Richard Salsman’s list of currently established government endeavors leads to a very important question for socialized-medicine advocates.

Considering the following, on what grounds could one suggest that government run health care would achieve any better results?

• Money – The Federal Reserve, which perpetually debases our money, manipulates interest rates, and instigates systemic risk
• Pensions – he Social Security Administration, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. – which are insolvent by multi-trillions of dollars
• Schooling – the “public” (government) schools are a mess, and generate mass illiteracy-innumeracy
• 1st Class Mail – the U.S. Post Office is badly run and a perpetual money-loser
• Passenger Trains – Amtrak is also badly run and always a money-loser
• Residential Mortgages – Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and the FHA-HUD have lost trillions and have brought ruin to millions

There is no reasonable justification for suggesting they would.

Yep, the next chapter in the most blatant story of economic ignorance in history gets under way. Anti-trust, the American hallmark of self-destructive and senseless tyranny, is rearing its obnoxious head again - this time to aggravate Apple and AT&T.

The Department of Justice has started an informal review of the exclusive arrangements that limit handsets such as Apple’s iPhone to particular wireless communications companies, according to people familiar with the matter.

The inquiry follows consolidation in the US wireless industry that has left four operators accounting for more than 90 per cent of the country’s wireless subscribers. This has left them with the market power to carve out exclusive deals with makers of the most popular handsets, making it hard for smaller rivals to compete and leading to higher prices for mobile services, according to rivals. [emphasis added]

Hmmm, so the resources and market position that AT&T and Apple have earned should be sacrificed to the needs of smaller rivals? Only in altruist-collectivist-statist-wonderland.

Apple, as the creator and producer of the iPhone, has the right to sell it to whomever under whatever terms they choose. Likewise, AT&T has the right to distribute and market products of their choosing; also according to whatever terms they choose. In sum, Apple and AT&T have the right to work together under whatever terms they agree upon. Any law that trumps their right to do so is unjust, irrational, subjective law.

So long as a market is left free from Government intervention, new competitors will step in if prices are set higher than the market will tolerate. If AT&T’s exclusive contract to sell the iPhone is leveraged to charge more than the market will bear, other competitors like Google and Blackberry will have an opportunity to seize a share of the market. Apple’s rightful purpose in business is to make money, not to provide phones as a charitable cause. Likewise, AT&T’s purpose is to make money, not to dole out phone service to the needy. If any relationship between these two companies results in prices that are higher than what the market will bear, consumers will spend their money elsewhere.

Thanks you meddling idiots, but we can take care of ourselves - no brilliant Government intervention is necessary.

Our country is the final stages of a tremendous mistake - one that will have adverse effects on every person you know. Acting as if human lives are disposable and that economic laws are pliable, so many are willing to give in to consensus and experiment with Government run health care. It can’t hurt to try right?

This is a deadly pragmatic notion that must be rejected. Not even a single right or life is properly available for sacrificial experimentation. Even if dissecting one human being would save the lives of billions, doing so is immoral. If one man’s rights are violated, so all men have suffered injustice.

For America to endure we must return to nothing less than a free-market in health care.

Politicians are masters at muddying the water in order to aid their efforts. The more they obfuscate and complicate the issue, the more likely citizens are to give-up and give in to what appears to be the superior insights and motives of our leaders. Throw in some hollow rhetoric and spike the potion with the moral tint of altruism and consensus will stomp over an endless sea of corpses. However, If one peers through all the emotional fog, the entire conversation is revealed to be senseless. To make the case much clearer, I’ll frame the principles in an analogous market less prone to emotional fraying.

This not-so-hypothetical market is comprised of a fictitious entity called “Technicare” - a taxpayer funded program to assist a segment of the population with their electrical appliance needs - and a retailer, in this example I chose Wal-Mart, arguably the most highly qualified bastion of efficiency and value.

Like all cases of market dysfunction throughout history, the cause is unnatural economic forces. Essentially, the only force capable of wide scale economic influence is Government. Economics is an elegantly simple system governed by principles that endure time and scale. Producers produce goods that consumers consume according to the standards and prices that both parties agree on voluntarily. That’s it. These fundamentals are absolute and unforgiving, and when any component of the preceding summary is acted against, the market becomes dysfunctional. If producers ability to produce is either enhanced or hampered, if consumers ability to consume is enhanced or hampered, or if the voluntary prerogatives of either are restricted to any extent, the result is some degree of market dysfunction.

Our Heath Care market is one that’s clobbered with regulatory assault from every angle. Each of the components prescribed above are unnaturally manipulated by Government. Government meddling inevitably serves to reduce competition, and decrease purchasing power, the two elements that form the lifeblood of a growing and prosperous economic system.

There are far too many instances to cover exhaustively, but fortunately a principled examination of only a few will clearly illustrate the negative impact that is universally achieved by market intervention. We’ll start by considering an element that achieves tremendous competitive detriment and has no logical justification - The Certificate of Need.

From the NCSL site:

Certificate of Need (C.O.N.) programs are aimed at restraining health care facility costs and allowing coordinated planning of new services and construction. Laws authorizing such programs are one mechanism by which state governments seek to reduce overall health and medical costs.

The basic assumption underlying CON regulation is that excess capacity (in the form of facility overbuilding) directly results in health care price inflation. When a hospital cannot fill its beds, fixed costs must be met through higher charges for the beds that are used. Bigger institutions have bigger costs, so CON supporters say it makes sense to limit facilities to building only enough capacity to meet actual needs.

Profit is determined by the difference in revenue from a unit of work in relation to the unit’s associated costs. Profit increases by either charging a higher price per unit to consumers or establishing a lower cost per unit for producers - by higher prices or by lower costs. Competition amongst market players urges them to offer services at the lowest possible price, thus their opportunity to increase profit will be naturally determined by their ability to operate at the lowest possible cost, as opposed to selling at a higher, less competitive price. Competition is a necessity.

By hindering the competitive aspect of the market, the CON hurdle is actually prone to a rise in costs precisely because mitigates (or eliminates) external pressure to compete on price. Additionally, the process is tedious, timely and expensive. For productive endeavors, time is money, and this process equates to an atrociously misdirected waste of capital.

The other fallacy used to justify this process is that investors would risk such vast amounts of money as typically involved without doing the proper market research to justify the expense. Like in so many other cases, and for obvious reasons, bureaucrats just can’t grasp the concept of personal responsibility. Unlike moochers wasting handout money, when an individual is spending his own earned resources, he’d best be, and typically is, mindful of how he does so. Successful investors seeking a profitable avenue for their capital do not need parental guidance.

Let’s consider this absurdity in our fictitious market:

• How would the “Certificate of Need” process and burden, including all the inherent political wrangling, affect an aspiring Wal-Mart store?
• Would the associated cost cause their prices to increase or decrease?
• Would that money be more appropriately invested in real estate, infrastructure and inventory, or as the cost of asking permission to do business when and where they see fit?
• On what logical grounds should they have to ask permission?
• By what right could some authoritative body decline their request?
• By what right does anyone or any entity have such authority in a country founded on individual rights?
• Whose right to what would be in jeopardy of encroachment by a lack of oversight for this new entity?

Consider Technicare’s impact throughout the rest of Wal-mart’s business model:

• Once the tedious CON process is complete and business is booming, how would Wal-Mart compensate for selling televisions to Technicare customers for an amount that’s significantly reduced - possibly below cost?
• Would these customers tend to spend more or less if given a Technicare credit card for which they have no financial responsibility?
• How would this consumption impact the individuals who are liable for the Technicare expenditures?
• How about if Technicare was granted the authority to determine what Wal-Mart could charge non-Technicare customers for televisions, how would this affect these customers if the pricing was at or below cost?
• By what right should Technicare posses such authority?

If Technicare was expanded to include storage media:

• Would this amplify or negate the existing affects of the program on Wal-Mart?
• How about if the storage media market was regulated by Technicare’s parent company GovCo. so that the media could be adequately tested, which led to drastically increased research manufacturing and legal costs and the time to market for a new product was a number of years. Would this impact the cost of storage media for all consumers?
• What if Wal-Mart was also regulated on how much they could charge Technicare customers for storage media?
• What if they had to sell below cost? What would this do to the costs of storage media for non-Technicare customers?

If Wal-Mart were forced by law to give away products at no charge:

• How would the rest of their business model be impacted?
• Would they continue operating at a loss?
• Would this raise or lower costs to the remainder of their customer base?

If Wal-Mart’s prices increased drastically over time due to the mandates of Technicare:

• How would the “Certificate of Need” process and burden, including all the inherent political wrangling, affect an aspiring competitor?
• Would it make market entry easier or more difficult?
• Would this affect lead Wal-Mart to be more or less responsive to its customers?
• Would such market-entry overhead inspire entrepreneurial interest?

Given the above scenario and the obvious answers and established patterns:

• On why logical grounds would some suggest granting Technicare/GovCo drastically increased, if not exhaustive, control of Wal-Mart operations, accounting and pricing?
• What would the expected results entail?
• As non-Technicare customers lose purchasing power as a result from both having to fund Technicare and having to endure higher prices as a result of Technicare, what changes would be more likely to repair the situation?
• What if Technicare decides to restrict all customers from shopping anywhere besides this new WalTech-GovCo?
• By what right could they?
• Wouldn’t this be a coercive monopoly?
• What would that mean?

With “solutions” like these, who needs problems? Is this issue really as complex as so portrayed by the media and politicians?

Socialization proponents consistently offer supposed aspects of the health care market that exempt it from economic laws due to some disadvantage faced by consumers. Regardless of the specifics, for each such claim we should ask “Why is this, and what are the repercussions?”

My point in general is that the “whys” are far more important than their corresponding repercussions. If a patient has a rash it could be a sign of a number of things, such as poison ivy, a food allergy, an infectious disease like measles, or a skin infection. Treating the symptoms without accurately identifying the cause could leave the patient worse off. Making assumptions on faulty or unrefined premises is a recipe for failure.

I’ve yet to hear a valid claim of “market-dysfunction” (if you will) that is actually more in substance than an acknowledgment of reality, e.g., individuals have varying financial means, or an example of a symptom caused by an existing economically unnatural force in the system, e.g., how Medicare rates affect private insurance premiums.

The former family of claims, in the context of “what should be done?” should properly be answered “whatever motivated individuals choose to do with their own resources.” The charge of “not providing unlimited free service to all who’d consume it” is no more valid a charge of dysfunction than criticizing a rock for not spurting pop-tarts on whim. Demanding a breach of reality in the form of non-causal action is irrational.

If the same question is posed in the context of the second category above, the answer should be “identify and remove the source of the issue.” - which arguably is in all cases, Government intervention.

Despite all the attempts to complicate this issue, it really is as simple as the answers above. Unless and until that is, as I mentioned previously, ulterior motives come into consideration. As soon as the rights of producers and consumers to contract freely are inhibited to any extent, the only possible result is a distortion in the market that will exponentially correlate to the extent of the inhibition.

Individuals thrive under, and have a right to, freedom. Innovation, value and efficiency are the result of freedom. Regulations, on the other hand, reduce freedom - which results in inefficiency, shortages, escalating prices and general stagnation. History illustrates this condition quite well.

Patients have the right to choose from whom, for what, and at what price they consume medical services. Likewise, providers have the right to choose from whom, for what, and at what price they provide their expertise.

This is the only moral and practical relationship between patients and providers.

A diligent consideration of any elements of the market that affect these mutual rights, including their cause, will very accurately highlight what needs to change for the market to operate normally. Increase freedom and all the positive dynamics of this and any other market will prevail.

Again, history unequivocally supports this fact.

To concretize - a free-market in health care, just like every other field throughout history - would result in the best service at the lowest price, according to the discretion of the consumers and producers involved.

There’s nothing unique about the health care market that should exempt it from basic economics. Providers gain expertise in medical services that individuals would consume based on supply and demand.

Only third-party involvement by force can disrupt economic laws and patterns. If one detects a flaw or undesirable pattern, prudence suggests one identify any source of unnatural tampering. Any market traits, e.g., “Forty-plus million uninsured”, could either be symptoms of an illegitimate disruption, or merely factual attributes representing reality. If one were to consider the statistic in slightly different terms, say “Forty-plus million individuals can’t own a 42 inch widescreen television”, then the issue becomes less clouded by by emotion. The facts illustrate that five years ago, indeed a large percentage of individuals couldn’t afford a 42″ television. However, the market (a relatively free one) has responded to demand and now a 42″ television is much more affordable. These principles work regardless if the market is for widgets, televisions, mobile phone service, wellness physicals or CT scans. Where the conversation veers drastically off course is when egalitarian politics come into play. If authentic rights are to be subsumed by artificial privileges, some external force must attempt to usurp economic reality. For every ‘yin’ of Government intervention, there’s a corresponding ‘yang’ of market disturbance. These ‘yangs’ reverberate through the system and their effects continue to amplify until very serious results surface. The system we have now is a result of 50+ years of intense ‘yin’ing. What, other than a tremendously distorted market, could we expect? And, exactly why would we propose more intervention as the solution?

So long as consumers are left free to consume (by their own means) and producers are left free to offer services (as they see fit), the market will perform and innovate like any other.

The government depriving people of opportunities and choice regarding their livelihood is not the solution to the problem of the government stifling competition with distorted economic forces. The solution is to get the government out of health care altogether.

Supplemental Ammunition:
I highly recommend Paul Hsieh’s work demolishing the case for socialized medicine:

FAQ On Free Market Health Insurance

Health Care Reform vs. Universal Health Care

Moral Health Care vs. Universal Health Care

Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America

A parable depicting the rise of tyranny being cloaked in supposed benevolence - should sound very familiar. Source unknown.

A chemistry professor at a large college had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, ‘Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’ The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. ‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again.

You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat; you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.

Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms — just a little at a time.

All taxation is theft. Taking the property of one individual by initiated force, regardless of purpose, contradicts the fundamental role of Government by violating individual rights to property. Any and every tax expenditure is immoral and unjust.

That being said, some expenditures, however, are so blatantly inappropriate that they stand out as especially vile amongst a sea of evil. Below are only a few that demand our attention and were found in a matter of seconds @ Grants.gov.

You can search for hundreds of terms that will score an abundance of “opportunities”. Keep in mind that for each “opportunity” there are larges wads of looted wealth waiting to be handed out - most in the tens or hundreds of thousands, many in the tens or hundreds of millions. Keep these in mind as you, friends and family face the financial hurdles in the coming years - hurdles caused by Government intervention in the economy. The purpose of the intervention is to tap into your productivity precisely for the purposes of handing out money in order to buy votes and satiate altruistic political ambitions. Enjoy.

• We need the toads…

- A crumbling nation must maintain its priorities.

• 10 Million for Cambodian Education

- Since we’ve essentially given up on our own, $10,000,000 to another country…

• 30 Million for Tanzanian AIDS Counseling

- I’m so glad I could help out….

• 40 Million for Uganda’s ‘Right‘ to Essential Medicine

- I didn’t realize any supposed right of a Ugandan citizen (or any citizen to any thing for that matter) granted them access to a portion of my income…

These examples represent the filthy ends of the tentacles strangling America. How long can it go on like this?

Che’ Hollywood is at it again.

Supporting his apparent penchant for late-night television, Obama charms the masses in a spoof interview segment.

NBC was clearly thrilled to have enough access to President Obama to base a two-part, prime-time special on it all this week (Part II runs Wednesday night.)

Mr. Obama, however, went even one step further for the network – participating in a spoof interview segment for “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” during his formal question-and-answer session with the NBC News anchor Brian Williams at the White House.

In the segment, shown on “Tonight” late Tuesday, Mr. Williams asked Mr. Obama whether he almost canceled his overseas trip this week “to stay and watch” Mr. O’Brien’s “first week as host of ‘The Tonight Show.’’’

Mr. Obama was fully game and, referring to Mr. O’Brien’s succession this week of the former “Tonight” host Jay Leno, joked, “This is something we discussed several times in the Oval Office, how to manage this transition between Leno and Conan. And I think he’s up to the task. But I just want him to know that there is not going to any bailout coming out from Washington if he screws it up.”

How cute. So cunning that our leader discerns such an opportunity where, by making light of an unprecedented feat of ludicrous economic tyranny that will destroy wealth and joy for generations, he can boost his pop-culture appeal and diffuse the angst of the masses.

As Ellsworth Toohey prescribed:

“Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It’s simple. Tell them to laugh at virtue. Don’t let anything remain sacred in a man’s soul — and his soul won’t be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in man.”

In a sickening attempt to memorialize one tragedy, a more profoundly reproachful one is carried out in the name of justice.

“We always prefer to get that land from a willing seller. And sometimes you can just not come to an agreement on certain things,” park service spokesman Phil Sheridan said. [emphasis mine]

What concern are one man’s rights in the face of the USSA?

Of all the contemptible evils being carried out by our leaders, eminent domain is perhaps the most blatantly vicious. I can hardly imagine a more despicable and inadequate manner of offering a supposed tribute to a horrible event.

If I had lost a friend or loved-one on 9/11, this would undoubtedly add insult to injury. A monument built on theft is very unbecoming in the context of solemnity.

Read the whole disgusting piece.

More Here:

• Flight 93 - Eminent Domain

There was a point in my life where her writing was almost therapeutic, but disgusted sympathy is the only response I can muster to this luke-warm call to arms by Peggy Noonan.

Like a basketball team which never identifies which goal to shoot for, or a football team who narrows it down to a only a few plays in the huddle, conservatives have no unified goals or principles. Philosophy drives ideas and any group based on an alleged ideology void of explicit principles will be ineffective. Noonan understands that unity within her party is non-existent and makes an attempt to define some basic tenets. Just like other pragmatists, the prescription is a call to abandon principles.

The poles that keep up the tent are the party’s essential beliefs. Republicans over the next few years should define what each of their tent poles stands for—a strong defense being an obvious pole, a less demanding and intrusive government being another, a natural affection and respect for tradition and for life being a third—and how many poles there are.

I can’t argue with the first, which is about the only position of the right that stands to reason. After the first, however, we get the same vague, implicit notions that the republicans have coasted on for decades.

Less demanding and intrusive? In what manner should we seek less demands and fewer intrusions? Should a proper government in a free society be demanding at all? Less intrusive? Should it be intrusive at all? In what way might it rightfully intrude?

Affection for tradition? To what aspects and to what extent? The American tradition imparts a shift to statism, should that pattern be upheld?

Respect for life? Absolutely, but in what sense? I can only guess this means violating the rights of women to their own lives by banning abortion.

In summary, here we see the same worn-out bromides that have defined the right for the last 50 years:

• The mixed economy is proper, so long as men can still produce.
• Uphold the status quo, whatever that might be.
• Tie it all up with theocratic underpinnings.

Noonan, like the troops she’s trying to rouse, shares the same moral base as the left - altruism. Hers is only decorated by trivial subtleties, tinted by religion, and hued by an implicit “common sense” provided by a foggy understanding of how freedom equals prosperity.

The ground is shifting. It’s hard to get your footing in an earthquake. As Republicans on the Hill try, they must also try to steady their party. It needs a greater sense of realism about its predicament. It needs less enforcement and more encouragement. It needs to inspire the young and the politically unformed not with bloodlust but with ideas.

Right, but which ideas? There’s not a single mention of the proper role of Government, individual rights, or any supposed alliance with the founding principles of this nation.

A great party allows everyone in, and allows prospective members to self-define. If they say they’re Republicans, they should be welcomed and helped to find a place where they fit. A great party has a lot of such places. A great party is expansive. A great party has [to] give. [emphasis and edits mine]

Abandon principles (which have yet to be defined), be flexible, give in, cooperate, compromise - the only thing that matters is what group one professes to belong to. So long as the jersey has an ‘R’ on it, they’re on the team!

By her prescription, not only will the conservatives remain pathetic in the defense of rights, freedom and Capitalism, they’ll continue to shift further towards the statism of the left - leaving America to choose only between two variants of the same collectivist nightmare.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more eloquent tribute to the superficial nature and impotence of the republican party.

Daniel Hannan is a wonderfully refreshing voice.

In general, Hannan is absolutely right in that we’ve abandoned the essence of America, in particular, we’ve discarded the notion and sanctity of individual rights. Rights, if revered, facilitate freedom. Freedom enables productivity. Productivity generates wealth. Wealth creates prosperity. Prosperity benefits life. To the extent that the root of this logical sequence is hampered, so each subsequent link suffers the same diminution.

Americans, in general, have never fully understood the source of this country’s greatness. None of the commonly mistaken notions; religion, race, or resources, can explain the unprecedented achievement by America. Only one concept, rights, i.e., freedom from compulsion, did and can ever facilitate the American ideal. Until our culture learns the meaning of that concept, its logical roots and obvious repercussions, the thrust of America is completely neutered - we’re running on the fumes of reason and justice, and time is running out.