All or Nothing

I have a friend, a native Texan, who is a pretty staunch republican. He's lived in Australia for the past few years. He really likes living in Australia, but he often rants against the socialist nature of the country. I've always found his cognitive dissonance somewhat amusing, and informative. He likes the people of Australia, he likes the country, he likes the way things are run, but he stumbles when he sees the taxes he pays, and when he hears the word "socialist" applied to the government. Now this is not a man who is hurting for money - he makes a lot of it. Even after the socialist taxes he pays, he makes a lot more money than most of the people that I know. So the taxes may look ugly on the pay stub, but he's not having any trouble paying the bills.

Unemployment in Australia is comparable to the US. Poverty levels in Australia are lower than they are in the US (though one does have to account for the different systems of determining "poverty"). By and large, people live well and happily in Australia. And the country does have a working safety net for those who are poor. So what is wrong with socialism? It seems to not be an undue burden for the wealthy, and it provides much needed services for the poor.

Tax rates in Australia range from 18% - 45%. Tax rates in the US range from 15% - 35%. So, ya, we're a little lower here. Rush Limbaugh actually claimed that residents of New York City pay more taxes than Europeans. (See Story #7 on this link). So the question is, if we are going to pay all those taxes - taxes which turn out to be not dramatically lower than the "socialists", what are we getting in return?

The US is the wealthiest country in the world. So even with lower tax rates than some counties, the government must be pulling in much more tax revenue. But for all that revenue, we have only the weakest social safety net. We have absurd degrees of government involvement in private business and private lives. So the way I see it, we pay taxes at a socialist rate and we have big brother watching us. Those are the bad parts of socialism. What are the good parts of socialism? Free or cheap health care, employment security, unemployment benefits. The US is a lot weaker in those areas than those counties we call "socialist".

I would gladly do away with many of the "services" that the government offers us. But I propose that if we must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous tax rates and government intervention, we should have the benefit of a comfortable safety net - or rather, a hammock, on which to rest.

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

- Samuel Adams

Health Care

The thing that pisses me off on the medical debate is that the conservative side of the argument is, intentionally or not, disingenuous. If I may take some broad strokes here:

• The liberal argument is that the government should at least help out, and perhaps even take over the health care system.
• The conservative argument is that the free market is the best solution.

I am not really hip to a socialized medical system. But the problem with the conservative argument is that it implies that we have a free market system in health care (which we don't), or that their solution would restore a free market system to health care (which it won't). We have a highly regulated health care system. "Free market" means you can sell anything I want to buy, and I can buy anything that you want to sell. But I can't buy my medical care from you, unless the government has (though various agencies and extra-governmental bodies) "approved" you. It doesn't really matter how good or knowledgeable you are as a surgeon, nor how much I trust you - you cannot practice your craft without the government saying you have met their credentials.

Crazier still, the federal government (in defiance of the tenth amendment) has the notion that it has the right to decide what substances you can and cannot put in your body for medical purposes, nutritional purposes, or entertainment purposes. And even if we were to accept that contention, the federal government goes on to make stupid decisions about it. Alcohol (dangerous to both individual and society) is legal, yet marijuana (relatively safe to both individual and society) is illegal. Even when states provide a legitimate approval of the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the federal government inexplicably threatens to step in and arrest people for using it.

It pisses me off, not that conservatives claim that the free market is the best path to the best health care, but that they appear to be completely ignorant of the fact that the free market does not control the health care industry. We can all find anecdotal evidence that the socialized systems of health care in all the pinko countries are useless, and everybody dies. We can also find anecdotal evidence that the socialized systems of health care in all the pinko countries work wonderfully, and no one ever dies. Interestingly, I don't know when I've heard anything other than the anecdotal "Sue-Anne had to wait over 300 years for a heart transplant in Canada, so she came to the US", vs "Auntie Mae couldn't afford to refill it here, so she went to Canada to get a cheap refill on Uncle Joe's Viagra prescription". To whatever extent any of the anecdotal evidence applies to the general case, it really doesn't matter. Because the conservative argument is a philosophical, not a pragmatic argument. The conservative argument is that the free market is the best way to get the best medicine. But if they refuse to unshackle the health care industry from the zillions of crazy regulations about who can buy what service or medicine from whom, then they have no right to simultaneously refuse to help people who have to pay the ridiculous costs of health care that are kept high because (among other reasons) the government restricts free trade in the industry.

My position is that if the government is going to restrict free trade in health care, it should pay for it, too. Private medicine in a free market just might work. Socialized medicine just might work (and from what I've seen of it, it does work pretty well for the vast majority of cases in Europe, despite the problems that do arise). But when the government provides "protection" for the business of health care, then leaves it to private financing, something is quite wrong.

Three Little Pigs

The behavior of the market is simply the sum of the thousands or millions of individual decisions made by all the people playing the market. Were it not for the natural heard instinct of human beings, and the willingness to believe that the market actually means something, none of this would be of any consequence. To suggest that the market "should behave this way or that" is to buy into the idea that the market is anything more than a neighborhood of make believe, a game of monopoly.

The real wealth in this country, and anywhere in the world, is not in paper instruments issued by governments and central banks. It is not in silver and gold, which have only as much value as people assign to them. Real wealth is ingenuity, labour and natural resources - the raw materials required to feed, cloth, shelter, heal, and amuse human beings, the machinery of civilization.

Petty crooks steal money and goods which can be traded for money. Sophisticated crooks seize power over human beings and control over the machinery of civilization.

Ayn Rand famously said

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to make money." No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.

Money was designed to simplify the process of trading goods. Money was a way of representing work done or goods produced. In fact, before money existed as such, everyone understood quite well the fact that "wealth has to be created". It was only with the invention of money that the understanding of "wealth" was lost. As the financial system has become more complex, money has become completely divorced from that which it represents. No work must be done, no goods must be produced in order to "make money" in the modern markets. Money itself is traded. If no work is done and no goods are produced, yet we continue to make money, our money is necessarily subject to the powers of inflation. We have postponed the inevitable outcome, the dramatic devaluation of the dollar, by moving it around so fast that it appears to be in many places at the same time. We have borrowed from ourselves, we have borrowed from other countries, and we have sold off assets to other countries, all in the effort of preventing the collapse of our currency and our economy.

We've built an economy out of nothing. We've build a house of straw. The big bad wolf is coming, and he's bringing his friends. It is time to let the banks and markets fall. Tear down the house of straw and build a house of brick on the firm foundation of the US Constitution and the greatness of its people.

When Chicken Little cries that the sky is falling, tell him to stop listening to the silly little pig who built a house of straw. It is only his straw house that is falling, and it shouldn't be our problem.