Category Archives: Crony capitalism

A Blind Hen…

As the saying goes, even a blind hen finds corn. Georgia House Bill 523 is just that bit of legislative corn. Typically it is large, distant governing bodies (federal and/or state) that impose upon their subsidiaries egregious violations of individual liberty. These large bodies commonly compel all to march in lock step with their directives irrespective of the preferences of the smaller communities and individuals. But as Yoda says, “size matters not.” Small governing bodies may be just as injurious to individual rights as large bodies. House Bill 523 is trying to right the wrongs that numerous local, city, and county governments have inflicted on their citizens. In short, House Bill 523 would remove the legal authority for such communities to restrict the property rights of those who wish to engage in “short term” rentals (under 30 days) of their homes. HB 523 has been dubbed the “AirBnB” bill because it is attempting to restore the rights of homeowners to use their property as they see fit with respect to these rentals. Many local communities currently impose either outright bans on such short-term rentals or onerous restrictions (such as being forced to plead one’s case in front of a board of commissioners – basically begging to be permitted to use their own property). This bill would do away with these regulations and render the local governing bodies impotent in this domain.

The indignant outcries from the local communities’ governing leaders (e.g. Morgan County which encompasses a wide swath of lake homes and charming antebellum abodes – see this article (behind paywall)) concerning this bill is deafening in its hypocrisy. Why this is a blatant violation of THEIR right to violate the rights of those that live in their community! This ranks right up there with the indignation of slave owners who were forced to free their slaves after the Civil War – “I can’t believe what is being done to me!” These are the same people that will put their hand over their heart and recite the pledge of allegiance while fondly reflecting on the phrase “liberty and justice for all” and then with a straight face tell a homeowner, “no, sorry, we have the right to tell you how you may or may not use YOUR property.” Yep, nothing illustrates pursuit of happiness better than other people imposing their will on you.

The objections to HB 523 run the usual gamut of crony-capitalism, protectionism, and nods toward the protection of existing homeowners. Unsurprisingly existing bed and breakfasts and local hoteliers oppose this bill since AirBnB and similar real estate sharing activities threaten their business. But it is not the domain of government to protect the economic interests of businesses by restricting competition  – regardless of how rampant this behavior may otherwise be across this country (from taxi medallions, to Certificate of Need laws, to food truck regulations and similar “turf” zoning). The other concern raised is typical fear-mongering; paint a worst case scenario to the constituents and then step in and offer a solution to prevent said scenario, “well, this might happen, so let’s ban it.” But of course existing laws prohibiting public nuisance or excessive noise already cover the scenarios they outline; there is no need for additional restrictive controls.  

In fact, this bill is so astutely crafted that it carves out an exception for existing private protective covenants that govern short-term rentals. Why? Because protective covenants are voluntary contracts: one may opt in or out by buying or not buying property governed by them. But this is not so with ordinances and regulations, they come and go and change with the prevailing political winds so it is impossible to ever be sure what your property rights will be in one, five or ten years. Perhaps HB 523 will change just a bit of that.

Anything Goes!

This past week Trump’s Energy Department announced a relaxation of a set of light-bulb energy efficiency standards (EISA) first implemented under George W. Bush and finalized under Obama. The standards were set to go into full effect in January 2020 (eliminating incandescent versions of three-way bulbs, candle-shaped, globe-shaped and reflector bulbs). 

The autistic screeching from the corporate press and leftist “public policy” lackeys only underscores the lengths to which “the Cathedral” will go to in order to maintain the hell-fire of climate alarmism. For Cathedral adherents the sky is quite literally falling. It is because of their prescient guidance that the rest of us are corralled into doing “the right thing” – namely spending $10 on a bulb to save $15 in electricity – over the next 30 years. Even though the market has always deprecated older technology in favor of newer, we just can’t wait when it comes to energy efficiency. In the words of New York Times columnist John Schwartz, we need the federal government to “force(d) Americans to use more energy-efficient light bulbs.” Please note that “force” here is a politically correct euphemism for “threaten with initiatory violence”. Now it is true, force can solve problems quickly. All the mugger needs to do is to wave his gun in my face and moments later his monetary problems are solved. One would like to believe that in the “land of the free” such state sponsored aggression would not be so readily lauded as the primary method deployed against perceived societal problems. Of course I do not expect the state to abjure this special power it has any time soon, it is the qua sine non of every state/government. When a such a body dictates to the citizenry what they may or may not manufacturer and buy, then that country is no longer entitled to call itself “the land of the free” or claim “liberty and justice for all.”

One of the more vocal critics of this rollback, an Andrew deLaski of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project went on record with some rather eyebrow-raising comments. For example

“The Trump administration is trying to protect technology that was first invented in the 1800s. It’s like trying to protect the horse and buggy from the automobile technology.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I recall the government did not OUTLAW the sale or manufacture of the horse and buggy in favor of promoting the automobile. Consumers transitioned to the newer technology over time at a rate mediated by both the cost and advantages of the new technology.

To imply that removing regulations that are annihilating an industry is equivalent to “protecting” said industry makes about as much sense as saying someone who was in the process of knifing you to death but then pauses and begins to only punch you in the face is actually now “protecting” you. The truth is the polar opposite. The manufacturers of fluorescent and LED bulbs are the ones receiving state protection insofar as competing technology have being outlawed. But we’re “protecting” the planet so greater good trumps all. Makes one wonder what the left is capable of when they eventually hold power and the climate apostates are in their cross hairs. In the words of Cole Porter I suspect it will be “anything goes!”

CON Job

There are a myriad of reasons that health care costs are sky high. Every cause shares a common genesis – government. From the World War II era tax benefit of allowing tax-free employer sponsored plans to state imposed price controls (Medicare/Medicaid) to today’s outright subsidies (Obamacare), it has been a 70+ year slow motion train wreck that has annihilated anything remotely resembling a “free” market in health care.

However, today I want to focus on but one sliver of that regulatory quagmire: Certificate of Need (CON) laws. When I first learned about these I honestly thought I was reading satire – this is America after all! How can such monstrosities of law exist? And yet they do. For those unaware, CON laws basically allow one or more local hospitals to have a say in whether a prospective hospital may be permitted in their “backyard.”

It’s like if McDonalds had a vote in whether any new fast food restaurants could be built within say 30 miles of their location. What do you think McDonalds’ choice would be? This is nothing but state backed protectionism, pure and simple. And like all protectionism it harms consumers while benefiting the protected class (unions, taxi drivers, any tariff protected industry, etc.) But please, tell me more about this free market in health care we have.

Supporters of CON laws try to appeal to ones sense of “fairness” by claiming that if these mean old private hospitals come in why they’ll “steal” patients from our poor old public hospital by only offering the most lucrative and profitable services leaving the extant hospital with money losing care and indigent patients. Hogwash. In other words they are saying that in terms of those “lucrative” services they can’t compete because they are in fact overcharging for their “lucrative” services in order to subsidize the money losing services.  In other words they don’t know how to properly run a (hospital) business and are afraid of someone coming in and competing with them that does. 

Ludicrously, these same people will turn around and decry the “monopoly” of a company like AT&T or Microsoft or Google or Apple and claim “why we need to break them up, don’t you know monopolies are bad and that competition lowers prices and helps consumers?” But then will unironically tell you that monopolies in hospital services makes perfect sense and why don’t you just trust the guy telling you he doesn’t need competition to give you a fair price? I guess state backed monopolies are “a ok” (schools, courts, police, utilities, roads, etc.)

Ironically many of these people who support CON laws are “conservative” Republicans! Indeed there was a recent Bill 198 in the Georgia House that died in that Republican dominated chamber. One representative quipped in a local paper

“I was very happy to help kill the elimination of the CON process that would hurt local hospitals.”

David Belton
R – Buckhead, GA, District 112

Wow, give that man a Bernie Sanders medal, he is a Democratic Socialist and doesn’t even know it. Socialism claims the right of the “people” (aka the State) to own the means of production. Ownership implies a right to control. If you don’t own it, then you have no authority to exert control. But if the state tells prospective investors in a new hospital what they may or may not do with their own money, then what is the state doing other than asserting an ownership (control) claim over those investors’ money? We have a word for people that control the property of another that they don’t own: thief. I’m sorry Republicans; I must have missed the part in the Constitution (Federal or State) where it says we have a right to a livelihood unfettered by nettlesome competition. Repeat after me, just because a violation of rights can be harmful doesn’t mean anything deemed harmful is a rights violation.

GDPR: End of the World

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”

This sentiment from the well known R.E.M song encapsulates most succinctly the state of affairs with the E.U.’s “General Data Protection Regulation” (or GDPR). Like you, I too received an onslaught of (promptly deleted) “updated privacy policy notice” emails last week. We all scratched our heads at the oddly timed confluence of these emails but soon went back about the business of life. In short, we felt fine, nothing to see here, move right along. In reality these email notices were the harbinger of the end of human civilization as we have enjoyed it (that is, relatively free liberal western democracies with some semblance of local autonomous governance). GDPR is the first step on the road back to serfdom, albeit a rather different path then the one foreseen by F.A. Hayek. This path follows the same instinct toward fascism (fascism=state control of otherwise putatively private interests, in short a fascism is the façade of socialism dressed up in a cloak of capitalism).

“Oh, c’mon now, I think you’re overstating things here just a bit!” you’re probably thinking by now. Sadly, I’m not. This is the first time that any law or regulation has had GLOBAL reach.

“There is nowhere to run to, no where to hide.”

It does not merely pertain to companies operating in Europe, no, it governs any company anywhere in the world that may at any time count an EU citizen as a customer or even merely a website visitor. That might be all well and good if it were merely a recitation of privacy best practices. But no, this regulation has teeth – velociraptor sharp and deep. The fines for violation of this regulation are specifically designed to put all small to midsize businesses into bankruptcy overnight. The fines range from 10 – 20 million Euro (12 – 24 million dollars) at a minimum! And that is for a single offence! To put that into perspective, according to IRS figures (2013 latest year available) 99.685% of all US business make less than 12 million a year in profit. Or stated differently only about 18,000 US businesses out of approximately 6 million could conceivably withstand such a fine. That is the recipe for serfdom. That is the recipe for what all regulations do to some extent (favor large businesses at the expense of the small) but at a scale that would all but ensure no one could ever again rise above the station they were born into by starting their own business. The least little misstep in following every little dot and tittle of this (and most assuredly future) regulation would leave the nascent entrepreneur crushed like a bug under the heel of Paul Bunyan. “But I’m in the US, they can’t touch us!” you say. Unfortunately our government will be all too willing to help out their EU cronies just in the same way that the EU has been complicit in enforcing the absurd US tax law known as FACTA (which basically treats any US citizen with an overseas bank account like a criminal). GDPR fines are the equivalent of the death penalty for jay walking.

The premise behind this regulation is itself flawed as well. When even someone’s name is considered “private” information I think we can say that privacy regulations have “jumped the shark” and entered full on SJW territory of head spinning absurdity. In short, there is no right to privacy. You do not have the right to walk through the public park and then insist that everyone who saw you must be beat over the head until they have no memory of you walking through the park. That is what this regulation does. It substitutes state violence for personal responsibility. If you don’t want some website to have your information, then don’t use the website, it’s that simple. If you don’t want some company to know where you live because they had to ship product to your house, then don’t buy from them. Don’t ruin society and the internet for the other 99% of us who don’t give a crap if some website stored a cookie in the web cache about the last visit there.

Privacy is a negative right  – it is up to you protect it. Using the state to point guns at people to make them do what you want doesn’t count as you doing something – unless you think violence is the best way to solve problems.

Ostrich policies delay the inevitable

Following in the wake of the recent school shooting in Florida, corporations all across this great land of ours are falling all over themselves to virtue signal their adherence to right-thought by distancing themselves from an organization (the NRA) that had zero culpability in the recent shooting. Brilliant. Supposedly the NRA stands as some bulwark against “common sense” gun control being passed – even though such “common sense” laws already exist and would have thrown a roadblock at the shooter’s attempt to obtain a weapon had the federal government minded their own business. The irony is that a fair portion of culpability falls at the feet of leftist “do-gooders” and not the NRA.

During the Obama administration a new policy was established that had the goal of reducing racial “disparities” in suspensions and expulsions from school, part of Obama’s overall “School Leniency Policy”. Basically the policy was this: don’t report serious crimes to the cops, try to solve the issue “in house.” That’s a laudable goal perhaps, but not when the crime is extremely violent or the incidents are persistent. After the first year of implementing this policy more than 30,000 incidents of students physically assaulting teachers went unpunished and unreported to police. The shooter, Cruz, benefited from this system of see no evil, hear no evil. His repeated misbehavior and violent threats were quietly swept under the rug in order to achieve the goals of this federal program. Indeed, Broward county went quickly from leading Florida in student arrests to having one of the lowest arrest rates in the state. Pay attention here: this is exactly the same technique by which Cuba is able to report ultra low infant mortality (ignore the problem by killing preemies or aborting anything suspect) or that the UK can show very low homicide rates (only count homicides in which someone is caught and convicted… unsolved cases are ignored in the statistic). Very easy to get the result you want if you just ignore the problem.

In any event, because Cruz managed to evade getting caught up in the criminal justice system, he had no criminal record and thus easily passed the legally mandated federal criminal background check when he purchased his AR-15 in February 2017. In other words, President Obama is far more culpable in this particular case than is the NRA. If he had merely kept the Federal government’s nose out of how local schools manage their discipline problems Cruz would have been arrested many times and never passed a criminal background check. As an aside, it has been put forth that this is why the FBI did nothing with the tips about him; he wasn’t “in the system” so was not thought to be a credible threat.

One of the companies involved in the NRA tie cutting (discount loss for members) is the Georgia based Delta Airlines. In response, the fascist/cronyist Georgia legislature decided to swat them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. A tax bill that was wending its way through the legislature had some juicy sales-tax breaks for jet fuel that would have greatly benefited Delta. The legislature threatened Delta with the loss of those breaks unless they restored the NRA discount. Delta did not, and the legislature made good on their threat. As a private company Delta has the right to associate or not associate with whomever they please (unless they make wedding cakes, then they have to associate with everyone) so it is a glaring failure of democracy that it is possible for those in power to abuse it so. But it is also a failure that such corporate favoritism (i.e. cronyist direct tax breaks) can take place. Sometimes two wrongs do make a right.

Riding the brakes?

Do you remember when those hurricanes hit Texas and Florida last month and since some people couldn’t access their money to buy food and other supplies the government just waived the law against theft so people could get what they needed more quickly? Yeah, me neither. But in fact the government did waive one law last month: the Jones Act. This waiver applied to affected ports in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.  But I thought laws were the very immovable bedrock upon which society was based. How can such pillars of civilization be summarily set aside? The answer is that such “laws” are not really law at all. They are but mere whims and cronyist preferences of those with the power to rule over we mere peasants. These “laws” rather than preventing victimization they instead create victims by benefiting one party at the expense of another.

The Jones Act of 1920 artificially restricts the transport of goods between US ports to only those vessels owned, operated and principally manned by US citizens. In other words no “ferners” can move goods from US port to US port. It was established for putative national security interests post World War I, predicated (as all such protectionist measures are) on a fear of the big “what if” nightmarish scenario of US goods being transported mainly by foreigners….shudder. Of course such a policy is amenable to the autarkist interests of any nation eager to engage in war.

So while the Act has benefited the US merchant marine industry, it has been at the expense of consumers, principally those on US protectorate islands (like Puerto Rico) who by necessity must have nearly all goods brought in by ocean. A 2012 study showed that it cost nearly twice as much to ship to Puerto Rico from the US as it would were a non-US vessel permitted to make such shipments. Another study showed it costs Puerto Rico $537 million per year. In other words $537 million more goes to US vessels (seen benefit) and $537 million fewer dollars goes to those businesses and industries (unseen harm) where that money would have been spent had it stayed in the pockets of the Puerto Rican people.

If a law becomes an obstacle in times of distress then think of what it does in normal times. Although one can get from point A to B while riding the brakes on a full tank, does it really require running on fumes to realize perhaps this constant braking is not a good idea? It is time to remove all such artificial drags on the economy. The role of government is to protect our rights, not to benefit one group at the expense of another.

 

Blind leading the blind

Last week’s article touched on a defect in humanity that spurs a tiny minority to use violence to achieve their ends. This week the focus will be on a similar defect that spurs a different minority to use deception as their tool of choice. I suppose I’d rather be duped than threatened (at least I have a chance of seeing through the deception and walking away) but it is nevertheless any unsavory side of humanity. The power of the Internet has given rise to a new class of conman, the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) peddler. They are like an Infomercial that doesn’t disclose it’s an Infomercial. These peddlers extend a helping hand, claiming they have access to special, secret knowledge that “they” don’t want you to know about – and they offer it to you all for free! As the saying goes in the Internet era – if the product is free, you’re the product. That’s not always a bad thing (witness Facebook) but it should raise your BS radar when someone is trying to steer you toward or away from certain products. A healthy dose of skepticism is always warranted.

One of the biggest of these Internet phenomenons is the “Food Babe”. Although she has no background in chemistry or biology she speaks and publishes as though she is an authority on those subjects. Her success makes sense: a) we all eat food, b) we all want to be safe and c) nearly none of us has the requisite knowledge base to separate the wheat from the chaff of her information flow (see, I made a food pun there).

By way of example, she recently published an article on the “dangers” of cottonseed oil. Not that hydrogenated oils are particularly healthy in and of themselves (irrespective of their source) but her arguments here are just silly and betray her chemical ignorance. Hydrogenated oil is hydrogenated oil, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. Trying to impugn it because the source in this case is ‘not food’ (cotton) is chemically laughable. It’s like saying mined salt from the ground is dirty because we know there is dirt in the ground but salt extracted from the ocean is pure and clean because water is clean. Her argument is incoherent, jumping back and forth between GMOs are bad to pesticides are bad. Well which is it? GMOs allow fewer pesticides to be used. There are ancillary negatives surrounding GMOs (seed patents, government strong arm tactics on behalf of Monsanto, etc.) but those are merely policy issues. GMOs themselves are biologically a non-issue. Those that fear them just don’t understand how chemistry or biology work…and then they peddle that fear to gain followers and links. This article was simply a formulaic anti-GMO screed with cottonseed oil as the vehicle for that screed, she could have written the same article using any GMO crop.

Unless you have a degree in chemistry or biology you’d be hard pressed to spot the BS she is shoveling. I have a degree (Ph.D.) in chemistry. My BS radar immediately went off reading the article. People like her succeed because the general public does not have the time or skillset to uncover the truth, so rather than take a chance they go along with whoever appears to be an “authority.” It’s the same technique politicians use to get elected; an uninformed electorate goes along with whomever sounds best or seems trustworthy. And so in both cases we end up with bad advice and bad policy. Trusting what our fellow man tells us is an admirable trait, it is unfortunate that it is so often abused by those have figured out how to exploit it.

Mother may I?

You walk outside one morning and witness your neighbor struggling to move a tree that has fallen across his driveway. Do you (a) ask him how you can help or (b) compose a letter to request a hearing before the town council in order to request permission to assist your neighbor? You request contains a detailed outline of your proposed methods of assistance whereupon you dutifully wait 2-3 weeks for a response back from said council. If you’re like 99.999% of people on this planet you go with (a). And that right there is what the free market is all about. People identifying a problem encountered by their fellow man, visualizing a solution, and then offering that solution If the solution is desired then people will show their acceptance by voluntarily engaging in trade in order to obtain said solution. If not desired then no such trade takes place.

But that is not the world we live in. There is no free market in the US or anywhere else in the world. There must be a defect in humanity that inflicts some with the instinct to force their ideas of what is normal or right or fair onto those that happen to be in proximity to them. In other words, we have a “permission market” – if you wish to solve a problem and offer the solution to the world you must first seek out the permission of these self-anointed guardian and kiss their ring on bended knee.

A recent example of this ring kissing involves a company “VidAngel” – a streaming service brought to market by two brothers who wanted to stream movies to their home with certain profanity or violent acts omitted. They searched high and low and when they couldn’t find anyone offering such a service, they started one! As an aside, this is how many such innovative companies get a start – unable to find a solution to a problem the entrepreneur solves the problem and then markets it to others with the same problem. CEO Neil Harmon recently explained on the Tom Woods Show podcast that when they started out they knew there would be copyright challenges to what they were attempting (witness the fall of Aereo, another innovative problem solving company) so they made sure to strictly follow the letter of the law. Their service, they contend, falls under the Family Movies Act, which gives consumers the right to filter movies they own – on videotape. So in order to comply with that antiquated provision they actually purchase on the consumer’s behalf a DVD or Blu-ray disc that is dedicated to only that consumer. Then their software allows the consumer to selectively remove certain words or content. Don’t like the “f” word – then delete away! Ok with profanity but don’t want violence? No problem! They were not secretive about their business. They requested licensing arrangements from all the studios. Some granted a license, but for those that did not, they followed the disc per consumer route. Then the big three (Disney, Warner Bros and Fox) decided to put an end to their little endeavor – not alone mind you, but with the help of the United States Federal Government. You see government is here to protect our rights, even the imaginary ones (copyright, trademark, patent and before that, slavery). VidAngel has now been shut down due to an injunction issued from U.S. District Court in California.

Even in the permission market it’s not enough to ask and get permission, you are also subject to the mercurial whims of those in power. Almost enough to make one have second thoughts about starting a business…nah… regulatory uncertainty would never have an impact on business starts and job growth.

The Carrier Deal

Donald Trump is an enigma. On the one hand he is not even President yet and he’s already using his legendary (according to him) negotiating skills to make good on his promise of keeping jobs in America. On the other hand this feat was accomplished through a combination of crony-capitalist carrots and sticks whose effectiveness was largely a consequence of Carrier’s parent company (United Technologies) being a cog in the military-industrial fascist apparatus. Dependency fosters control and United Technologies is highly dependent on the federal government for much of its business, therefore this was somewhat of a low-hanging fruit “win” for Trump.

The reaction to this deal has predictably fallen along party lines although there is a bit of cognitive dissonance on both sides as they try to come to terms with balancing fairness with pragmatism. People appreciate that Trump saved those jobs but are troubled by how he did it. Is it fair to bestow tax “giveaways” on one company but not others? Is it fair to reward only those that threaten to leave? Is it fair to invoke a punitive 35% tariff on goods imported from US overseas firms? The answer depends on the framework in which the question is asked. Within the framework of natural rights and individual liberty none of these are legitimate. The actions of any entity that initiates violence (taxation, tariffs) to achieve its ends are illegitimate. But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world literally run by the very warlords we are told would arise absent the state. Every state (i.e. country) is a plantation; some are far worse than others, but a gilded cage is still a cage. So given our condition of servitude to the state is it fair if the master decides to treat one slave more favorably than the others? Should we tell the master “You have no right to lift our brother out of the mud, please, cast him back down here with us!” Thus we have both sides of the political spectrum opposing this but for opposite reasons. The left opposes it because they enjoy being in the mud and believe this is the only way we can all be equal, therefore it is “wrong” for anyone to get out of the mud. The right opposes it for purity reasons. They believe ALL should escape the mud but that it is an either-or proposition; either all escape or none escape. Libertarians will argue for the moral solution but (grudgingly) accept the pragmatic one as a stepping-stone. Better for some to escape than none. Since wholesale emancipation seems to be off the table, then let’s create so many loopholes and deals that all can escape.

So do I wish I could get the kind of tax incentives Carrier got? Sure. It is absolutely unfair that they get them and other businesses like mine do not. However I’ll still applaud their small victory if it means it moves the needle even a bit toward the direction of universal tax relief.

Faith Healing

The current outrage-du-jour over the skyrocketing price of EpiPens is a perfect example of the effectiveness of a societal indoctrination that leaves us blind to the parasitic ills wrought by the state. The credulous media reports with much indignation and finger wagging over yet another example of an evil profiteering corporation charging outrageous sums for a life-sustaining drug. Clearly this fits with the media’s preconceived narrative that capitalism is bad and we need government to right such wrongs. Case closed. No need to scratch the surface and investigate the cause and effect of this phenomenon. Even those media outlets that do ask the right question and get the right answer are still somehow blind to the necessary solution. They recognize that prices are high because of a lack of competition (a result of patents), third party payment distortions, and cronyist-driven increased demand (fueled by FDA mandates). Even the likes of the Journal of the American Medical Association have admitted as much in a recent article.

“The most important factor that allows manufacturers to set high drug prices is market exclusivity, protected by monopoly rights awarded upon Food and Drug Administration approval and by patents. “

But the universal answer to solve these woes? More of the same: state intervention. If we can’t even imagine a world without state-driven influences in the market then there is only one option that remains – more state intervention. The state is entirely responsible for the current quagmire that is our health care system, but hey, maybe more regulations can fix the problem the first, second, and third set of regulations caused. As they say, if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.

There is no quick fix. The foundation is built upon the sand of wishes and emotion rather than the stone of the unwavering principle of liberty. To solve the problems in the health care market we must dismantle the framework of rules, laws, and regulations that can do nothing but produce this distorted market.

Step 1: Eliminate the patent system entirely. Without patents competitors can instantly respond to prices that get out of control. Novel inventions have a natural period of protection because of secrecy and first-to-market advantages. The more obvious the invention, the more easily it could be copied. Praising the patent system for rewarding inventors with monopoly pricing while simultaneously pining for the low price of generics is the height of cognitive dissonance.

Step 2: End the FDA’s monopoly privilege of being the ONLY agency allowed to review the safety and efficacy of drugs. If the FDA is going to take years to approve a drug or device (resulting in countless needless deaths and higher costs) then perhaps it is time to let competitors help them out.

Step 3: The FDA and its competitors should be financially responsible for their mistakes just like any other company. Presently the FDA bears zero responsibility if they approve a flawed drug. If there existed in any other sector of the economy such a lack of competition and accountability we would be outraged. Yet somehow this state of affairs exists with the FDA and no one bats an eye. Most curious.

It’s almost like society has been brainwashed into the credulous narrative that those in government are not mere mortals but rather angels who are immune to normal human foibles. This blind faith in the supremacy and righteousness of the state has closed our eyes to the truth no less than medieval faith in the Church blinded men to the truth of heliocentrism. Time to question that faith. Our very lives depend on it.