[tylerboyd49]

Here a few articles I found when we our science classes started shifting into policy classes in pharmacy school a couple years ago. One thing I have noticed among some of my classmates is that they think our current healthcare system is the picture of a free-market. They think that private ownership of the means of production = unhampered capitalism. A lot of these articles dismantle that misconception. Also, they outline the history of government intervention in healthcare that has brought us to where we are today. I point out to my friends that if we are to learn anything from the past 50-100 years it should be that government intervention drives up costs and drives down quality.

What’s Really Wrong with the Healthcare Industry by Vijay Boyapati

The Real Right to Medical Care vs. Socialized Medicine” by George Reisman

Lowering the Cost of Health Care” by Ron Paul

Healthcare Reform Passes” by Ron Paul

Diagnosing Our Health Care Woes”</a" by Ron Paul

Abolish the FDA!</a" by Jim Grichar

100 Years of US Medical Fascism by Dale Steinreich

[tylerboyd49]

And a follow up statement by another kenysian….

“Obviously gold is subject to speculation, just like any other commodity – a big hole in the theory of those supporting GS. But I think the main reason the gold standard is such a fail is because it automatically hamstrings a nation’s economy. You are placing a cap on how much money can be in your system due to the scarcity, which limits the rate of growth of the economy.”

[tylerboyd49]

I agree with all that, but the question I’m asking regarding specifically the New England Compounding Pharmacy was that the government was NOT insuring the quality of their products. Compounding pharmacies are not under the FDA like manufacturers. So the argument is being made that more oversight would’ve prevented this. So why hasn’t the market produced good quality control among compounding pharmacies? There are several well-known sterility standards such as USP-797 and accreditation/certification available… why would so many hospitals neglect those quality insurance signals and go for this pharmacy that was dirty? When dealing with an entity as big as a hospital and with few options of hospitals, how do consumers hold hospitals accountable for ordering supplies from poor quality compounding pharmacies or even know who their suppliers are?

[tylerboyd49]

I’m anti-Incorporation Doctrine.. So I say it’s a state issue. Tennessee has a right to bear arms clause, so it’d be unconstitutional here. Californians have neglected to put such protections in their state constitution, so I’d say it’d be Constitutional (though immoral) there.

[tylerboyd49]

What about weapons that are almost exclusively of an offensive nature that would not be used in the case of an imminent threat? Nuclear bombs, sniper rifles, fighter jets, land mines?, silencers on guns?

[tylerboyd49]

I’m very encouraged because not only am I convinced of the technical processes that make capitalism and freedom work, but I’m convinced because I believe it to be rooted in correct moral principles that don’t change. I’m also encouraged because the current system that is based on immorality is breaking down, so I’m happy that justice is consistent, even if I’m financially hurt by being so close to an immoral society that breaks down. I’m encouraged that the freedom message is growing faster than the nonfreedom message, but even if the non-freedom message gets a temporary win and then next couple decades, or even remained of my life is spent under tyrannical regimes that leave me in poverty, I’m confident that history will not cover up the efforts of those who knew what was right and successful and people sometime in the future will recognize our efforts for good.

[tylerboyd49]

I’ve heard this before as well. Of course, this doesn’t hurt the case against secession at all, it just means that Tennessee legislators were not principled on the issue of secession in and of itself. They probably saw secession as something a state could do but that a county could not do since counties are chartered by the State.

However, I believe there are also cases where the opposite occurred. I’ve heard that when Tennessee voted to remain in the Union in the first vote, Franklin County seceded from Tennessee and joined Alabama for a few months until TN changed it’s mind (as a result of the call for invasion). Likewise I’ve heard there was a northeast Alabama county that stopped sending legislators to Montgomery when Alabama seceded and effectivy seceded from Alabama. The CSA also instituted an income tax and military conscription if I’m not mistaken. And of course their paper currency was a disaster as well.

[tylerboyd49]

Thanks for the response! The conversation became quite lengthy and I think I hit most of those points (much less concisely). He’s still convinced that money creation does not cause increased prices (and he calls the rise in prices ‘inflation’ rather than the money creation). I’ve gone round and round with him using all the logic and examples I could think of. He finally said Austrian economics was wrong because most the vast majority of economists reject it… Which I took as a victory. But one thing he said that I don’t know what to respond to is that “the data just doesn’t support it.” He produced this Krugman article http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/varieties-of-error/ that contains a graph showing the growth of the monetary base since 2008 and a relatively flat CPI as evidence that money creation does not cause an increase in CPI.

My assumption is that CPI has not gone up because the banks are sitting on the new money rather than lending it into circulation, but even then, are we to expect prices to go up with exact proportion to the money creation? I would expect there to be a plethora of data showing money creation reaping high prices considering our history.

[tylerboyd49]

[Here a couple more statements by this guy:]

” First, consider what US government debt becomes. Private sector income. Public surplus (taxes too high) are a private sector net loss. That money should have been used in infrastructure, but instead was saved – essentially wasted. Why was it wasted? Because this money could have been used to fund projects, add jobs, raise wages – all of which stimulate the economy. This is why it is important to have deficit spending – that money is pumped directly into the private sector, where the means of production (middle class) spend it, growing the economy.

The first step in understanding this is recognizing that a household economy operates differently than a government’s economy.

The second is to know the difference between deficit and debt.

Next, let’s think about US debt. The majority of US debt is owed to… the US. That’s right. The US will “borrow” from programs like Social Security. This is money that they could essentially write off with little to no repercussions.”

“So the government debt that isn’t intragovernmental. Most of this debt is owned by China. We haven’t given dollars to them or borrowed dollars from them. China has acquired them by running a trade surplus with the US. In other words, they send us stuff, we send them a unit of account. These dollars are placed in an account at the Treasury, which they can use (mainly to buy Treasury bonds which accrue them interest). It facilitates trade and is a win-win for both countries involved.”

someone else jumps in and says “Only around 30% of our debt is foreign owned . . . of that 30% only about 25% of it is owned by china (around 7% of the total). If anything this helps to link our economy and our currency to the global economy and keep our prosperity in the global public interest. That 7% ownership of debt doesn’t create them as a threat to our prosperity or give them incentive to “come collect their debt” as I hear so many people misleadingly proclaim.”

[To which someone asks] “So why not stack more foreign debt if its no big deal?” [which brings a response of] “It isn’t that simple. You need to play the game of finding that sweet spot of too much or too little debt. It also ebbs and flows with global and local economies, current events (disasters, wars, peacetime etc). It’s kind of like playing the stock market . . . you try to manipulate it based on all of these factors in order to achieve maximum benefit . . . but there is not a simplistic formula for success.”

[And the first guy adds] “Because there is no need. The government can literally create currency out of thin air.”

I can tell these guys’ arguments for state intervention and deficits are full of holes, but I just don’t know where and what to say…

[tylerboyd49]

I was having a facebook conversation along similar lines of this. I’ll just post one of my comments.

“I have a couple thoughts on greed right now. First is that the desire to profit may not be the best definition of greed for a couple reasons. I may desire to profit for the purpose of using that income to freely help others (family, Church, those with more material needs, etc). In the Scriptures I see greed often tied to desire for unjustly acquiring property as opposed to justly acquiring property. But there is certainly also an aspect of greed in simply wanting to acquire property for your own sake whether at the expense or benefit of others.

Second is that greed is not a distinguishing characteristic of neither capitalism nor socialism. In any form of socialism (corporatism, communism, even mixed economies) greed is exemplified by one group using government force to extract wealth from another group for the former’s benefit or government force is used to gain special privileges that inhibit or prohibit competition with the former. In capitalism an individual’s greediness will result in actions that try to build up his own treasures, but that build up of treasure can only occur voluntarily. A greedy CEO that chooses to use his profit to buy a yacht instead of give to the poor still employs an immigrant yacht builder… The virtue is missing but the wrong lies with the CEO alone and stealing for him to help a poor person does not fill him with virtue.

If I sell my labor in the form of cooking a chicken for someone else to eat (or purchase money) so that I can receive wages that I can spend how I choose, and someone else purchases labor (or sells their money) so they don’t have to cook their own chicken, who is the greediest one – Labor or Capital? Or are both people equally greedy?”

So it seems to me that capitalism is morally neutral to individual motives in general but is certainly morally superior in civil structure (no stealing allowed). Am I thinkin’ right? The conversation progressed into a Biblical discussion of the ownership of property by God and free stewardship granted towards mankind (so that really we don’t actually own ourselves/our labor, but are stewards of what God owns…. the end result being the same –> governments/other people don’t own us). It was a fun talk.

[tylerboyd49]

I’ve been leaning more and more in the direction of not saying it any longer, more for religious reasons however. My faith is such that Christ is my King and alone deserves my pledge of allegiance. I imagine what it would be like for a Christian in Nazi Germany or some other country to pledge allegiance to a state and can’t think of how it’d be morally justified. The difference in morality of the states is simply that of degrees anytime it goes beyond its morally justified role of enforcing justice. As a Christian I am obligated to submit to the the state with all its injustices that are committed against me (mostly theft of wealth, but I’m also registered so could be involuntarily enslaved/conscripted) but I cannot willingly be an ally of a state that regularly commits fraud, theft, murder, enslavement, etc rather than protect its people against those actions.

As a kid in school I used to mutter “Tennessee” in place of U.S. because my dad raised me in a good states’ rights foundation, but the same principle would apply there.

[tylerboyd49]

Since the people at the time of the amendment don’t appear to have believed in incorporation, I don’t think it should be used that way….. So if California wants to ban guns and don’t have a Right to bear arms in their state constitution, I’d say it’s their problem.

[tylerboyd49]

My guess is since the human sacrifices ended with the conversion from barbarism & paganism to Christianity & Greco-Roman thought, it wouldn’t help the anti-western movement.

[tylerboyd49]

Yep, I think that’s the key point. People only get rich at the expense of others when property rights are not protected (i.e. robbery, government subsidies, having the benefit of access to newly created money under old prices, etc).

In a free market, exchanges only occur when both sides value the exchange to be in their favor. While there will still be cases where someone may feel that the other person got a better improvement than himself during the exchange, improvement still occurred for both sides. This “bargaining range” decreases as the market develops (if I understand it correctly).

Excellent book. I recommend it to anyone for their first step in exploring the effects of government intervention. I saw this quote the other day by a anti-keynsian economist in China… “We human beings always seek happiness,” says Mr. Zhang. “Now there are two ways. You make yourself happy by making other people unhappy—I call that the logic of robbery. The other way, you make yourself happy by making other people happy—that’s the logic of the market. Which way do you prefer?”

[tylerboyd49]

It seems like whatever definition of regulate is used must be applied to foreign nations and the Indians as well. So if regulate among the states meant free trade zones were to be established then wouldn’t that mean free trade zones are required with all nations? And since tariffs among foreign states are legal, I would assume that’s not the correct definition of regulate. I wish the authors had just said “states can’t put up tariffs between other states within the union…” Would’ve made it so much easier.

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