Virginia Libertarian

Chuck George over at LewRockwell.com has written an amazing libertarian State of the Union Address that he’d like to see (he calls it satire, but I’d prefer to call it common sense). Maybe we can shut the hawks up on calling us pacifist once and for all by pointing at this:

Most of these installations will be closed immediately and the thousands of GIs scattered out there will be coming home. We will further develop our human intelligence and our various electronic (not to include unwarranted wire-tapping of Americans) and satellite intelligence capabilities to replace the intrusive stations.

Our intelligence henceforth will literally be directed at defense…, DEFENSE.

Our Defense Department will be postured for defense…, DEFENSE.

We will retain two massive and expensive functions of the military for some unforeseen period in the future. We will assume, unilaterally, an active Mutually Assured Destruction stance toward all of the nuclear powers. We will destroy any force, and its sources, which uses nuclear weapons or is on the verge of doing so, if it can be unequivocally confirmed. We will use big sticks. Curtis LeMay, where are you?

To supplement that we will continue to work on Ballistic Missile Defense. It is feasible; it will be expensive. BMD and MAD will be the big-ticket items. They will always be considered temporary, defensive necessities under continuous review, to modify, decrease or eliminate as soon as it is found safe to do so.

[…]We will cease meddling in the affairs of other states. We will discontinue foreign aid. We will stop interfering with small powers seeking nuclear weapons, but we will remind them emphatically and frequently of our MAD policy. They will appreciate that “Mutual” is a euphemism and they will be far more “mutualed” than we or France or England will be.

We will withdraw from the United Nations immediately. The documents effecting this step are arriving at the United Nations buildings as I speak, awaiting arrival of the UN officials to accept them, tonight.

We shall invite the United Nations to find a new home on other shores within two years. Delegates to the United Nations will no longer be accorded diplomatic privileges while on American soil, effective immediately, tonight; the New York Police Department is being appraised of this right now.

This is exactly the kind of rabble rousing and political commentarty that libertarians should be proud of. Unfortunately, outside of a bolt of lightning hitting Bush in the head and rewiring his circuits to actually care about the constitution, we won’t be hearing this tonight.

[Via Hammer of Truth]

by Harry Browne

July 1, 2003

It’s easy to think sometimes that a new government program, law, or regulation could cure a pressing social problem.

Whether it’s a desire to end abortions, keep the wrong people out of the country, make your city drug-free, stop corporate frauds, crack down on criminals, or make health care more accessible and less expensive, you can imagine how the right new law could make everything okay.

But when you get that kind of thought, I hope you’ll remember the seven principles that apply to all government programs — not just the ones you oppose.

The Principles

1. Government is force. Every government program, law, or regulation is a demand that someone do what he doesn’t want to do, refrain from doing what he does want to do, or pay for something he doesn’t want to pay for. And those demands are backed up by police with guns.

You expect that force to be used only against the guilty. But we can see how the Drug War, the foreign wars, asset forfeiture, the Patriot Act, and other government activities have used force just as often against the innocent — people who have not intruded on anyone else’s person or property.

In fact, government force is used more often against the innocent than the guilty, because the guilty make it their business to understand the laws that apply to them and stay clear of them. Meanwhile, the innocent, thinking they’ve nothing to fear, suddenly find that they’ve innocently violated laws they never heard of.

2. Government is politics. Whenever you turn over to the government a financial, social, medical, military, or commercial matter, it’s automatically transformed into a political issue — to be decided by those with the most political influence. And that will never be you or I.

Politicians don’t weigh their votes on the basis of ideology or social good. They think in terms of political power.

3. You don’t control government. It’s easy to think of the perfect law that will stop the bad guys while leaving the good guys unhindered. But no law will be written the way you have in mind, it won’t be administered the way you have in mind, and it won’t be adjudicated the way you have in mind.

Your ideal law will be written by politicians for political purposes, administered by bureaucrats for political purposes, and adjudicated by judges appointed for political purposes. So don’t be surprised if the new law turns out to do exactly the opposite of what you thought you were supporting.

4. Every government program will be more expensive and more expansive than anything you had in mind when you proposed it. It will be applied in all sorts of ways you never dreamed of.

When Medicare was initially passed in 1965, the politicians projected its cost in 1992 to be $3 billion — which is equivalent to $12 billion when adjusted for inflation to 1992 dollars. The actual cost in 1992 was $110 billion — nine times as much.

And when Medicare was enacted, Section 1801 of the original law specifically prohibited any bureaucratic interference with the practice of medicine. Today not one word of that protection still applies. The federal government owns the health-care industry lock, stock, and barrel.

The new program you support will eventually include all sorts of powers and privileges you can’t even imagine right now.

5. Power will always be misused. Give good people the power to do good and that power eventually will be in the hands of bad people to do bad.

As Michael Cloud has pointed out, “The problem isn’t the abuse of power; it’s the power to abuse.” Give politicians power and it certainly will be abused eventually — if not by today’s politicians, then by their successors.

As P.J. O’Rourke said, “Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

6. Government doesn’t work. Because government is force, because government programs are designed to enrich the politically powerful, because you can’t control government and make it do what’s right, because every new government program soon wanders from its original purpose, and because politicians eventually misuse the power you give them, it is inevitable that no government program will deliver on the promises the politicians make for it.

For years, I’ve asked listeners during radio interviews to name a government program that has actually delivered on its promises, and no one has been able to do so.

If you think there’s a successful government program, you probably don’t know how much it actually costs, aren’t aware of all its destructive side-effects, have no idea how easily and inexpensively such a thing could be done outside of government, and/or are basing your view of its success on political propaganda.

It doesn’t matter whether a program is supposed to do something you want or something you don’t want, whether the program is something you consider a proper function of government or something beyond its limits. It won’t work. Government programs always wind up disappointing you.

7. Government must be subject to absolute limits. Because politicians have every incentive to expand government, and with it their power, there must be absolute limits on government.

The Constitution provides the obvious limits we must reimpose upon the federal government. Until the Constitution is enforced, we have no hope of containing the federal government.

The present system of unlimited power is like giving a drunken stranger a set of signed, blank checks on your bank account. You are reduced to relying on the honesty and integrity of people you don’t even know — and they abuse that trust again and again.

Whether you think government should be bigger or smaller than the limits specified in the Constitution, the first step is to restore absolute limits, and then — if you like — work to change those limits to ones that would be more to your liking.

Questions

So the next time you’re tempted to think that some government program is just what this country needs, ask yourself these questions:
1. Do I really want to use force to make this happen? Do I have any idea how many families may be destroyed by giving the government another tool to be enforced with fines and prison terms?
2. Do I really believe that George Bush, Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Trent Lott will have my best interests at heart when they fashion this new program or law?
3. Why should I believe supporting this program will lead to exactly the solution I believe is right — when I have no way to control the outcome?
4. Do I really think the politicians won’t expand the scope and cost of this program far beyond what they’re talking about today?
5. Do I really want to give politicians this kind of power — knowing that some day the politicians and party I don’t like will have it at their disposal?
6. Why in the world should I think this government program will work any better than any government program of the past?
7. How can I hope to bring about small, limited government when I’m suggesting a new government program that will take us further away from the Constitution?

Conclusion

If you really want to cure a pressing social problem, take steps outside the realm of government. If you don’t see how you can convince people to help you succeed in a non-governmental endeavor, how can you expect to control politicians who care nothing for your desires?

And if you really want to make a noticeable difference, if you really want to improve life, do something for yourself or your family today. That’s where you have real control, that’s where you don’t need to rely on politicians — or anyone else — and you can make sure the results are as you intend.

It is very disturbing, isn’t it? Fishing expeditions based on the use of large nets by the government are an invasion of privacy for all.

Sorry I haven’t been able to keep up with the political mailings, David, but am happy to see that you are an involved, thinking citizen. I’m sure we will end up with differing views at times, but our exercise of free speech makes for healthy discussion.

Meanwhile, what about our ports?

Donna

Yes, this is what our wonderful Senators just reauthorized the Patriot Act for…

He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges’ behavior was found questionable.

[…] They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.

Because damned if Al Qaida’s suicide bombers aren’t the most financially responsible people in the world according to this wacky DHS profiling.

Update: HoT pal and sometimes editor Michael Hampton is all over this with more information and snark than the terrorists can shake a stick at, saying “The irony to this blatant loss of financial privacy is that terrorists frequently run up large credit card debts and fail to pay them off.”

Read on…  Comments…

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5715&print=Y

March 2, 2006

by Arnold Kling

Arnold Kling is an economist and author of the forthcoming health-policy book Crisis of Abundance.

In recent years, the approach to major policy issues has been for wonks to design proposals and for politicians to stage confrontations over those proposals. Sometimes, such legislation stalls, as with the Clinton health plan and the Bush Social Security plan. At other times it passes, as with Bush’s Medicare drug benefit. Either way, the result can be considered a failure. The mistake has been to focus public attention on solutions without providing adequate background on the problem. An issue as challenging as health care requires a conversation, not a confrontation.

More people, both in Washington and in the country at large, need to be better educated concerning the trends, constraints and trade-offs involved in health policy. Some well-established facts are rarely brought up in the public debate, while myths, half-truths and rash promises are widely circulated. Here are some issues that Americans, liberals and conservatives alike, should consider: Our health-care system is pulled in different directions by competing objectives. For example, individual consumers would prefer to have health-care expenses covered for them, rather than worry about paying for health care. This is the objective of Insulation.

However, we are concerned with the rising share of resources devoted to health care. This is the objective of Affordability.

Finally, we do not like the idea of being denied health care because of a bureaucrat’s decision. This is the objective of Accessibility, because we want to be able to access whatever our doctor recommends.

These objectives conflict with one another. For example, managed care was an attempt to move toward Affordability, but it reduced Accessibility.

We cannot slow the growth of health-care spending in this country without changing health-care practices. Experts agree that new technologies make medical care more expensive. In addition, the rapid rise of physician specialization accounts for a large share of our health-care expenditure growth.

Reining in health-care spending would require wrenching cultural changes. A market-based approach would be to reduce Insulation and instead steer people toward catastrophic health insurance, requiring them to pay more out of pocket for routine care. A government-based approach would be to set a national budget for health care and provide only the services that fall within that budget. The consequences of either approach are not well understood by policy-makers or the general public. The better plan would be to experiment with different approaches at the state level instead of suddenly lurching in one direction for the country. Perhaps California could be one of the states that attempts to experiment with a single-payer system. As a non-Californian, I would like to see that. My guess is that single-payer will require enormous tax increases and ruin the state’s economy. Better that should happen in California than in Maryland, where I live.

We lack information about the effectiveness of health-care protocols. Critics complain about “information asymmetries,” in which doctors know more than patients. But that problem pales in comparison to the information gaps shared by doctors and patients alike. For example, after a heart operation, no one knows how often a patient should be seen by a cardiologist. Is it cost-effective to be followed up once a month, once every six months or once a year? Researchers at Dartmouth University found that the main factor in determining follow-up visits was cardiologist availability. Cardiologists with a lot of room in their calendars will see a given patient more often than those with more crowded schedules. Overall, the researchers documented a shockingly broad pattern of differences in health-care practices that appeared to have no relationship to medical outcomes.

Those of us who propose market-oriented health-care reform need to spell out what this will mean for consumers — how it will increase their responsibility to study the costs and benefits of alternative treatments.

Those who favor universal government-provided health insurance also have an obligation to describe how health-care decisions will be made. If we cannot afford all the health-care services that everyone might want, then we are going to need policies for rationing health care.

Before electing to undergo surgery, we want the diagnosis explained, the alternatives described, the risks outlined and our responsibilities for contributing to a successful recovery made clear. By the same token, surgery on our health-care system requires a more thoughtful conversation than this country has had so far.

This article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 2006.