Sep 16, 2009 | Dollars & Crosses
In “How the Freedom to Contract Protects Insurability” Paul Hseih makes the economic case and moral case for a free-market in health insurance. Here is just one choice quote:
It is true that patients today with preexisting medical problems can have difficulty purchasing health insurance. But forcing insurers to cover such patients is not the solution. On the economic level, such coercion would create many new problems. For instance, under such legislation patients would have a strong incentive to delay purchasing insurance until they got sick, knowing they could not be denied coverage at that time. Why pay for insurance before you need it if you can wait and purchase it when you need it? Thus, many people would simply go without insurance until they needed medical care, at which time they would purchase an insurance policy and receive immediate coverage far in excess of the price paid for the policy. Such laws would legalize plunder.
Required reading.
Sep 15, 2009 | Dollars & Crosses
WASHINGTON, September 15, 2009–The Supreme Court has recently finished an unusual second round of hearings in the case of Citizens United v. FEC. The case concerns the government’s decision to ban Citizens United from airing a movie about Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primaries on the grounds that it violated a campaign finance provision in the McCain-Feingold Act. Supporters of campaign finance restrictions argue that by limiting the ability of the wealthy to promote their political views, these restrictions make speech more “fair.”
“What campaign finance supporters call ‘fair’ speech is anything but fair,” writes Don Watkins, a writer and researcher with the Ayn Rand Center.
“Those who acquire wealth through productive activity, whether individuals or corporations (which are nothing more than groups of individuals), have every right to use their ‘louder megaphone’: they earned it. What possible reason could make it ‘unfair’ for these individuals to use their resources to support and further their political views?
“In ordinary speech, ‘fairness’ means justice: getting what you deserve–i.e., what you have earned. But the advocates of campaign finance laws twist it to mean equal results: everyone, they claim, must have ‘equal speech.’ They are speech egalitarians. “But real fairness demands, not ‘equal speech,’ but equal freedom–not equal megaphones or equal commercial time but the equal right to get your message out as widely as you can given your time, interest, resources, and persuasiveness. But that’s precisely what campaign finance laws prevent, by having government bureaucrats dictate what you can spend, how you can spend it, when you can speak, and what you can say.”
Sep 15, 2009 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes John Lewis in the The Objective Standard:
The administration of George W. Bush, for instance, greatly expanded government power. President Bush doubled the national budget, doubled the deficit, added a digit to the national debt, signed the largest entitlement bill since the 1960s, ordered his cabinet to cooperate in regulating carbon dioxide as a “pollutant,” signed Sarbanes-Oxley, distributed economic “stimulus” checks, asked for $700 billion as business handouts, and never vetoed a spending bill. […] Although no Republican in three generations has defended capitalism in a principled way, Republican rhetoric continues to use pro-capitalist language, mainly to oppose Democrats. Ronald Reagan’s assertion that “government is the problem” continues to resonate among supporters of the free market. However, few Republicans have been willing to face the inescapable fact that the federal budget and debt grew exponentially under both Reagan and his Republican successor, George H.W. Bush. Republican lip service to the free market has muddied the waters and continues to make it difficult for people to see that Republicans were, in fact, throttling freedom under a maze of growing federal controls. Hence there was no uprising against Republicans or their policies.
Following eight years of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush appeared to offer the best hope to regain that alleged free-market, low-tax legacy. Once again, most people did not see that the free-market image of this Republican was a mirage that bore no relation to his actions. This image gained power when Bush was touted as an alternative to his leftist Democratic challengers. This contrast of images obscured the fundamental differences between Bush’s policies and a truly pro-capitalist position. This obfuscation—instigated by the Republicans—deeply confused many honest Americans about the nature of his policies, and caused enormous harm to their understanding of both capitalism and conservatism. This split between appearance and reality—between the image of a pro-freedom Republican and the reality of a welfare-state Republican—made it difficult for people to recognize that no candidate in either party was willing to defend capitalism. As a result, any real discussion of capitalism—properly understood as a truly free market, in which individual rights are protected by the government—was obliterated from public discourse.
Bush fostered his undeserved free-market image with tax cuts that accompanied huge increases in spending and led to enormous deficits. He also appeared to oppose business regulations, even as he approved thousands of pages of new controls (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley and the steel tariffs). His selective repeal of some rules (such as parts of the Glass-Steagall Act) contributed to the image of a free-market administration that had “deregulated” the economy. He promoted the expansion of huge federally-sponsored entities such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginny Mae), and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) because he wanted to appear compassionate to people who “needed” loans. When the market imploded, Bush proposed hundreds of billions in federal aid, saying “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free market system.”6
The visible result was an exploding welfare state in which capitalism was blamed for massive deficits, for rising health-care prices, for the collapse of Wall Street, for the cost of the Iraq war, and for every other bad consequence of Bush’s policies. The more fundamental, unseen result was a confused American public—a public confused about the very meaning of the free market, liberty, and individual rights, and about what a proper defense of those values would mean. “Capitalism has failed” became the mantra of the left: “We tried it under Bush, and look what happened.”
In his systematic treatment of the philosophy of Objectivism, Leonard Peikoff wrote that “[p]recisely because of their pretense,” conservatives “are the main source of political confusion in the public mind; they give people the illusion of an electoral alternative without the fact. Thus the statist drift proceeds unchecked and unchallenged.”7 George W. Bush is the quintessential example of this point.
Read the rest in The Objective Standard.
Sep 11, 2009 | Dollars & Crosses
End States Who Sponsor Terrorism by Leonard Peikoff (September 11, 2009)
Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The climax was September 11, 2001.
Hatred of Western Civilization: Why Terrorists Attacked America by John Lewis (September 11, 2009)
The hatred of the West is not based on jealousy but on hatred of the good because it is good. Nihilism, the desire to destroy, is why the enemies of freedom fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up with dynamite.
September 11th: Where Have Our Leaders Gone Wrong? by Keith Lockitch (September 8, 2006)
Unable to defend America intellectually, our leaders are unable to defend her militarily.
September 11th: Five Years Later by Edwin A. Locke and Alex Epstein (September 7, 2006)
It is now five years since September 11, 2001–and since that horrific day we have witnessed numerous additional attacks by Islamic terrorists against the West. In the face of a seemingly never-ending supply of suicidal killers, many still do not understand the motivation of the terrorists. Commentators are eager to offer a bevy of pseudo-explanations–poverty, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc.–while ignoring the motivation the terrorists themselves openly proclaim: Islam.
Columbus Day: The Cure for 9/11 by Thomas A. Bowden (October 5, 2004)
Columbus Day’s celebration of Western Civilization reminds Americans why they deserve to win the war against Islamic totalitarianism.
Reflecting America: World Trade Center Memorial Should Celebrate America’s Producers by Dianne Durante (September 2, 2004)
The people who worked at the World Trade Center (WTC) were all productive people: they were there to do a job and earn money. They died on September 11 because they symbolized that productivity, not just to millions around the world who aspire to live like Americans, but also to the terrorists who despise all that America stands for.
Diverting the Blame for September 11th by Onkar Ghate (April 1, 2004)
Sept. 11 could have been prevented only by having a principled foreign policy.
1776 vs. 9/11 by Edward Cline (September 11, 2008)
Non-actions also have consequences.
Sep 10, 2009 | Dollars & Crosses
WASHINGTON, September 10, 2009–In a joint speech to Congress last night, President Obama laid out his plan for health care reform. The president, quoting the late Senator Ted Kennedy, said: “What we face is, above all, a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”
“The President and the Senator are right about one thing: health care is above all a moral issue,” writes Alex Epstein, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center. “Unfortunately, the ‘social justice’ morality behind universal health care is utterly un-American and destructive.
“A proper system of health care, based on America’s founding principle of individual rights, is one in which each individual has a right to pursue health care on a free market of medical professionals and insurance companies. Such a system recognizes each individual’s right to his own life, and responsibility for its preservation–as well as the right of doctors and others to assist the poorest Americans through private charity. The practical result would be the same as emerges in any truly free market: ever better, cheaper products and services for your (health care) dollar.
“Health care is a moral issue. And it should be dealt with via the American morality of individualism, individual responsibility, and individual rights.”
