providers know that individual consumers are not shopping around, so there’s less incentive for them to be competitive on price.

4) Medicare and Medicaid. Just as with government subsidies for college tuition, the subsidizing of health care through Medicare and Medicaid cause demand to be artificially increased, thus causing prices for everyone else to rise well beyond natural market levels. And of course the increasing prices drain individuals’ income and thus create additional “need” for Medicaid and other government welfare. In addition, when you subsidize health care, you incentivize poor health, increasing demand yet again. Finally, the large number of Americans now on Medicare, combined with the rules governing reimbursements for each procedure or medication, means that medical pricing in America is now grossly distorted by the federal government. On a related point, the government requires hospitals to admit and treat anyone who comes in, thus further increasing demand on these facilities and raising prices for everyone.

5) Insurance regulation. Insurance companies are regulated by state governments, which restrict insurers’ and consumers’ freedom to contract with one another as they see fit. Insurers are forced by law to insure uninsurable risks, thus driving up prices. They are prevented from effectively discriminating between various risk levels among consumers, driving up prices even more. And states often prohibit the purchase of insurance across state lines, further limiting consumer options.

6) Perpetuating the “right to health care” myth. Government at all levels tends to make pronouncements and take actions that perpetuate the erroneous belief that there is a right to health care. Any regular readers of my blog know where I stand on that–it is logically impossible to have a right to something when the provision of that right requires the forcible confiscation of another person’s property (thus, there can be no such thing as a right to a certain level of health care, housing, wages, etc). But government creates a feedback loop with its health-care-is-a-right propaganda that boosts support for additional socialist measures to control health care.

These are just a few of the government actions that have caused our health care costs to rise so dramatically. And Obama’s solution is more government control of the industry? I can only hope there are enough Americans still possessing enough critical reasoning aptitude and desire for freedom and prosperity that this latest attempt to expand government oppression will fail.

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Doesn’t matter what you see
Or into it what you read
You can do it your own way
If it’s done just how I say

Independence limited
Freedom of choice is made for you my friend
Freedom of speech is words that they will bend
Freedom with their exception

I think these lyrics from Metallica’s “Eye of the Beholder” are appropriate for today, Independence Day. It’s a stark reminder that there are two distinct aspects to the commemoration of American independence. First, there’s the historical occurrence of national independence–when the American colonists declared their independence from the British crown and subsequently waged a successful revolution. Then there’s the celebration of the resulting individual independence (or freedom) for American citizens, and this is what most people now focus on.

Unfortunately, most people, lost in their patriotic fervor, don’t realize the freedom they celebrate is a figment of their imagination. It’s true that America can probably be considered more free, on a relative basis, than many other countries in the world (although every year there seems to be more places that come in above us on things like the State of World Liberty Project and the Index of Economic Freedom).

But I’m not sure it means much to say America is one of the freest countries in a world dominated by government oppression. From an objective point of view, it would be hard to describe this country as free. It’s hard to think of a single aspect of your life that the government (an entity based on the initiation of force to accomplish its goals) doesn’t touch in some way.

Personally, I think the government and its promoters love that we fire up the grill, crack open a cold one, and watch fireworks in giddy observance of our “freedom,” because, until very recently, it served to dampen the growing recognition by Americans that we are approaching a critical point at which the chains of government (chains we can believe in, Mr. President?) will lead to some form of modern revolution.

But in the last year or so, I’ve noticed a change. More and more people are refusing to fall for all the nationalistic (i.e. pro-government, anti-freedom) manipulation and are reacting to it by questioning the foundational principles (i.e. government is here to help, there are some things free markets just can’t handle, it’s okay to initiate force against others if it’s for a ‘good cause,’ etc.) they’ve been taught in government schools.

No doubt various pro-government elements have taken notice of this and are planning ways to counter it, but I have a feeling they won’t have much luck in halting the powerful human drive for freedom and the prosperity that flows from it.

Here’s to a new revolution.

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The mayor of Boston, Tom Menino, had a nice moment of libertarianism Friday when he said he would not be approving the police department’s request to arm patrol officers with M-16 rifles given to them by the U.S. military. It’s a basic libertarian tenet that giving the government’s enforcement arm additional firepower is bad for the prospects of individual liberty. Militarization of the police is a hallmark of oppressive regimes and something we should oppose at every turn. Of course, he didn’t rule out arming “specialized units” with such weapons, and he most certainly did not do a truly pro-liberty thing like pushing for the rifles to be sold on the free market to private buyers and sending the proceeds back to Uncle Sam with a demand for the money to be applied to the debt or somehow returned to the American tax payers. But it’s a start.

Of course, the argument in favor of such enhanced armaments (an argument often put forth by well-meaning law-and-order conservatives) is undoubtedly that the police need those weapons to combat the well-armed gangs who thrive on illegal drug trafficking. Unfortunately for their position, that’s like liberals who are arguing that the current government-regulation-induced financial crisis should be cured with more government regulation.

Rather than engage in an arms race with better-funded and more highly motivated drug gangs, resulting in innocent casualties and an ever more powerful and dangerous government, we should (thinking to ourselves, what would Sun Tzu do?) remove the traffickers’ very raison d’etre by legalizing all currently illegal drugs. Then we’d be simultaneously ending an un-American policy of keeping people from putting certain things in their bodies and ending the violent drug black market over which the gangs are fighting (and bribing cops, lawyers, and judges). After all, since the end of the disastrous prohibition of alcohol, you don’t see people battling in the streets over liquor turf, do you?

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 Here’s a post on intellectual property (or monopoly) from Art Carden of the Independent Institute and reposted on the Mises blog:

Intellectual Monopoly is an Unnecessary Evil

There are some interesting points about whether things like patents and copyrights actually hinder technological progress and economic growth (rather than stimulate it, as their defenders claim).

But it seems to me that the fundamental problem with government-granted intellectual property rights (from a libertarian perspective) is that they’re granted by government. The very fact that these rights can only exist through the workings of a coercive, monopoly government indicates that they are not true rights. It’s the same as the socialists who say that there exists a ‘right’ to health care or a minimum wage or a certain level of housing. We know these are not true rights because they require initiation of force against someone else. Since the creation and enforcement of today’s patents, copyrights, etc., also requires the initiation of force (at the very least in the form of taxes confiscated to fund that part of the government), it seems that those are not real rights.

However, I do imagine there could develop some form of market-based IP in the absence of the government system depending on how the costs and benefits play out in different situations.

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Well, the government is up to its old tricks, this time in my own back yard. A divorce court judge in Wake County is apparently ordering a divorcing couple’s kids into government schools after having been home schooled by their mother for the past few years. The mother’s curriculum seems to be based on the Biblical teachings of some kind of fundamentalist Christian sect, and the father is opposed to such education (as is the judge, it would seem).

Now I’m certainly no fan of religious education and all its attendant absurdities. It’s always disheartening to know that there are people out there teaching their children that many of the foundations of modern science are wrong, that two of every living thing on the planet were carried around in a big boat while the whole planet was underwater, that long-extinct creatures (like dinosaurs) were included in that big boat party, that people were healed and raised from the dead and walked on water through some supernatural means, that an ancient book of history combined with mythology (that has had its inherent absurdity compounded by being thoroughly garbled by a multitude of poor translations and intentional additions, deletions, and redactions) is the infallible word of an apparently schizophrenic supreme being, and that they will be tortured forever after they die if they break any number of ridiculous rules.

Nevertheless, it’s every parent’s inherent natural right, as the trustee of their dependent children, to determine how and whether their children are educated. Disagreements between parents on the issue should be settled through private, voluntary means—not compulsory action by others (i.e. the state). The state is committing a gross violation of natural rights by making and enforcing laws that require children to be educated, using force to cause the vast majority of children to go to the state’s institutions where they are then taught for years on end to view the compulsion foisted on them by the government in a positive light and to not attempt to reject it or defend themselves against it, and by funding all these actions through funds taken by force from all of us.

If someone wants their kids to worship Yahweh, Zeus, Odin, or the great and powerful Tom Cruise, we should perhaps feel sorry for them but should never use the illegitimate power of the state to force them to do otherwise. Hell, we probably have less to fear from people who worship mythological characters (with a few notable exceptions) than we do from people who worship the very real and very dangerous state.

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I’ll say right up front that I’m not going to win many friends with this post, especially among those with whom I served.

It’s that time of year again: Veteran’s Day. The time when we all go around patting the troops on the back and thanking them for their service and for fighting for us and defending our freedom.

There’s just one little problem: they’re not actually defending our freedom.

There’s a case that could be made that they’re defending Iraqi freedom or Afghan freedom, or that in times past they defended South Vietnamese freedom or South Korean freedom or the freedom of various European nations. But they were not defending Americans’ freedom. But to make the case that our troops are defending OUR freedom, you would have to show that they repelled or resisted an unprovoked invasion of person or property. But as far as I can tell, the only two times that’s happened was the Revolutionary War and the Civil War (in which the Confederate forces legitimately attempted to resist the aggression of the Union forces following the South’s perfectly Constitutional secession). After perusing the very long list of conflicts in which America has been involved since its birth, I found no other instances of major unprovoked aggression by a state actor with the exception of Pearl Harbor (and leaving aside the possibility that Roosevelt may have allowed the attack to happen in order to get the American public to support a declaration of war, our entrance into WWII had nothing to do with protecting Americans from another imminent attack).

So, the military isn’t in the business of defending our freedom. But what about enhancing our security? Now that seems to make more sense. Except that nearly every U.S. military action, being offensive rather than defensive, actually tends to reduce our security by creating rallying cries for lunatic terrorists. After all, even us non-lunatics would be pretty pissed off if Iran started bombing our neighborhoods to try to kill someone who had flown a plane into an Iranian building.  Now think about that situation except the bombing country is a big, intimidating superpower, and the bombed country is a primitive, impoverished country loaded with fundamentalist Muslims. Uh oh.

So, it turns out that the military doesn’t defend our rights or keep us safe. Now I don’t blame them for these shortcomings. The troops are doing what they think is right. They’re following orders. They’re eating up all that stuff about defending the Constitution (I certainly did). Unfortunately, they’re just like any other national military - they’re one of the tools the state uses to maintain power and enlarge itself. The troops are good people who just happen to believe that elected officials know what they’re doing and have good intentions (neither of which is generally true in actuality).

And, in theory, they could actually keep us safe (at least from foreign aggression) by actually remaining stationed only in America and only engaging in purely defensive operations. They could also theoretically defend our freedom by standing up to the government when it tries to confiscate our income or property or restricts how we run our businesses or forces us to get insurance or prevents us from trading with certain people. But of course that would be considered a rebellion, just like Lincoln called the southern states’ decision to secede a “rebellion” (so rebellion was good enough for the Founding Fathers but not for anyone that comes after them apparently).

If you want to thank someone who really defends your freedom, thank a defense attorney. After all, they’re entire livelihood is based on holding the government feet to the fire and keeping it from violating rights. We may not like a lot of the people they defend (and trust me, they don’t like them either), but they’re probably the only reason we still have even a semblance of personal liberty in America.

Just to be clear, I’m perfectly fine with honoring veterans. Just like I honor anyone else who goes to work and performs the tasks they had agreed to, although I strongly affirm the rights of our troops to terminate their service to the state at any point if they come to the conclusion that they’re not okay with being used to further the immoral ambitions of a coercive government. And I look forward to the day when society goes out of its way to honor those who produce goods and services that people actually need and get paid voluntarily rather than by taxes taken from people against their will.

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As promised, I want to talk briefly about libertarianism, the philosophy of the Libertarian Party. Most people call themselves conservative, liberal, or moderate. Only a few of us dare call ourselves libertarian. But I believe that is due in large part to simply a lack of information about the philosophy. To put it simply, it’s the only political philosophy that doesn’t contradict itself.

In modern American terminology, conservatives advocate freedom in economic matters (but not always) while advocating the initiation of force in many “social” matters (such as reproductive issues, marriage issues, drug use, gambling, prostitution, etc) and in foreign policy (usually). Liberals advocate freedom in social issues (but not always) while advocating initiation of force in economic matters and foreign policy (unless the other party has the White House, as we’ve seen over the last 8 years). And no one really knows what a “moderate” believes, but one might be fairly disturbed by the implication (perhaps they prefer initiation of force in ALL matters??).

Now libertarianism, on the other hand, is based on the non-initiation of force principle–the idea that it is wrong, no matter what, to initiate force or fraud against other people (including invasion of property), whether done by an individual or a group, even if that group calls itself a ‘government’ and says it has the ‘right’ to initiate such force. And it is all based on the axiom of self-ownership, the idea that we each own our life. If you own yourself, then any unowned resources you find and put into productive use are necessarily your just property and cannot be taken or invaded by anyone else (otherwise, humanity would degenerate into violence and poverty). Obviously, you can enter into any voluntary exchange with anyone else, exchanging your just property for their just property. Anyone who came along and forbid such an exchange would be guilty of aggressing against both parties (this is what happens, for instance, when government sets minimum wages–it aggresses against both the employer and the employee by using force to prevent their voluntary exchange). There’s obviously much more to libertarianism, but my purpose is not to re-derive the philosophy on my blog.

If you don’t quite understand libertarian philosophy, or if you think you do and believe you can’t subscribe to it, I’d encourage you to take this opportunity (now that the passion of the election season is over) to learn more about libertarianism by reading at least the first five chapters of The Ethics of Liberty, by Murray Rothbard:
1. Natural Law and Reason
2. Natural Law as “Science”
3. Natural Law versus Positive Law
4. Natural Law and Natural Rights
5. The Task of Political Philosophy

Another classic explanation of libertarianism is the Philosophy of Liberty animated movie.

I promise you’ll find that the logic and morality and beautiful consistency of libertarianism is, at the very least, a new way for you to look at the world.

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So, Obama has won. America is going to have our first half black President. I could only shake my head as I watched his blubbering, vapid supporters crying their eyes out as he gave his victory speech. Now, it’s not lost on me that this a momentous occasion for race relations in our country and probably will do wonders for black kids’ self esteem and our perception around the world. But it’s also not lost on me that Obama is a statist and does not believe in protecting natural rights. He believes that it’s good and proper to rally part of the population together and use violence to aggress against the rest of the population. With a Democratic White House and Congress, we are likely to see an acceleration of oppression and socialism in America the likes of which we haven’t seen since FDR and the New Deal. I can only hope that it’s so swift and painful that the American people will finally see statism (both socialism and fascism) for the inhuman, destructive force it is and react against it so strongly that our country will be forever purged of the popular desire for such schemes as wealth redistribution, minimum wages, socialized health care, subsidies, regulations, central banking, and so many other terrible things that Obama ran on.

Democracy is how the rulers of a country make their subjects believe they’re not being oppressed. And the American people totally fell for it yet again.

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Senator Elizabeth Dole has launched an sustained attack against some of her constituents as part of her campaign for re-election. In a press release to her supporters and a mass mailing that’s been going out to voters, Dole attacks her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, by pointing out that she attended a fundraiser held by a couple of atheists, whom she describes as “vile.” Here’s the mailer:

Vile? As someone on another blog pointed out, can you imagine her calling some religious group (like Jews or Muslims) “vile?” But those who choose science and reason over superstition are described as vile by a sitting U.S. Senator and no one even blinks.

And in the press release, she describes atheists as people “most North Carolinians would not be comfortable having over for dinner.” Again, this is one of my U.S. Senators. I’ve got news for you, Senator Dole–you had dinner with a future atheist in the fall of 2000. How about them godless apples?

Now, some would argue that this bigoted and primitive behavior by Senator Dole means that anyone who believes in being a decent human being and not spewing hatred at your neighbors should vote for Kay Hagan. I disagree. Both Republicans and Democrats have an appalling record when it comes to their treatment of those who don’t believe in the supernatural. Both use the religious, and their susceptibility to manipulation, to advance their own ends. The only party that truly stands for eliminating the irrational hatred of atheists is the party that would end the church-state alliance once and for all - the Libertarian Party. And it just so happens there’s an outstanding Libertarian in this race that the media simply chooses not to mention. Chris Cole is running on the Libertarian ticket against Dole and Hagan, and is now polling around 5-7% (when he’s actually included on the polls).

Cole and the Libertarian Party seek the dismantlement of the state apparatus, which would leave nothing with which to coercively promote religion or suppress atheists. Hagan, on the other hand, has a platform that is a laundry list of expansions of government scope and power. Also, after perusing her web site, she doesn’t seem to have a single press release hitting back at Dole for her anti-atheist vitriol. No, neither Hagan nor the Democratic Party are allies of atheists and the non-religious. Their schemes for promoting government will do nothing but further threaten everyone’s individual liberty and natural rights, believers and non-believers alike.

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