3 posts tagged “healthcare”
In a way, it is somewhat amusing, when I turn on talk radio, how many political partisans say that we require a Republican in the United States Empire's imperial thrown in 2009 because that would, allegedly, turn around the current economic recession (and it is one) sooner rather than later or perhaps even end it in contrast to a president with a "D" by his (or her) name. And all this time I thought there was a Republican currently in the thrown, with the economic results and consequences of his policies before our very eyes.
Dr. Clyde Wilson, over at Chronicles Magazine, is right. As usual, Republican grassroots will drop any sense of principle (if we grant that they ever had such a thing) because Obama/Clinton must be stopped. They must be stopped at all costs! So forget about upholding the notion of having any real principles.
Because, well, we might see welfare increases which would knock your socks off; a new, Great Society might get through; taxes might increase (a good rule of thumb: taxes, in the long-run, are equal to the amount the government spends----which, of course, helps to show Bush's tax "cuts" in a new light); God forbid we might see Dictator Hillary Clinton believe that she is above the law; who knows there might even be enlarging of the Marxist department of education and D.C. dictating to all local schools what to do; there might be increased welfare for the rich; or camping finance reform (oh wait, doesn't McCain somehow fit with this?); the State might even think about getting into the private affairs of families; maybe the airports will be further socialized; foreign aid would most definitely increase; there might even be more protectionism; the Mexico-US borders might become wide-open; and who does not fear Obama at the helm of a future police state? And, my goodness, there might even be housing troubles with a Democrat's economic policies!
But we all know the truth about why the Republican grassroots, made up of what Mr. Llewellyn Rockwell has fittingly called "red state fascists," will support John McCain. Because, behind all their rhetoric, their commitment to the principles of limited, constitutional government is pusillanimous and vapid. There is one paramount thing that amalgamates today's self-described conservative Republicans, and that is war and the police state. It annihilates any of their fictitious devotion to the Old Republic. For war, as the great Old Rightist Frank Chodorov said, "is the apotheosis of power, the ultimate expression of the faith and solidification of its achievements."
While I have not been won over, a few traditional conservatives have given some reasons why paleos should support Barack Obama. I grant that he would probably be relatively better than McCain, who is not tough competition. But picking between the "lesser of evil," to me anyway, is playing a game of Russian Roulette. My advise is not to play. I have no intention to vote in November, even for a third party. And do not believe I will ever vote in any future election. Nonetheless, if you must vote, my advice (for what it is worth, if anything) would be to vote for either the Constitution Party guy or the Libertarian Party guy. But I would not recommend anyone to vote for McCain.
Sen. McCain is the embodiment of militarism, empire, and all-around Bush-type policies. It makes him a fitting descendant of the Bush administration. Even if we could imagine---by some miracle---that McCain would actually be a good "economy president," war is the most important issue. Things like taxes do not compare with State murder. Taxes hurt but they typically do not kill. War, on the other hand, does kill. After all, you cannot bring back the dead. They have a different weight, and we must rank our hierarchy of values correctly. Too bad that the "booboisie" cannot easily do that in the modern world.
Abortion: Statism vs. Private Property Society.
Pro-Life Should Not Use Leftist Rhetoric.
It goes without saying that as an individual I am sympathetic to the "pro-life" side and consider myself generally on their side, opposed to the "pro-choice" side in the abortion conundrum. Insofar as abortion relates not to personal morality versus immorality but with common/natural law and ethics, my libertarian views are derived from the principles implied in private property, although this makes my views somewhat more "nuanced," I guess you could say, contrasted with your average pro-lifer.
I should mention that the great libertarian Dr. Walter Block has outlined an argument that puts libertarianism, properly speaking, in the middle ground. It "compromises the uncompromisable." It makes barbaric practices like partial-birth abortion illegal. Listen to this [mp3].
(Either way, if you agree with Block's position or the late Rothbard's, one thing all libertarians should agree on is the fact that the issue should be localized as much as possible and be out of the hands of the federal government.)
In terms of morality I am pro-life. Moreover, as I argued in this entry (please take a look at it) I believe that a stateless society gives pro-lifers the best environment. Not only would there be no collective reinforcement or subsidization of abortion in a free society, private law agreements and covenants can ban the practice and help cut it down, and more so than the current statist environment. A free society with a variety of authorities and group associations increases "social power" away from the centralized, top-down, and all-or-nothing managerial State. There is nothing more conservative than this feature of a free society. Libertarianism does not mean, as some suggest, a democratic or egalitarian free-for-all or an ideology of saying that all life -choices or -styles are "equally" good.* Neither does it necessarily reject a natural moral order making it "relativistic."
*[It is a clear confusion when a conservative, paleo or otherwise, says that anti-State libertarianism is for getting rid of stop signs or saying that something as despicable and evil as child pornography is a good and would be allowed all over a libertarian society. The first one does not need much comment. It does not take much thinking to see that a private road would lay down rules to maximize profits and minimize costs and traffic accidents. The second one should be thought of like this: If you were to enter into a private law enforcer would you sign up with one that said this was okay? Also, would you move into a community covenant that said this was okay? Or would your senses tell you not to do such a thing? My guess is that your senses would tell you not to do such a thing. 99.9% of the population agrees with you and me that it is an evil. The remaining one-tenth of a percent would find themselves having to conform with standard morals. They would have to civilize themselves or would be banished from society. Not only would private law agreements and community laws ban the practice, there could be other methods of public ostracism as well. A private property society would have "bilateral law." This would mean people would have to assimilate to more traditional norms of the community. There should be little question that child pornography would be at the top of the list to condemn and "fight against." See, especially chapter ten, Hoppe's Democracy – The God That Failed.]
(And as Mr. Joseph Sobran has said, in an essay about ending the war on drugs: "Informal social sanctions, as always, did most of the work of governing society." Today, unfortunately, we think that everything should be political.)
Exploring my newly received Nisbet book from Amazon, Prejudices, he has some very illuminating comments on abortion, even though I cannot say I agree with his position fully. (Paleoconservatives should note, Robert Nisbet was one of the three leading lights in traditional conservatism and he was not what we could call anti-abortion. According to Nisbet, antiabortionists "strike at the very heart of both family and individual rights.") One of the things he says is that State laws against abortion is a sign of how the State has weakened the family's authority. Once the State interferes in internal family affairs, says Nisbet, this is a sure "sign of despotism."
Never have so many laws been passed, first by the states, then the federal government, prohibiting so many actions which for thousands of years had generally be held to fall under family authority. It can be fairly argued that the present infirm state of the family in Western society is the consequence as much of moralistic laws assertedly designed to protect individual members of the family from one evil or another as it is of anything else. Current efforts to prohibit abortion categorically and absolutely might be viewed in this light. It is not so much the "women's right to choose" that is being assaulted as it is the ethic of family and its legitimate domain. . . . But all such attention by law and religion has to be seen in the context of the considerable number of actions along the same line----against alcohol, tobacco, prostitution, sex for pleasure, profanity, and others, all novel utilizations of the law and religion which would have been deemed egregious by earlier generations. . . . The use of sovereign powers of the states to achieve success in this crusade was manifest in the epidemic of so-called Blue Laws in America. . . .
Abortion became front and center, he says, when the issue was nationalized. States have used abortion "to weaken the hold of the family over its own."
Instead of internal disputes in family households being rightfully settled by the head of the house who lays down the rules, there has been a shift to the democratic State. We have replaced family patriarchy with politics. An attrition of the family occurs. And instead of internal extended family disputes being attempted to be solved internally within its hierarchy, we have the democratic State. The natural bonds and connections, inequalities, societal institutional frameworks, autonomies and social pluralities have been replaced by the anti-plural State to atomize the individual so that it has authority and power over him. In the name of "freeing" the individual, what we have left is Leviathan. Without a multitude of bonds and institutions of various authorities all that is ever more left to confront situations and challenges in life is the political. In absentia is the State.
While abortion may be debatable vis-à-vis the State, I would say that many traditional or paleo-conservatives (e.g., Mr. Patrick Buchanan) have only hurt their social and cultural causes by powering Leviathan versus what Nisbet would label social pluralism. Say what you will about "natural rights," individualism or John Locke, it may be time to think about rejecting statism and its entire work, like great conservatives as Mr. Sobran. If not be a "libertarian," then, I exhort, be a conservative anarchist.
[Maybe time permitting in a few weeks...I'll get around to typing up an extended blog entry on this important subject and some of its related subtopics. So, as always, please stop by The Paleo Blog once a week.]
Anyways, now what I would like to point out is that Mr. Marcus Epstein, over at Taki's Magazine, is giving some good advice for pro-lifers when it comes to arguing for the pro-life position. There is this sad tendency that you find in the framing of arguments so that they are politically correct and egalitarian. This is no way to defend the pro-life position, if you come from a paleoconservative perspective or, like me, a paleolibertarian-Blockian one.
Hail, Discrimination! in Insurance (and everywhere else)
A Leviathan filled with hundreds of politicians is a sure way to guarantee liberty and security, huh!? (Ha-ha. Who in the world thought this?) Politicians are always looking for new ways to be busybodies so they can expand the political circus in civil society. That's their job. How many times do people (left-liberals, for example) complain about politics only to ask for politics to enter more areas of life? This will only result in one thing: A process of accelerated increase in the politicization of society. And as the politicians get more power their potentiality to abuse it, as monopolists, increases.
But of course anything in the name for "evil" discrimination... Who could allow that? That would mean that people would have the freedom to choose. It would be too pro-choice, wouldn't it?
The House of Representatives, according to Dr. Rozeff, voted in favor 414-1 and the Senate 95-0 for a new bill banning discrimination based on genetics. With those bipartisan numbers it is a fair bet that the bill, as one conservative would say, is both evil and stupid. (But thank you, Rep. Ron Paul, for your lone vote against it.)
Something like this, I am positive, definitely feeds into the emotions making it an easy sell for the public. However, this is not something that we should want at all; on the contrary because it will just result in ever more problems in health insurance. Ceteris paribus, there will be ever higher costs, more waste, less private research, and the collective subsidization of sickness.
(Ms. Karen De Coster on her blog adds: "Of course, the most notable aspect of this debacle will be how 'genetic disease' will be defined.")
In brief, insurance is about pooling homogeneous risks because otherwise what would be happening is not insurance but redistribution. The groupings of persons in health insurance, as far as everyone could tell, would have the same individual chance of getting sick and thus needing insurance money. The less these groupings are homogeneous, which means that certain subsets get sick more often, premium rates will be higher for the bulk of those in the given group outside of that particular subset. Therefore, if we had a free market in insurance, those companies that became more and more precise in groupings would tend to out-compete those that did not. One way these groupings would be done is through genetics. And there are many positive things that would come with this. The tendency would be that there would be no net redistribution, the lowering of expenses, the lowering of premiums, increased research, and so forth.
I'll point out that Dr. Hans Hoppe has given a lecture on this. You can listen here [mp3] In it he explains, the mountain high stack of statist regulations has pushed into motion a situation where expenses continually rise because discrimination has become less possible. This promotes increased costs and hence higher premiums. A side effect of this is a relative increased number of those dropping out of the system. Hence prices are pushed up even more. Next, it can be expected, that the State will force, by the point of the gun, everyone into the system. Then you will see price controls because of public outrage of these artificially high prices. Gross misallocations will happen, including shortages. And then political (mis)allocations will dictate everything that happens in healthcare. Et cetera. . . .Although, I am sure, these problems are just a sign we need more socialism. . ., according to those that worship the nightstick.
(This is not to mention all the other problems in healthcare, like the statist/fascist AMA.)
The Death of the West.
In cerebration I do not find it any surprise that Occidental society is committing suicide. Today we find a corrupt culture filled with lots of bad ideas and values, a massive welfare and managerial state engineering society, and a massive warfare and empire state. Combined with this is a wide open border, which is only asking for trouble. And, in my view, it seems that it is only natural that there is a wide open border with today's perverse statism. It is a sign of a falling civilization, and for this reason nothing will probably be done about it. In Mr. Buchanan's seminal book The Death of the West he explores our age of Cultural Marxism and how birthrates have fallen to the point of where the West will perhaps be no more.
Buchanan writes in a recent article of his:
Hopefully, the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, who are about to inherit the earth as we pass away, will treat us better than our ancestors treated them in the five centuries that Western Man ruled the world.
Otherwise, we all go out with a bang.
In this essay the late-great Murray Rothbard addresses government's and statists' interminable yells to augment the existing socialistically-oriented medical “insurance” system.
Market-based, reality-based insurance is quite different than statist medical "insurance." Rothbard gives the example of fire insurance. (Here is a extensive mp3 lecture on the nature of insurance and the results of statist interventions.) Fire insurance the individual pays "in advance a fixed annual premium." If fire occurs, then the individual "receive[s] ... a compensating fixed money benefit." Contrariwise the governmental-fascistic system pays its customers "whatever the doctor or hospital chooses to charge."
As Rothbard explains, demand thus becomes artificially stimulated to mountain heights. Prices will of course follow. Then what's next? Why, of course people blame the "free market." No, never look to what created this atmosphere. Ignore the men behind the curtain.
Furthermore, "moral hazard" is created. As Rothbard writes:
There is no way by which it can be measured or gaged or even defined. A "visit to a physician" can range all the way from a careful and lengthy investigation and discussion, and thoughtful advice, to a two-minute run-through with the doctor doing not much else than advising two aspiring and having the nurse write out the bill. ... Moreover, there is no way to prevent a galloping moral hazard, as customers ---- their medical bills reduced to near-zero ---- decide to go to the doctor every week [for frivolous reasons] ... Hence, it is impossible, under third-party insurance, to prevent a gross decline in the quality of medical care along with a severe shortage of the supply of such care in relation to the swelling demand.
He says that the problem goes before the 1950s medical "insurance" government scheme. First there was the American Medical Association (AMA). (See Lew Rockwell on this topic here.) With the AMA what happened?
The government thus, Rothbard says, "put out of business all medical schools that were proprietary and profit-making, that admitted blacks and women, and that did not specialize in orthodox..." Half of the schools were close down and the industry cartelized. Competition was killed and prices artificially driven up. So customers lost control and power.
In conclusion, demand was artificially increased and supply artificially decreased. The results are before our eyes. And instead of seeing the problem as it is, people act as if more government is the answer.
. . .For some reason it now feels appropriate to find a H. L. Mencken quote to fit this matter. Today's political absurdity demands it. Democracy, the "soft variant of communism" that it is, in particular.
[Rothbard's essay, which this entry is based on and is meant to bring attention to, is included in Making Economic Sense.]
Here we go again... One of the things that can sometimes aggravate a person like me is how often men erroneously set up the divisions of a polemic political debate. Like usual, the polemics between those that aspire to see government implement some sort of universal "free" healthcare program and those who do not generally miss the point. Statists, especially. Hey, what else is new?
Defenders of wanting to see a future free market, one we presently are extraordinarily far away from, are often condemned by leftists as follows: "You libertarians. You are in bed with big business!"
This actually should be turned around to the truth of the matter. Guess who is in bed with big business? If one thinks about it, the answer would have to be left-liberals and the rest of the pack of statists. They are the pawns for big business who seek regulations, controls, and special privileges to limit or get rid of competition. And they want to continue to move in that sort of direction. In fact, they were the ones who created a state corporate field. The present mess is their doing.
Corporate America is really on the side of the government; ergo leftists are too. This industry has been cartelized and monopolized by their doing. The result has only been decreased quality and increased cost. And, then, surprise, more governmental action is requested. Compare this to an industry that is relatively free, like technology. Observe the prices between the two. It is of no accident.
But we are told that the healthcare debate is as follows:
On the one side, we have the Wonderful, Benevolent, and Always Unselfish government Protectors. On the other side, we have the Evil, Greedy, and Nasty corporations. It is the government desire for the "public good" versus the "greedy" free market.
This is plainly wrong and absurd. Either they are lying or completely and utterly ignorant. What are these people talking about?
As Mr. Rockwell explains in the linked to article of a speech he gave in 2000, it all started with the American Medical Association (AMA). The agenda of AMA, says Rockwell: "was openly discussed at its conventions and in the medical journals: to secure a government-enforced medical monopoly and high incomes for mainstream doctors."
This started the downward spiral to where we are today, thanks to the left, and the neoconservatives who defend the current system.
Read the Important Article HERE.
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And, if you have some extra additional time, listen to this [mp3] lecture on the nature of insurance and how this relates to the troubles of today's statist health insurance.
