In an email discussion with a very interesting new friend, an idea I’ve heard before came up:  Libertarianism is sort-of childish; a Utopian dream that’s nice in theory, but not practical in reality.

It might be trivial to write at this point, but I of course disagreed.  To be fair, I believe this is completely true on foreign policy.  Libertarianism seems like a domestic political philosophy only, but more on that in the future.

On the childish part – in some ways I can see why that perception exists as well.  I’ve jokingly said before the reason libertarianism has a bad name, is because of libertarians.  The cultural norm in libertarian thinkers who draw large numbers of readers seems to be to take one basic principle and stretch it to infinity.

For instance – it’s your property, you can do with as you please.  So you can put a brothel next door to an elementary school and the only recourse should be neighbors buying the lot to out price the brothel.

To many, including me, this is stupid.  The point in giving as many freedom to others as possible, simply can not include a dissolution of society itself by subjecting populations to things they don’t want.  Also, I think they already have this type of vision in local government using SOME zoning laws.

Additionally though, libertarians do believe in contracts.  So if a bunch of people bought tons of land, they could sell those plots with any caveat they want – even religious requirement.  By buying the lot, you are signing the contract and therefore willingly entering into that agreement with those constraints.

While I firmly believe this is possible, legal, and potentially preferable, it seems like that’s a community/town.  Their issue however with government control is one of the use of force, but I think that’s due to too much centralization.  Studies have shown, more decentralization, IE – more local control, leads to better outcomes (here).  What this would mean, if we were to ever take it seriously, is that while New York might maintain 18 million people for the economic possibilities that provides, government spending and programs should be on a much smaller level.

Please note – this doesn’t mean that no federal government should exist or that taxes should only exist on a very local level, just to say that smaller communities providing for their own fire, police, education, etc, etc, etc works better than 3 million people trying the same thing.  The idea is a state tax or federal tax would be required for things such as national defense, but the majority of expenditures should be directed more locally by a mayor or city manager at a much smaller level.

So it’s not that I believe the community should completely dissipate, it’s that I firmly believe that when the government gets involved, it actually distorts the system to the point where people simply don’t take care of themselves…. or their neighbors.   I think this is backed up by basic human behaviors and thinking as well as all of our uniquely “urban” problems.

One of the human conditions which helps this continue is that of group think.  By safely removing yourself far away from the negative results the government produces with its Wars on poverty, terrorism, obesity…. kids?  People can insulate themselves in larger communities due to increased anonymity by blaming society at large, instead of assuming any direct responsibility.

Listen carefully when people argue about police abuse, or crappy government inefficiencies with social spending, or politician’s lack of values…. they place blame it lots of places, but never on themselves and usually, oddly enough, never on the voters either.

Going further, the government exploits our fears with the media willing accomplices (Politics of Fear) into giving up more control to the government and thereby reinforcing the notion that the government is the answer, when it fact it’s people.

For instance.. violent crime is down a great deal since 1990 (uptick recently, but very small and declining again), but the reporting of crime has increased on average around 500%.  Thanks to multiple 24 hour news shows, combined with a finite amount of news, sensational stories about very rare events influences people’s fears about those events.

We humans aren’t that good at evaluating risk as it is, without doing so in a very methodical way, but with the government’s various wars on everything: AIDs, H1N1, Poverty, Terrorism, Obesity, Smoking, Drugs, Cancer…. kids?  All with the media willingly pushing these sensationalized news stories, people have exaggerated fears towards rare events and minimal fears towards much more likely catastrophic events (great video here ~20 minutes).

Add to this, a general lack of skepticism and critical thinking, most people never take the time to see if their fears, concerns, or core set of understanding of the world is accurate.  I believe this is due to a lack of appropriate priorities for most people, but more on that later.*

Looking at society, you can see the fear we have in our neighbors.  For example, in lots of neighborhoods in lots of places, people will more quickly call the cops on a loud neighbor than just walk over and ask politely.  We go to court when cutting down a tree that crosses property lines, we call the cops when we think the neighbor has too many dogs, we…. we just call the cops because people are scared of their neighbors.  & not because they know about the bunker with a year’s worth of rations and ammunition, but because we continue to allow our human frailty in risk assessment to be exploited by those only seeking more power.

Additionally, we willingly take away rights from others.  The most consistent comment from friends, colleagues, strangers who accidentally started a conversation with me…. but for those I did talk to around carry conceal laws during a vote in MO had, by definition of a binary question, one of two answers. Yes or No

The interesting part of the nos was almost all used the same basic reasoning when talking to me:  “You’re fine. It wouldn’t bother me a bit if you carried a gun, you were in the military and trained.  I just don’t know about everyone else.”  Other than showing a lack of knowledge of how little an electronic technician trains on weapons, I think it shows our general distrust of others.

Not surprisingly, even when confronted with the stats that prove FL, TX, and other states did not turn into the Wild West (not that the West was truly all that “wild”) where horn honks during rush hour turned into shootouts between soccer moms & insurance salesmen, were all safely ignored.

I guess the cognitive dissonance was too much to handle because stats like those in FL & TX demonstrate that our 99.9% of our neighbors who might get a carry conceal permit are not planning to emulate Rambo on the morning commute did nothing to waver the opponents.

With all that being said – I’m proffering the idea that in an odd, perverse, but easily understandable way, government involvement, even in very charitable actions, can actually reduce our incentive to live together peacefully and take responsibility for our communities.

*On the lack of priorities, I don’t believe all people should run out and research everything I know because I think everyone should read what I read.  I think the very first rule in critical thinking that all trying to be honest analysts have to understand is that like all other humans, even those trained and educated in analysis, will still have the same frailties in their thinking process.  Potentially less pronounced, but never completely mitigated.

Therefore, when writing that peoples’ priorities seem to be off, I think our failure isn’t with not reading what I read – but in being a well rounded person by honestly reflecting and actively deciding their core values.

As a corollary to that – I believe society is teaching people right now that this is a good thing. Valueless employees ask fewer questions and do more as their told without contemplating reality and what the decision’s effects most likely are. & Even if they do contemplate and know it’s wrong, they do it anyway. Therefore people who don’t make waves, get promoted. Those who ask pertinent questions, even if necessary and correct, get ostracized.

This is not only true of our business leaders, Bernie Madoff, Enron, MCI, but our politicians as well.  Unethical leaders leading secret lives, even the corrupt politicians among us, seem to get a reprieve from the voters… so long as you’re on their side and they’re not mean.

Additionally the leadership selection process seems perverted for the same reasons the leaders aren’t what we should expect.  Someone who is arbitrary, but polite and educated, is someone a lot of people like.   In a deep seeded wish to reduce not only any discomfort we might experience, but for civility’s sake try to prevent others’ discomfort, society has conflated the ideas of social skills with leadership to the detriment of society as a whole.

On the whole, it seems our desire for civility has the unintended consequence of making us less civil and more prone to failure.

In January’s edition of Wired Magazine, they detail an article about rail systems and advocate high speed rail as a solution for congestion.  The problem is identified correctly (here):

…Getting California’s train up and running will be expensive. But doing nothing would cost two to three times more. Why? Currently, gridlocked lanes waste $20 billion in fuel and productivity annually. And it’s only going to get worse. The Golden State is growing — quickly. By 2030, another 12 million people could be calling it home. Without an infrastructure overhaul, drivers can expect a 10 percent congestion increase every year. To accommodate the billion trips between cities that residents and visitors will make annually, the state would need to build 3,000 more miles of freeway lanes, five more commercial airport runways, and 90 more airline departure gates. The price: at least $100 billion. Oh, and all that construction wouldn’t alleviate traffic; it would simply keep pace with it….

The article goes on to detail rail as a solution, showing a brief history of rail in the US, including the really cool technological advancements in rail systems.  The main problem with the idea however, isn’t that new rail systems aren’t cool or that rail couldn’t become much faster and more efficient, the main problem, which they slightly acknowledge, is getting people to use it:

…To be cost-efficient, any high-speed rail system needs an ample supply of riders. San Francisco hopes to deliver them through a new million-square-foot terminal. Dubbed the Transbay Transit Center, it will connect the new rail line with nine regional transportation systems…

And

…No city epitomizes the insane appeal of driving like Los Angeles, whose citizens cling to their steering wheels even as they face the worst congestion in the nation. Will high-speed rail persuade them to give up their autos? Maybe. Ridership on the local rail system has increased to 306,000 on weekdays, up from 265,000 in 2007. A faster, cheaper trip — the high-speed ride between Ontario and LA will save the average commuter at least 85 hours and as much as $6,400 a year in gas, parking, and lost productivity — might pry even the most dedicated motorist out of the driver’s seat….

Looking historically though, they’ve made this argument over and over again and it’s always failed.  Due to constant regulation of the transportation industry, we’ve wasted billions and continue to poor billions more into this mess (from 2007):

Rail transit is a huge waste of money that harms transit riders and mainly benefits a few politically powerful interest groups, such as rail contractors, at the expense of ordinary taxpayers….

Thanks in part to the high cost of rails, transit systems in Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and the San Francisco Bay Area carried fewer riders in 2005 than two decades before….

…Due to financial stresses caused by the high cost of rail transit, San Jose cut its transit service by 20 percent and lost a third of its transit riders.

The mass transit system in Portland, Ore., carries only 7.6 percent of the region’s commuters, down from 9.8 percent before rail construction began.

The subway in Washington, D.C., is wonderful for tourists, but not commuters: Though the region gained more than 100,000 jobs between 1990 and 2000, the transit system lost more than 20,000 daily commuters….

& it fails for the very same reason most centralized planning fails – there is no one-size fits all solution which can magically come from government that will ever be better than what the market can provide.  Over thinking the obvious, that if rail lines could honestly save the average individual 6400 dollar a year, they should be willing to pay 4000 dollars a year to help fund it.

The simple truth is that government inefficiency will only increase the costs of rail overtime, increasing the subsidies and making a large portion of the population fund what a small portion of the population will use.  As Cato notes (here):

….Second [problem with highs peed rail], highway users paid for interstate highways, whereas high-speed rail will be almost entirely subsidized by general taxpayers who will rarely use it….

Why do “smart” people seem to espouse imposed solutions by default?  Well, as with a lot of scientific minded individuals and magazines, the search for solutions to problems becomes an end by itself.   This certainly helps when it comes to innovation – always looking for that next step or next increase in efficiency is extremely valuable ideal which helps many be successful.

Conversely, we also try to decrease known defects, a valuable skill in a fairly closed system, but I think a detriment to larger scale thinking.

Engineers, computer programmers, process engineers, CFOs, IE those in the industries where daily critical thinking tasks ask not only what we can do better, but also attempting to steam line, standardize, and reduce defects through control mechanisms, seem to be more prone than others to view imposed solutions as a solution default.

Indeed, in their lines of work, lots of systems are routinely imposed on clients, employees, and others with typically, minimal involvement from the end user. & often for good reason.  Allowing untrained users to have open access to say a client database would be too risky.  Allowing any employee to spend the company’s money on what they thought was a good idea, would be a huge preventable risk as well.

The difference however between these critical thinking endeavors is that they have somewhat of a closed system.  Sure, market dynamics affects the controls companies can exert on their clients, but the cost benefit analysis for decisions in these closed system will be much more accurate than a similar analysis for the market as a whole.

The idea of imposing these new systems through tax payer funds has a further assumption as well: if the market is currently in state A and many experts believe it should be in state B, that’s because the market has failed.  Inside of that assumption holds that we have the requisite knowledge to take literally billions of individual transactions which led to the creation of the current transportation system and with a few nifty math tricks and a good sales pitch from the experts -  impart a better solution than all those transactions managed to build.

& lastly, but not an inconsequential difference, is a company’s ability to control the results.   One of the keys to any systems update success, will always be in checking the results.

For instance, if I changed process X, hopefully to make the time spent on X lower on average or hoping to reduce defects in products for which process X can affect – I should be able to look back in time after making the changes and ask the question – did my solution work for the problem we attempted to solve?

This doesn’t seem all that radical and certainly seems like something our government could be doing now, but the historic reality is always the same.  Governments seek to grow by expanding power.  Governments by nature move slowly.  Good government is stable and therefore moves more slowly.

This means when the government proposes changes in X process to solve problem Y, they have a known tendency to exaggerate the benefits and obfuscate any attempts to prove that changes in X didn’t affect Y, by constantly shifting goal posts (example of just one, tiny government program employing this strategy  here – 2002):

…This is essentially the strategy that DARE, the country’s leading drug education program, has successfully used to stay in business for nearly two decades. One study after another has found that students who complete DARE (a.k.a. Drug Abuse Resistance Education) are just as likely to use drugs as students who don’t. Yet DARE claims it is constantly revising its curriculum, so any research indicating that it doesn’t work is immediately outdated….

In a classic example of not being able to see the forest for the trees, this default condition of believing in solutions which will be imposed for benefit of others might be well meaning, but still one of the largest logical & philosophical impediments to true freedom.

I guess to start any post about this, I should start with why people think I am.  The main reason I tend to side with Republicans is because of their stance towards free markets and smaller government.  I think they are overly concerned with porn, violence in video games & on tv (censorship leanings shared with the Democrats), stem cell funding (though as a libertarian I don’t think any research necessitates government involvement), and a number of other things.

Like most I suspect, I pick the one I dislike the least… though it’s a little more than that as the Democrats don’t even discuss economic freedom, only economic redistribution.

To my main point – the reason I’m not a Republican is because even in the last sentence, the Republicans may talk about economic freedom, relaxing overbearing regulations, moving towards smaller government, but all I’ve seen is a slower movement towards lesser freedom from the Republicans than the Democrats.

Case in point – in MO (here):

JEFFERSON CITY — Smoking would be banned in many public places statewide under legislation proposed Monday by two St. Louis-area legislators.

The bill, which has not yet been assigned to a committee, would ban smoking in restaurants, bars, shopping malls and gambling facilities, among other public places.

“We’re on three sides surrounded by no smoking states,” said Rep. Walt Bivins, R-St. Louis, the bill’s primary sponsor. “I just think it’s time we pass this for the health of all of us.”

Bivins and Rep. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, hammered out the specifics of the legislation with support from the American Lung Association and American Cancer Society, who have, in the past, opposed bans at the city and county level because they were too lax for the groups’ liking….

The article goes on to tell us that a few years back someone sponsored a similar bill that failed to get a hearing, but this one is likely to pass due to the overwhelming support of these types of bans.

So there you have it – take President Bush’s overwhelming need to increase social spending, the size of the government, and increased federal control (IE – NCLB), add it to this idiot’s complete misunderstanding of the basic RNC Platform (here):

…That is an urgent task because economic freedom – and the prosperity it makes possible – are not ends in themselves. They are means by which families and individuals can maintain their independence from government, raise their children by their own values, and build communities of self-reliant neighbors.

Economic freedom expands the prosperity pie; government can only divide it up. That is why Republicans advocate lower taxes, reasonable regulation, and smaller, smarter government. That agenda translates to more opportunity for more people. It represents the economics of inclusion, the path by which hopes become achievements. It is the way we will reach our goal of enabling everyone to have a chance to own, invest, and build….

I guess the State Senator forgot that part of economic freedom means that if I’m willing to invest a few hundred thousand to build a restaurant, hire people, deal with all the regulations associated with hiring/firing, food preparation, and the rest…then it should mean that I can control the legal actions which are permissible in my private establishment.

Just like the government has no right to tell me whether I can smoke legal tobacco in my home – neither should they have the right to tell me whether I can allow smoking in my private establishment.

The idea that somehow, by allowing the general public on my private property, therefore means I’m suddenly at the voter’s whims to what I can do with that property after I’ve purchased and invested in it, is nothing more than tyranny of the majority.

The simple fact those that support this legislation are usually unwilling to admit any possibility of the paraphrased truism: the government that can ban smoking can tomorrow become the government that can force smoking.

& there you have another genius that lied within our founding fathers.  A democracy, they understood, is nothing more than allowing 50.1% of the population to destroy 49.9% of the population for the former’s benefit.  So they made, a representative constitutional republic, where the main founding documents allowed free men to subvert any government which subverted their natural rights and setup a government constitution which didn’t empower the government, but limited it.

This wasn’t a social contract whereby citizens gave up their rights for security, but a social contract in which citizens allowed a monopoly on force so long as that force never subverted their freedoms.   They knew the government was needed for a common defense, international treaties, and other things, but also knew the tendency of government was always to grow more powerful, to control more, to subvert the rights & freedoms of their citizenry, all for their own ends… intention good or bad, it was historical reality.

Just like the iPod (trivially), which is beautiful in its simplicity because of the constraints on its design, the Constitution and the United States government is beautiful because it didn’t state what should be – but only what shouldn’t be.

The founding fathers, reflected in the document itself, never assumed they had the answers.  They only knew, through belief and faith, of what should never be.  No man shall ever be above another.  No leader shall ever be above the law.  To secure these things, freedom, justice, the opportunity for life, we propose a government which can not restrain speech, religion, association, press, expression, right to bear arms… and it cannot unnecessarily seize private property, remove an individual’s rights (incarceration) without trial, fair and impartial…

Yes – it was flawed.  The black man was 3/5 a person and couldn’t vote.  Neither could a woman.  It Pennsylvania you had to be a Quaker to be a resident.  Thank you William Penn, our founder of freedom of religion…

But I think somewhere, maybe, the founding fathers that really wanted to stamp out slavery in the constitution itself (Benjamin Franklin was the head of the first anti-slavery group), knew that to impart the true ideals of freedom that quickly would mean the end of the idea itself.

So they wrote the words – we are all created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights – knowing they might have rang hypocritically hollow, but hopeful for the future that could be.

So Mr. Bivins and even Ms. Schupp, don’t call yourselves anything more than you are – big government statists, neither of you deserve any other designators.

Anyone remember when Halloween was about running around the neighborhood, staying up late, and eating too much candy?  Remember when selling lemonade was easy?

Well, thanks to how enlightened we’ve become, things like that are no longer allowed… by law in some places.

In Bellvile, IL the law encompasses ages of those allowed to trick-or-treat, whether children over 12 should be allowed to wear masks at all, and of course the all important curfew.

I don’t know about you, but it’s odd to me that this many ordinances are required for a fake holiday.  Even the explanation shows how little the mayor grasps what a police state this is becoming (@Fox2News):

…Mayor Eckert said “We had listened for many years to our residents, particularly seniors and single moms who said it was kind of scary many times when high school aged kids, people who are as tall as you and me, 6-feet tall, coming to their door late at night.”

“We firmly believe that trick or treating is for children, and when they get to be an age, if their parents aren’t sensible enough to tell them they’re getting too old, you’re getting too big, then we feel that the ordinance is in tact for our police officers to not have to tap them on the shoulder telling them to knock it off,” explained Eckert….

With all due respect to the mayor, I don’t honestly care what you “firmly” believe about Halloween.

Honestly, I tend to agree that 16 year olds running around for candy is stupid.  But I’m not sure that if parents allow their kids to do things I “firmly believe” are stupid equates to a government attempt to micromanage behavior on Halloween.

It’s instructive that the mayor doesn’t even seem to grasp the long term consequences of these actions.  Maybe someone should ask, “What if you firmly believed Halloween was evil?  Would you ban it altogether?”

Of course since they’re all busy dealing with youth crime, maybe they don’t have the time to answer.

It’s not kids and Halloween messing things up, but kids & unlicensed businesses.  It’s so bad in some places, that neighbor’s are calling the cops  (whole thing here):

…Juveniles, seven of them, on a quiet residential street, selling an uncontrolled substance: lemonade. A neighbor had dimed them out, and a Haverford Township police officer responded in a hurry. When he arrived at the two-story brick house on Maryland Avenue, he dutifully informed Dana Kleinschmidt, mother of four of the reputed offenders, who included 5-year-old triplets, that they were violating the law. They were selling lemonade without a permit….

Which in and of itself is dumb enough, but wait… after scaring little kids, it turns out what they were doing actually wasn’t against the law at all.  Enter John Viola, Deputy Chief of Police, to explain things:

…The responding officer – who was unavailable, whom Viola would not identify, and whose name and badge number were blacked out of the police report – invoked a township ordinance against vending without a permit. What the officer didn’t realize, Viola said, is that the law doesn’t apply to anyone younger than 16…

So there you have it – the War on Kids just had an innocent casualty due to a simple misunderstanding.  It’s just another  training opportunity really.

Or at least that’s as it appears.  In a stunning admission by the Deputy, he explains how they will continue to harass anyone they want, even if it’s not really illegal.  Seriously – how are they supposed to know the law?

…“The police officer would have no way of knowing this on the street,” Viola said. “He acts on information he has available.”…

It seems obvious to me, that if cops aren’t required to know the laws they are enforcing, we might have a problem, but I admit I’m not a cop.  I do recall something from school about ignorance being no defense, but I guess that’s only if you are charged with a crime, not if you’re being harassed for breaking a non-law.

Welcome to (NEW) America:  Home of the criminal, land of the state.

What are the odds that a government agency tasked with identifying research priorities, research performance management, and reviewing the impact of completed research will come up with a solution that doesn’t involve the government?

Today & tomorrow the EPA are meeting for just this reason (@eScienceNews):

…The goal of the meeting is to develop a collaborative framework to ensure future research and development dollars are spent wisely and in a coordinated manner….

Of course it doesn’t really matter what the answer is, because “spent wisely in a coordinated manner” is almost mutually exclusive to good R&D.  As should be expected by now, the EPA is wasting money on answering a question for which recent literature already exists.

Back in 2001, a Jack Welch underling, W. James (Jim) McNerney, Jr was hired as 3M’s CEO.  In the fanfare associated with being a protege of Mr. Welch, when Mr. McNerney joined 3M, investors had high expectations of pushing some of the GE magic onto the 3M culture.

One of the first and most prominent of these culture changes Mr. Mcnerney instituted was a heavy does of SixSigma.  From the beginning, leading business thinkers were asking whether pushing a very creative culture into the narrow focus of SixSigma might not work.  Or at least, it should not include the whole company.  Sure, use SixSigma for accounting procedures, but leave out R&D.

Of course proponents of SixSigma disagreed.  If it can help manufacturing and then be translated to service related products, why not R&D?

Regardless of the writing public, 3M went forward with implementing a SixSigma policy that included training all workers to a Green-belt level and use SixSigma methodology for every department, including R&D.  How’d it fare?

As you’d expect, the results are mixed.  But asking former 3M scientists, engineers, and the like?  Overwhelmingly they tend to agree it wen too far (@DesignNews):

…While 3M emerged financially stronger from the McNerney era, many long-time 3M researchers, engineers and scientists chafed under the strictures of Six Sigma. Critics argue that excessive metrics, steps, measurements and Six Sigma’s intense focus on reducing variability water down the discovery process. Under Six Sigma, the free-wheeling nature of brainstorming and the serendipitous side of discovery is stifled. Proponents contend such methodologies’ rules keep researchers on track and accountable for producing. Striking the right balance between the application of Six Sigma and unencumbered research is often seen as key….

In fact, a then board member and the former 3M scientist who developed Post-It Notes stated that he believes that in the SixSigma environment, Post-It Notes would simply never have been developed.

History is also rife with examples.  In the book, Sex, Science and Profits: How People Evolved to Make Money,  written by Terence Kealey (review @ Reason.com):

…Kealey shows in nearly every case the crucial inventions of the past two and half centuries were called forth by markets, not invented by scientists working from ivory towers. These include the steam engine, cotton gin, textile mills, railroad engines, the revolver, the electric motor, telegraph, telephone, incandescent light bulb, radio, the airplane—the list is nearly endless…

In fact, a government-funded research paper showed public money can hurt innovation.  Mr Kealey writing about it(@AllBusiness.Com):

…n fact, the evidence shows otherwise. In 2003, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published The Sources of Economic Growth in OECD Countries, reporting on a comprehensive regression analysis of the factors that might explain the different growth rates of the world’s 21 leading economies between 1971 and 1998. This indicated that only privately funded R&D led to economic growth, and that publicly funded R&D did not. Worse, the public funding of R&D crowded out private funding, and thus slowed economic growth…

No worries though, I’m sure the government will tell you, that this time is different.   Just ask them.  They completely understand it’s failed many times before, but what you (read: citizens) are too ignorant to understand, is that those failures were under other people and not the worldly, brilliant, omniscient, and yes, even death-defying leaders of today.

& if that doesn’t work for you, remember that it’s “Green”, which we all know are now established unqualified goods.  As such, regardless of how much money taxpayers have to spend to subsidize “green” stuff, the end results are worth it.

Last, but certainly not least, if both of these arguments don’t work to mitigate your concerns, welcome to the club: Disgruntled Americans Against Government Stupidity (DAAG)

Late last week, Michael F. Cannon @ Cato released a study entitled, Yes, Mr. President A Free Market Can Fix Health Care in response to a challenge made by President Obama in March 2009:

“If there is a way of getting this done where we’re driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate, and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I’d be happy to do it that way.”

This is very much a presumption based question, like “When did you stop beating your wife?”  It holds within an assumption the only plausible answer is one which uses the power of the government to control the market, and by extension individual citizens, with complete skepticism about any power of the free market.

While this seems to be the default assumption of many of my fellow citizens these days, I don’t know that I’ll ever understand how an objective look at market success versus an objective look at governmental success would lead one to believe the government is capable of much more than simple, repetitive tasks.

Having said that and even knowing the Democratic leadership and the White House is likely to ignore the answer, Mr. Cannon presents a pretty convincing case about a market solution (@Cato).  He explains:

how Congress can remove the impediments that currently prevent markets from doing so:

Whole thing here.

If you’re anything like me, you too are getting nauseous about the “public option” in the health care debate.  One day it exists, the next day it will never exist.  The day after, it’s required…

Well, apparently legislators might have a compromise to pass a bill including an “opt-out public option” (@theHill.com):

Democratic senators continued to remain bullish on the chances of creating a government-run public option as part of health reform….

…Schumer echoed the calls of several senators who this week said that Democratic negotiators has garned the 60 votes necessary to invoke closure on the measure. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) last week put it in even stronger terms, saying that Reid had 60 votes for a “robust” public option.

…According to Schumer, Reid “is leaning strongly” toward including a provision that would allow states to opt out of public health insurance if they want to keep private insurers.

Schumer added that the liberal senators are “able to live with” an opt-out public option under which states could decline to participate in a public program….

So there we are;  in a compromise between moderate and liberal Democrats only, a public option seems likely.  Not only has the White House and Democratic leadership dropped any pretense of working across the isle, but people at large seem unwilling to question the claims of their leaders.

One suc spurious claim, is that this option will result in increasing competition:

…”We need some competition for the insurance companies,” Schumer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” A government-run insurance plan would “have to play by the same rules as the insurance companies and it would negotiate rates with the providers,” Schumer said. Having a public option would bring competition to states that only have one or two insurance providers, Schumer said….

Proponents everywhere continue to take this stance, even though a public option is logically inconsistent with their stated goal of increase competition.

If Mr. Schumer and others truly wanted to add some competition for insurance companies, adding a new company would not be necessary.  In deed, removing the laws the disallow selling of insurance over state lines doesn’t cost the tax payers one single dime, yet increases competition dramatically, both in the total number of competitors and the speed at which they can begin competing.    Additionally, given the benefits a public option will have over its private competitors, this isn’t really competition.

As Michael Tanner wrote over @ Cato, this support for a public option isn’t likely what it seems (@Cato):

Cognitive dissonance is defined as holding two completely contradictory ideas at the same time.

That seems to be the case with the American public, with a new poll showing rising support for a so-called public option in health care, even as the public continues to oppose greater government control over the health care system….

All in all though, the Democrats hands seem to be very strong hand right now with recent polls showing 57% of the country expressing approval of a public option.   With uninformed voters, an uninformed and uninformative press, and politicians more worried about winning than engaging in honest debates, this compromise might soon become law.

That’s freedom for you – as unfortunate as it seems, whether most people truly understand what the public option entails is irrelevant.  So long as they are willing to approve things they know little about and skip any hard work necessary to critically analyze the problem and various solutions, this new government boondoggle will just continue going forward.

This morning, news outlets everywhere carried recent news out of the Treasury Department.  The Pay Czar, who is certainly living up to the moniker Czar, announced today (WallStreetJournal):

The U.S. pay czar will cut in half the average compensation for 175 employees at firms receiving large sums of government aid, with the vast majority of salaries coming in under $500,000, according to people familiar with the government’s plans.

As expected, the biggest cut will be to salaries, which will drop by 90% on average. Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department’s special master for compensation, also intends to demand a host of corporate governance changes at those firms….

Even without bothering with the fact that the government is not in any position to understand what kind of compensation any single employee should have, this is still a radical and arbitrary move that if continued can work to destabilize the economy.

Beyond that, this decision is an anathema to a free society breaking not only the contract rights of ordinary citizens, but also violating all individuals by pushing a blatant ex  post facto punishment.

In a free society, within reason, individuals should be able to contract for any reason they want.  In this case, you have employees who have privately contracted with their employers for certain remuneration based upon their perceived worth to the company.

I say perceived work, because obviously not all hiring decisions work out for the company even if the employee does very well at their job.  Personality conflicts, culture conflicts, and even performance problems are some of the reasons why a new hire might not work out as expected.  Unless specifically stated in the employment contract, even in these cases the employer’s general resource is firing, not taking back pay.

Adding to this is the simple, real, true fact that this is by its very nature an ex post facto punishment for perceived mismanagement.  It has been a legal tradition for centuries, a that passing laws, which retroactively punish people, is against a free in democratic society.

In fact it’s in the US Constitution and universally recognized by a number of treaties including Universal Declaration of Human Rights and American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (from Wiki):

…no person be held guilty of any criminal law that did not exist at the time of offence nor suffer any penalty heavier than what existed at the time of offense. It does however permit application of either domestic or international law….

To be fair, there are some uses for ex post facto laws which have been recognized by our supreme court including allowing for Congress to grant administrative agencies the ability to do just this thing.  So legally speaking, this might be ok, however to anyone who proposes to value freedom, it should be obvious that even allowing administrative agencies this power was a massive failure of all branches of the government.  They are supposed to protect our freedoms, not remove them one at a time.

Either way – it’s intuitive that both contract rights & ex post facto laws are required for a free society.  If the government can interfere at will in private contracts and retroactively punish you for perceived wrongdoings, you have no ability to make relevant decisions for your life as you have no ability to be secure that those decisions will continue to hold true.

This insecurity is what creates instability in most third world countries today.  This lack of basic economic & legal foundation is what continues to plague most of the planet and yet we seem to be moving on the same path.

A week ago or so, a Democratic non-profit held a focus group of GOP members & Independents (here).  Among other interesting things they found, they noted how the GOP members opposed the President because they felt he was attempting to fundamentally move away from our founding principles.

They went further to note how this differed from Independents “underscoring the extreme disconnect of the conservative Republican base voters”.

I will say this move is absolute proof that the GOP members have it right.  If the administration allows this travesty, it is without a doubt a complete move away from not only our founding principles, but away from freedom in general.