Archive for category Freedom Fridays
“If You Agree, Post This as Your Facebook Status”
Posted by The Marginalist in Freedom Fridays on September 4th, 2009
Some of you may have come across this Facebook status in some form or another yesterday:
No one should die because they cannot afford health care. No one should go broke because they get sick, and no one should be tied to a job because of a pre-existing condition. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
How do freedom-lovers like us respond to that kind of statement? Surely none of us would want people to die simply because they lack wealth or had the bad luck of having a pre-existing condition.
John Thorlin at The New Madisonian offers a good answer. Thorlin cites the “forgotten man,” the one who is forced (against his will) to provide welfare for each other.
What people who subscribe to that statement really believe is that “Someone should pay so that no one will die because they cannot afford healthcare.” That “someone” is the forgotten man Amity Shlaes spoke of — the person who is being forced to provide healthcare, whether it’s a doctor with a gun to his head or a productive citizen being targeted for more tax money.
Absolutely right. Besides the fact that the current reforms won’t actually improve the cost and quality of health care, the fact that it coerces others into providing welfare is a big no-no.
Cross-posted at Young Americans for Liberty
Schiff: Minimum Wage Laws are Stupid
Posted by The Marginalist in Freedom Fridays on July 10th, 2009
Peter Schiff explains why minimum wage laws hurt workers, and then talks about his potential Senate campaign:
Hat tip to Young Americans for Liberty.
(Extra Credit: Know how I’ve been talking about pizza parties lately? What if the teacher set a minimum price for pizza ticket prices?)
Freedom Friday: The Democrats’ False Dilemma
Posted by The Marginalist in Freedom Fridays on June 26th, 2009
OVER these past few weeks, I’ve heard the Democrats and their supporters using this argument to gain support for their (disastrous) health care and cap-and-trade plans:
“America faces very severe problems in regards to [health care, climate change]. If we do nothing, America will face severe problems. Doing nothing is unacceptable. Therefore, we need to enact this legislation to take action on this problem!”
The Democrats are right in one aspect of this argument. Our country does face problems in health care, the economy, and energy policy. But the Democrats are offering us a false dilemma: Either we do what they say, or we fall into ruin. They’re framing the debate as the choice between nothing, or their agenda.
Of course, even if the debate was between nothing and the Democrats’ policies, many times doing nothing would be better. That’s not what we should be debating. When we libertarians debate statist, corporatist, and interventionist policies — whether they come from the Democrats or the Republicans — we’re not defending the status quo. We have our own way and our own policies out of the messes that government itself has gotten us into.
P.S. My 100th post comes tomorrow (:
Edit: Cross-posted at Young Americans for Liberty.
Is it murder?
Posted by The Marginalist in Freedom Fridays on June 19th, 2009
MY friends and I were debating the morality of forcing pharmacists to fill Plan B prescriptions a few days ago. Disregarding the moral arguments over sex and contraceptives for now, I want to talk a bit about this one argument that was made:
Some people need contraceptives to prevent unwanted abortions that may have terrible effects on the mother and family, such as fatal health problems or family/social unrest.
By not providing a contraceptive to a patient because of moral beliefs or what have you, the pharmacist is being irresponsible. He or she has a moral duty to fill that prescription, because she has the power to help the patient. Without her help, the patient will suffer; the pharmacist therefore is denying the patient his or her right to a contraceptive.
I don’t quite buy that. Here’s why:
The argument is basically that:
- Pharmacists have the power to easily help patients.
- Without the help of a pharmacist, the patient will suffer.
- If a pharmacist chooses not to help a patient, he or she is willing to let the patient suffer (for whatever reasons he or she chooses)
- The pharmacist, because he or she has the power to help a person, is responsible for their well-being
- If the pharmacist chooses not to help a patient, he or she is being immoral.
On one hand, I do agree with some of these points. If you have the power to help someone, especially at a low cost to you, it makes moral sense to do so. But I disagree with the idea that it is a crime not to help someone, and that you are responsible for another person if you have the power to help them (and that it should be a crime not to help someone if you can).
[What's in a crime?]
Think about crimes that most everybody agrees are crimes: theft, murder, and slavery, battery, assault, and burglary. What do these all have in common?
They all involve some violation of a right — one of three fundamental human rights. Theft and burglary violate your right to own property. Murder, battery, and assault violate one’s right to life (right to your body), and slavery violates your right to freedom.
These crimes all also involve actions by specific people against specific people. But things get dicey if you start saying people have rights to things like food, housing, and health care.
First of all, when these “rights” are violated, there’s no one to prosecute. If a homeless man dies on the street because he lacks food, who do you prosecute? Any one of a number of people could have given him food.
Secondly, “violation of a right to a thing” doesn’t involve any direct use of force agains anyone else.
Thirdly, there are some interesting implications if we accept that people have fundamental rights to things. This would mean that every time a person does not provide food/housing/health care to someone who needs it, he or she is guilty of a crime.
At any time, we could donate part of our wealth to save a lot of lives in poor countries. Vaccines don’t cost that much. Food for poor kids isn’t that much compared to our budget. In fact, if food is a fundamental human right, if every time one of my rich liberal friends chooses to spend his money on a video game instead of donating it to charity, isn’t he violating someone’s right to food?
Certainly, there’s no logical reason why food should or should not be a fundamental human right. But if you accept food as a fundamental human right, you have to accept all of the conclusions of that. So, my well-intended right-to-food friends, will you go forth and sell all your possessions for the good of Hopelink?
Freedom Friday: Who Knows Best?
Posted by The Marginalist in Freedom Fridays on June 5th, 2009
I found an article that saddened me today.
A little girl was diagnosed with a rare medical condition from birth. For twelve years, she lived under the fear of losing her life because her body was weakened by her condition. But, through the use of doctors, she and her family put together a fairly effective treatment plan. For twelve years, it looked as if this cute girl would be able to live a normal life.
But then she moved. She went to a new hospital. She had new doctors. These doctors didn’t know her as well, and suggested a new treatment regiment. The parents refused — the original treatment plan had worked so well, and they were concerned for her health. They contacted her old doctors, who opposed changing the treatment plan, which they thought was dangerous for her.
The new doctors insisted on the new plan, and even threatened to call the police on the parents — they believed the parents were being unreasonable and preventing their daughter from receiving the treatment she needed. The parents had no choice but to go along with the new treatment plan.
The new treatment plan killed her. Her name was Francesca. She was twelve years old when she died of respiratory failure.
Perhaps the government should have done something, one might say. Perhaps the government should have taken them to court and decided which treatment was better? Perhaps the government should have set some sort of standard for the treatment of this disease?
Oh, but here’s the real kicker: this didn’t happen in America. This happened in Britain… where health care IS run by the government. Government officials decided they knew what was best for this little girl based on their regulations and guidelines determined by government bureaucrats. And it killed her.
You see, government regulation often tries to dictate what they think is best for us. They think we’re too stupid to choose correctly what’s best for us — oh, but they, the infallible regulators, somehow do. Never mind the fact that they’ve never met you or your doctor. They know what’s best for you, not you or your doctor.
Isn’t that at least a little bit insulting? For someone to come in and dictate to you your personal choices under the guise that somehow they have some god-given power to know what’s best for you. But government officials don’t know. They may know what’s best for the majority of people, but they can’t make all of these decisions on an individual basis.
Who better to make the decision than the individual? Yes, perhaps the average person knows little of medicine. But he knows who to ask, he knows where to find the information; he can ask a doctor for his own, personalized advice. But he can’t do that with a government official. Government officials don’t know him. The average person also knows little about cars and computers, but we still allow them to make personal decisions about what car or computer to buy.
The key thing in regulation of personal decisions is that the best course of action is different from person to person. Government officials cannot replicate those best decisions; they’re not in the shoes of every person, and therefore they cannot determine what the best course of action is. Imagine if we did that with food, if we decided de-individualize food choices. We’d just have the same thing every time, and some people would like it. But some people would hate it, and we would deny them the choice to choose their own lifestyle.
So government regulators take what’s best for most people and force it on everyone. Those in the minority, like Francesca, suffer — greatly.
Friday Freedom Post: How Freedom Was Lost
Posted by The Marginalist in Freedom Fridays on May 15th, 2009
Yeah, yeah, a new series… Freedom Fridays. The first post is a response to a Daily Kos article that a friend of mine wanted me to talk about.
How freedom was lost
IN the article, “How Freedom Was Lost,” Devilstower wrote of the deaths caused by pollution from a zinc factory in Donora, Pennsylvania, the floods from a coal mine in Saunders, WV, and the tragedy of the triangle shirtwaist factory in New York (NYU, by the way, owns the building now).
No one implemented health, safety, and environmental legislation because they thought it would be fun….. We did it because that kind of freedom, marketplace freedom, was literally killing us.
Read the article before going on — the rest of this post will make much more sense. Today’s topic: regulation and the free market. Onwards!
What a free market is (and is not)
CONSERVATIVES and free-marketeers talk about a “free market” all the time, but it’s sometimes unclear what this term means.
John Locke is famous for coining the three essential freedoms of humanity: life, liberty, and property. The violations of these three freedoms take some form of the following crimes: murder, slavery, and theft. According to many believers in the free market, the protection of these liberties is not only the purpose of society but creates the best outcomes.
That’s what a free market is — a society in which individuals are free to mutually trade with each other, given that they do not infringe on other peoples’ rights.
But, Devilstower argues, a purely free market lacks regulation, and without regulation, people infringe on each others’ rights — just look at the pollution in Donora!
Why a free market lives on regulation
The answer to this is that the situations Devilstower describes are not genuine free markets. Clearly pollution destroys property and injures — sometimes kills — people. That’s an infringement on those peoples’ rights, and therefore not part of a free market. A world where corporations can simply earn money without bearing the costs is corporatism, not freedom.
Devilstower tries to equate free markets with a complete lack of regulation — but from a geniune free market point of view, that’s preposterous. Of course free markets need regulation — it’s impossible to have a free market without regulation. Freedom needs government to protect it.
For example, police and courts are the most important form of regulation. The police regulates our behavoir in a free society so that we don’t infringe on the rights of other people — we don’t murder, steal, or enslave.
So no, Devilstower — the free market wasn’t killing us. An unfree market was. Don’t equate free markets and individual liberties with anarchy! Freedom is not only about protection from the state, but from other people.
I have a proposal, sir
So, as part of the conservative/libertarian/classical liberal backlash against Obama, I’ve called him “socialist.” I regret that. His policies certainly tend towards that direction, but to call him “a socialist” may — at least, for now — be too much. The word “socialist,” I think, is quite extreme, and isn’t so much used to accurately describe Obama, but to elicit an emotional reaction from listeners. Wrongheaded his policies are, but socialist they are not.
So, I have a proposal. I promise to stop calling Obama a socialist… if progressives and liberals stop calling our current system a free market. Because we don’t have a free market, and you can’t blame the free market for something if it doesn’t exist.