Sep 19, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--Under Monday's ruling by a European Union appeals court, Microsoft must disclose secret software codes to rivals, strip Windows Media Player from its operating system, and pay a $613 million fine. The court rejected Microsoft's appeal of a 2004 antitrust ruling in which the company was found to have "abused" its "dominant position" in the marketplace.
"This ruling violates Microsoft's right to profit from the enormous popular acceptance of its Windows operating system," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "Microsoft cannot force anyone to buy its products. If the company sets prices unreasonably high relative to its customers' interests, then competitors are free to step in and offer a better value. But if 95 percent of consumers choose to buy Windows software, then Microsoft has a right to profit from that success and not be punished for it."
The ruling forces Microsoft to disclose the secret codes used by workgroup servers to access Windows-based computers, and it also requires the company to offer a version of Windows that omits the company's proprietary media player.
"European regulators should have no power to dictate the availability or price of any company's inventory of goods, services, or intellectual property," said Dr. Brook. "Antitrust laws in Europe and America unjustly threaten the freedom of every successful business and should be abolished."
If Microsoft chooses not to appeal, the multi-million-dollar fine will be distributed to the member states of the European Union. "The governments of Europe should be ashamed, dividing the loot like highway robbers who have terrorized a helpless victim," said Dr. Brook.Sep 18, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--Hillary Clinton has announced her new "universal healthcare" plan, which she claims will solve the problem of high insurance premiums. "You'll never again have to worry about finding affordable coverage," says Mrs. Clinton. "Your coverage will be guaranteed--if you pay your premiums and follow the rules, your insurance company will be required to renew at a price you can afford."
Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, denounced the proposal. "Like all other ‘universal healthcare'--that is, socialized medicine--schemes, Mrs. Clinton's is guaranteed to lead to disaster if implemented, because it ignores the basic requirement of medical progress and falling prices: freedom for doctors, patients, and insurance companies.
"Health care is a mess because it is one of America's most controlled and socialized industries--beginning with the fact that we are all forced to pay for one another's health care through Medicare and the government-induced third-party-payer system. In the name of the individual's ‘right' to health care and the government's 'responsibility' to provide it, the government has reached its tentacles into every facet of medicine, from how many doctors are allowed to be licensed to which medical professionals may perform what procedures, to what procedures insurance companies must provide on their plans.
"Mrs. Clinton and other advocates of socialized medicine all seek to ‘solve' this problem by adding more government coercion to the system. For example, her ‘guarantee' that ‘your insurance company will be required to renew at a price you can afford' is a veiled call for price-controls--and a prescription for insurance companies to be exposed to a bankrupting combination of huge liabilities with comparatively low premiums.
"If anyone is interested in fixing American health care, there is only one solution: remove coercion from the system. If medicine were left free, with individuals responsible for paying for their own care and insurance, and America's businessmen, doctors, and educators liberated to offer it at all different price points, we would see quality and price improvements like those for flat-panel television sets. Indeed, we already see this in the few realms of medicine that are left free; laser eye surgery, for example, has improved dramatically over the years while prices have fallen. We could see such developments with medical care as a whole--as soon as we agree to take responsibility for our own health, and get the government out of it."Sep 18, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--As high default rates on subprime loans continue, various state and federal officials are eager to "do something" to counter the failures--especially to give aid to the homeowners who bought mortgages they couldn't afford.
"This is exactly the wrong approach," said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "The current subprime problems are the result of borrower and lender irrationality, and of government intervention in the market to ‘help homeowners.' Government housing assistance programs, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encourage people to buy homes even when they cannot truly afford them. And the government's longtime manipulation of interest rates to keep them artificially low led many to expect that their adjustable rate mortgages would stay low forever--only to see their fortunes at the mercy of government rate hikes or rate cuts.
"This does not absolve lenders or borrowers of responsibility for taking on risky loans, and it certainly does not justify any sort of bailout. The individual who buys an expensive home counting on interest rates to stay low forever is responsible for the consequences of his risky decision. For the government to ‘do something'--anything--to alleviate a mortgage failure necessarily rewards those who took on large housing risk at the expense of those who didn't. And it invites future irrationality by telling people that they do not need to think about their financial decisions, because the government will always be there to save the day.
"The only moral and rational response by the government, besides prosecuting genuine cases of fraud, is to stop encouraging people to make bad decisions--but then leave them to face the consequences when they do."Aug 10, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently ruled that terminally ill patients do not have a right to take medicines that have not been approved by the FDA.
"Barring individuals from choosing what medicines to take is immoral and destructive," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
"The decision about what drugs to put in one's body rightfully belongs to each individual, not to FDA bureaucrats. To deny individuals this right is to impose a death sentence on those who, in the face of certain death, would rationally choose to accept the risks of an experimental treatment, but are barred from doing so until the urgently needed drug completes the FDA's onerous, years-long approval process. Indeed, this case was initiated by a group founded by the father of a girl who died after she was denied access to an experimental anti-cancer drug the FDA later approved.
"Individuals, in consultation with their doctors, should be free to assess the evidence of a drug's effectiveness and safety, taking into account their own personal context (such as their unique risk factors, or the fact that they are certain to die without the treatment). Some people may take ineffective or harmful drugs, but FDA approval does not eliminate such risks. The individual always assumes some level of risk when deciding on a course of treatment, and it is capricious--and too often deadly--for the FDA to usurp the individual's right to decide which risks it is in his interest to accept.
"Some claim that, freed from the necessity of gaining FDA approval for new medicines, 'greedy' drug companies will sell ineffective and dangerous drugs. But a company that sells such drugs is only ensuring its own financial destruction. And if a company knowingly misleads the public about a drug's safety or reliability, or is negligent in putting a dangerous drug on the market, it should properly be prosecuted. The solution is not to give FDA bureaucrats the power to condemn sick people to certain death.
"Some claim that allowing individuals to take unapproved drugs will make effective clinical testing impossible, since, as they say, no rational person would willingly submit to the double-blind, randomized tests that are currently used in clinical trials required by the FDA. In such tests, some of the participants are unknowingly given a placebo, which, it's said, no one would chance if he could ensure that he received the drug by paying for it. But, contrary to those who make this argument, individuals are not lab rats who may be blackmailed by the government into becoming test subjects. It is chilling that defenders of the FDA's current trial system are, in effect, advocating as an incentive to take part in such trials: 'join or die.'
"Moreover, such twisted ultimatums are not necessary in order to make effective drug research possible. Were individuals free to take untested medicines, new incentives to take part in clinical trials would surely arise, such as, for instance, an offer of free treatment to those who choose to take part--an inestimable value to people unable to afford the drugs.
"Anyone who values human life, and the freedom of judgment required to maintain it, should oppose this disgraceful ruling--and demand an end to the unnecessary deaths caused by FDA drug regulations."Aug 9, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--The prices of many U.S.-made prescription drugs are lower in places such as Canada, Australia, and Europe than in the United States. In order to allow Americans to take advantage of these lower prices, the House recently passed a bill that would permit the re-importation of these cheaper drugs to the U.S.
But according to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, "The supporters of this measure fail to ask one crucial question: why do prescription drugs cost so much less in other countries?
"The answer is that, unlike the U.S., countries such as Canada impose price controls on prescription drugs, forcing drug companies that want to do business there to sell their products for less than they would in a free market. Drug re-importation schemes, like the one passed by the House, are in effect 'back-door' price controls. They enable Americans to buy the foreign price-controlled drugs at a lower price than their U.S. counterparts--just as if the U.S. government itself had capped prescription drug prices.
"But price controls violate the rights of drug makers. Neither the Canadian government nor the American government has a right to tell drug makers what prices they may charge for their products.
"Proponents of prescription drug price controls claim they are necessary in order to protect consumers from 'excessive' drug prices. But if a consumer determines that a drug price is 'excessive,' he already can protect himself--by refusing to buy the drug. He has no right to buy the drug for less than the drug company is willing to sell it, anymore than he has a right to buy a car for less than a car dealer is willing to charge.
"Indeed, the ultimate result of forcing drug makers to offer their products for less is to ensure that fewer such products are available. As with any commodity, price controls lead inevitably to shortages, as it becomes unprofitable for companies to produce enough drugs to meet the rising demand created by the artificially low price. And such controls hamper the creation of new life-saving medicines, as drug companies find it less profitable to invest the millions upon millions of dollars necessary to discover new drugs and bring them to the market.
"The sole reason Canada has been able to institute its price controls without severely hampering the discovery and production of prescription drugs is because it is 'free riding' on the backs of Americans. It is only because the American market is free from price controls that drug companies are able to recoup their enormous R&D costs, and thus find it profitable to sell additional units of the drugs at a lower cost in other, price-controlled countries. Should America impose price controls either directly or by proxy, the house of cards will collapse.
"We should protect the rights of pharmaceutical companies--and the welfare of consumers--and demand an end to price controls, direct and indirect."Aug 7, 2007 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--The Bush administration is asking Congress to approve a $20 billion arms sales package to Saudi Arabia, with the justification that a better-armed Saudi Arabia may serve as a "counterbalance" to the threat posed to us by Iran.
"This is absurd," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "The administration has been telling us that we must forgo oil for more costly fuels because our 'addiction to oil' helps finance hostile Middle East regimes--among them Saudi Arabia, which has spent almost $100 billion spreading the terrorists' ideology of Islamic Totalitarianism. And yet at the same time that our leaders demand that we sacrifice oil-consumption for the sake of protection from the Saudis, they are arming the Saudis to the teeth.
"What explains this blatant contradiction? While one might attribute it to simple hypocrisy, the Bush Administration is in fact being consistent. In response to both the Saudi threat and the Iranian threat, our response is not self-assertion, but self-sacrifice. When Saudi Arabia spreads a terrorist ideology around the world, we do not punish that regime, we punish ourselves by rejecting the lifeblood of our civilization. And when Iran unleashes even more terrorist aggression, we do not destroy that regime, we imperil ourselves by arming our Saudi enemies and hoping it will somehow protect us. Indeed, the same pattern has been at work in the Iraq fiasco; to the extent the Hussein regime was a threat to us, we did not simply use our military to end it, but instead set out to sacrifice American money and lives to bring the good life to the hostile tribal Iraqis.
"The pattern here follows a definite principle; America has no right to use its unmatched military might for its own sake—it is duty-bound to sacrifice its soldiers, money, and self-defense.
"America, the most moral and most powerful nation on earth, has both the right and the ability to end state sponsorship of terrorism. But we will not be able to do so until we abandon our addiction, not to oil, but to the morality of self-sacrifice."