TGIF: The Market Doesn’t Ration Health Care
Posted on August 7th, 2009 by Sheldon Richman
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Healthcare reformers say they have two objectives: to enable the uninsured and under-insured to consume more medical services than they consume now, and to keep the price of those services from rising, as they have been, faster than the prices of other goods and services. Unfortunately, Economics 101 tells us that to accomplish those two things directly — increased consumption by one group and lower prices — the government would have to take a third step: rationing. The reformers are disingenuous about this last step, and for good reason. People don’t like rationing, especially of medical care.
The rest of my latest TGIF column is here.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Okay, let’s see if I get this right:
1. “The market does not do anything. It has no purposes or objectives. It is simply a legal framework in which people do things with their justly acquired property and their time in order to pursue their own purposes.”
How can you have a legal framework that has no purpose? Why would no something of no action be a subject of law?
2. ““The market is a process,” by which he meant “a series of activities.”
Isn’t a process a action? How do you have a process when you do nothing? So we have activities but the market doesn’t do anything?
The market is what people do in exchanges.
If a market is what people do in exchanges then does it have a purpose or are you a nihilist?
Quote from Mr. Richman:
“Those words — especially ration, which shares its root with rational – suggest conscious decision-making — as part of a plan — by an agent. — especially ration, which shares its root with rational – suggest conscious decision-making — as part of a plan — by an agent.”
So people what do in exchanges isn’t subject to conscious decision making?
Markets are what people do exchanges and people ration in exchanges because resources are scarce hence “market forces” ration.
Man in nature is born weak having neither fang, claw, or talon but he subdues nature because he is rational. Without using your mind how can you expect to survive even a single day?
Why do you then demand that man in relations to what is around him is not guided “conscious decision-making” and totally irrational?
You don’t know anything about economics.
Economics is the science of increasing man’s power over nature for increasing the material provisioning of man via the ever changing structure of the individual mind.
What people don’t like isn’t rationing it’s other people rationing for them and that includes both so called “market forces,” insurances companies, contracts, and government boards.
People want more access to more medical care and they don’t care who pays as long as they get what they think they need.
They question is one of how do you physically provide for more medical care than we have now? The reason medical costs keep going up because the population needing medical care is growing and the numbers of doctors, nurses, equipment and infrastructure keeps going down.
Talking about who pays, public financing, private financing, the rules of exchanges of existing property will do nothing.
The only relevant economic question is how you do rationally organize the society so that people produce more hospital, beds, equipment, and medical staff.
The problem is that our society isn’t organized around what humans need but monetary profit and that irrational social orientation around monetary markets is wrong.
Our markets are not some neutral fixed framework that just naturally arose contrary to the Austrians.
It does have a history, it was create for purpose and it has the objective of monetary value uber alles and that framework needs to change.
British and Austrian Monetarism delenda est!
Here is what I will say – the current medical system is not a free market. It is already infested with rules and restrictions that prevent free exchange of medical goods and services.
Once you admit that, and that is a big step, the question become is the proposed system different/better than the current system.
And arguments that one is “more” free market than the other are not very convincing as the only thing worse than a fully regulated system is one that is partially (and poorly) regulated…
The problem is that our society isn’t organized around what humans need but monetary profit and that irrational social orientation around monetary markets is wrong.
Our markets are not some neutral fixed framework that just naturally arose contrary to the Austrians.
It does have a history, it was create for purpose and it has the objective of monetary value uber alles and that framework needs to change.
How, pray tell, do you propose to change the framework? What new framework strikes you as being more rational. People use markets to exchange what they can produce best and most easily for other things that they value more highly. That’s been going on since the beginning of recorded history, and it seems to work, since it aggregates information about individual values and none of us are as smart as all of us, so to speak.
I don’t trust your proposed “planner” to be entirely trustworthy, to say nothing of his or her capacity for intelligence or empathy.
I think that the market does ration health care. If you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s what drives prices down,
I think that the market does ration health care. If you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s what drives prices down,
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ration
Inability to get what one wants is not the definition of rationing. That’s merely life.
“Rationing” is a specific word with a specific meaning. It means not being able to get what one wants because the government is saving it for someone else or some other time.
Mr Richman writes:
“We face a choice between rationing according to a bureaucratic plan and being freed to engage in mutually beneficial exchanges.”
If you ever have to try and get insurance with a pre-existing condition you’ll find out just how mutually beneficial an exchange you’ve entered.
Mr R condemns reifying the market – and I’ll grant that markets themselves have no purpose, plan or action provided he shows me a market that exists without human participation. Human created markets most certainly have purposes. Always. In some instances, like computer hardware, sellers are forced to sell into a market where there goal must be gaining market share by pricing. Great for consumers.
Other markets are rigged in favor of the seller. For decades, DeBeers controlled most of the world’s diamonds and sold them for more than their scarcity might have suggested. Of course consumers could have just gone without, but mutually beneficial? Hardly. In every transaction, a buyer and seller will maneuver to gain advantage. In the case of computer hardware, I’d argue that consumers have rigged the market in their favor by threatening producers (through consumer friendly laws) with sanctions if they attempt to increase their pricing power via price fixing. I think a better description of what happens when humans buy and sell is that a way is found that is mutually tolerable. It’s not beneficial to both parties in equal measure.
So, in any market each side tries to bend the purpose of the market to best satisfy its desire for cheaper goods or higher profit. Rationing is one way of rigging a market – DeBeers rationed diamonds for its benefit. In WWII, the electorate through their lawmakers rationed many items, choosing to restrain their own demand while keeping prices democratically low. DeBeers still had to price diamonds low enough for people to buy, and the US Govt still had to allow producers to charge enough to cover costs and make some profit. Mutually tolerable.
I know there are those who will argue about the fairness of the various ways in which sellers and buyers will try and rig markets. This can be argued from right and left in big, fat books I’ll never read. Fairness in a market is only a byproduct of finding a mutually tolerable way to do business.
What all this has to do with healthcare is this: the market for healthcare in the US, as currently arranged, is not mutually tolerable. Consumers spend too much for too little, as can be seen by comparing US health expenditure v. our peer countries. Private insurers do not offer consumers what they really want, which his health care without costs for excessive administrative overhead, marketing, and excessive salaries and profits, and care that does not attempt to exclude consumers who might actually need to use those services for which they pay. Consumers have as much right to alter this market in their favor as the insurers have to rig it in theirs.
And those who are smart enough to know their own self interest won’t have trouble figuring out which side they should be on.
mattswartz
Actually the dictionary link you provided did not specify in the definition that it only be done by government. Their examples were all governmental.
I just want to make sure I understand the position of all you Prog’s:
The desire for money serves only the self, and therefore profit-motivated human arrangements lack the empathy needed for the care of the human body.
Our “free-market” healthcare system has created a profitable situation for insurance companies and left a lot of people unable to afford health care. I may concede that the market is no longer free, due to the imposition of regulations and the presence of Medicare and Medicaid as providers. I may even concede that these government interventions cause distortions that are less than desirable, but practically speaking, we are not about to undo those things, so why not go all the way to central planning and solve the problems that a partial government solution has created but cannot solve?
The best solution is to create a system that cares for all and doesn’t care to profit from helping an individual. If you put the right smart people in charge you will be able to help all individuals and cut costs at the same time. I concede that this may cause some rationing, but there are millions that are getting none or less than adequate already, and their lack is based on their lack of money, instead of their lack of need.
I think all conservatives and libertarians (and thinking people) should stew on these good intentions. How does a society address these concerns with prudence and wisdom? I’ll be taking notes.
Charlie,
I grant your (technical) point. The state element’s being left out of the definition, however, in no way affects usage, which, in all cases except for the nautical, means governmental restrictions.
Even in the case of sea rations, though, which is the only other way I think the word has ever been used, there is a sense of a single authority (the captain) controlling distribution of a good.
The market (in this case a market that’s already choked by government regulation) not having enough of that good to supply existing demand at accepted prices, one has to admit, is a very different thing.
Jack, I don’t think sentiment need enter the argument about why our current system of health care is not working. I don’t care about empathy or its lack when it comes to paying for a service: I want the best possible service at the lowest possible cost.
Right now, the US pays much more for health care than our peer countries and we get less. Do we leave so much money on the table out of empathy for insurance companies? We pay more for prescription drugs than our neighbors to the North – are we feeling the pain of big pharma?
As to rationing – the population most likely to need frequent and major medical intervention are those over 65. They pay nothing for their care – However, I’m not aware that this group is suffering from the rationing of care – are you? Also – if you have acute symptoms and go to the hospital, they have to treat you regardless if you can pay. If you have money they’ll take it all until you’re indigent. Once your indigent, your care is free anyway. So, how many people are going without acute care now? Or are they just doing without care until their conditions become acute? Is that good business.
If rationing is so much a feature of single payer health systems, how do you explain the mortality/morbidity statistics of countries with such systems being as good or even better than ours? And how can they get those results while spending so much less than the US?
Just a few thoughts from a hard-hearted cheapskate.
mrmetrowest,
Thanks for adding to my list of Prog arguments. I am also a cheapskate, and I appreciate a fellow of my kind.
Regarding your comments, here are a few responses and questions for clarification:
“I’m not aware that this group is suffering from the rationing of care – are you?”
My grandmother has to have private insurance to make up for the gaps in her Medicare coverage.
“And how can they get those results while spending so much less than the US?”
Stories abound of denied care in these systems. If the only measure is mortality/morbidity, then you’re confusing correlation and causality, aren’t you? Where are the stats on denial vs granting of care? Is there somewhere I can look that up? Who would keep these stats other than the bureaucracies that manage the systems?
“I want the best possible service at the lowest possible cost.”
If that is your goal, do you honestly believe that central planning will deliver it to you?
>>My grandmother has to have private insurance to make up for the gaps in her Medicare coverage.
Gap coverage isn’t about rationing. It’s about shortcomings in Medicare coverage that can leave one financially exposed. My mother carried gap coverage to pay for hospital stays of more than a year, because that’s as much as Medicare will pay.
>>Stories abound of denied care in these systems …etc
My feeling is that if, for instance, heart surgery is systematically rationed leading to long waits for critical care this should show up as excess deaths in statistics. Certainly, notable failures in health care delivery should show up somewhere. None of the data sources I’ve seen show that kind of deficiency in other ’socialized’ systems. Anecdotes of the delay/denial of care do abound – in socialized systems and ours too.
>>If that is your goal, do you honestly believe that central planning will deliver it to you?
Planning? No. Paying, yes. One payer, one package for everybody. But you can choose your Dr, hospital etc. My mother is on Medicare, and that’s how it works for her. And it works well.
Medicare only “works” because it hasn’t yet collapsed as it eventually will along with the giant ponzi scheme known as social security. Medicare, Mediaid, licensing and regulation has pushed up the cost of health way beyond what it would be in a free market system. The employer paid health insurance was a direct result of the perverse tax structure of world war two. People now only pay three cents on every dollar of their hospital care and fourteen cents on every dollar of their total health care. The UK system has now started to stop paying for pain killers and in Canada if you have a serious condition you come to the US for surgery. Guillible people take the leftist stats at face value and believe they are
“entitled” to health care. You are entitled to nothing that anyone produces in goods and services. No one is your slave
who is chained to your needs by virtue of their greater competence. Fools who believe the “success” stories of socialized medicine are exactly like the useful idiots who believed in the USSR as they killing 62 million and in Mao’s China as they were killing over 100 million. Go to lewrockwell.com or to the Ayn Rand Institute to find information on socialized medicine. In a free society we don’t have a “single payer” of anything. The whole HMO concept as a step towards state medicine was set up by Ted Kennedy and Nixon. Our system now is more government managed than free. The fee for practice system was better
and as far as rationing goes you better believe that the older you are in a fully socialized system the less likely you will be approved for certain services. Remember he pays the piper
calls the tune which is the old fee for service system was better for the individual. One paying system IS central planning of the most statist kind. Progressive has always been a euphemism for communism.
What I don’t understand is what the fear is about a single payer system? When everyone participates and pays into one system, the health of the population increases and security abides. Everyone seems to thinks that like in the “hood” the insurance companies “have my back bro” well, no they do not have your back bro; insurance companies consider paying out not a cost of doing business but, cutting into the profit; insurance companies do not care if you win or lose your battle with illness; and if they see one inkling of weakness (a small business owner out in the woods by themselves) they will start the denying game. Americans should want to see the entire population and themselves have continuous, unending coverage which provides preventative care. Our whole way of thinking would change if we decided value our neighbors health as much as our own. Why do we just say, “that’s too bad” and expect that anyone who gets sick should be bankrupt and sent to the streets? Are you all invested in insurance company stock or something? Personally; I would go with green companies for investment and, ding, Treasury Bonds; because America will have the biggest come back of the century if we have national health care; companies from all over the world will feel comfortable setting up shop if they know ten people won’t need to be on staff to issue benefits and they will not need to pay out millions of dollars each year to insure an unhealthy bunch o’ Americans. People stop sucking the ether insurance companies are waiving in your face and get back to REALITY!
The rational fear is of socialism in any form.We should no more pay for each other’s medical care than we should for their food, gas, tv sets or their kids. The insurance companies only got to their present undue influence as a result of earlier governmental interventions in the name of managed care, which is just a step toward state control of medicine. I listed some of the reasons above socialized medicine is a bad idea and some sources that you read for further elaboration. The only reason we have the government mandated employer health care is because of the astronomical WW2 tax rates which created a perverse tax incentive for this. We need to return to fee system where you pay for your medical care. The single family practitioner has been virtually destroyed by these government mandated programs including the HMOs.
The health of the population worsens under socialized medicine. People in Canada and the UK who need serious
operations come here. In 1958 Cuba was 13th in the world
for infant mortality, now it’s 44th. Check out the LewRockwell.com website today (8/10) for three good articles on this subject. We don’t want the same fools who mismanage the post office, the schools and “defense” now
ruining medicine. Medicare right now has over 44 TRILLION in unfunded obligations. If the system was extended to everyone the increase would be incalculable. Taxes will go up sharply and that not attract new businesses to the US. Socialism is antithetical to objective reality, Sara. You better
go to the Von Mises website and read the works of Rothbard,
Mises, Reisman, Hazlitt, etc. and learn basic economics.
@Sara Jones
Let’s see if I can break it down so even a rabid lib can understand.
In Canada, or England, if your baby has had a temperature of 103F for 48 hrs (for you libs, that’s 2 days), you wait another 2 days before trying to get the baby to a doctor.
In the US, if you’re not confident, after 2 days that the baby is going to be okay, you have the option of trying to get baby to a doctor.
Before you spout some lib-pseudointellectual retort, try checking with an actual Canadian or UK citizen.
============================================
But where dumb republicans, (like sometimes Hannity and OReilly), go wrong, is they think there is no “bottom of the barrel class” who don’t have this available to them. This DOES need fixed, just not at the cost of screwing the other 20 million who are covered.
We won’t get to a decent solution until the conservative talking heads quit spouting their nonsense about “everyone in the US has access”, and help those trying to advance realistic solutions without some communist takeover.
Quote: “How, pray tell, do you propose to change the framework?”
By ending the Federal Reserve System and establishing a Constitutional credit system based on credit for long term physical economic development just like we used to do.
Quote: What new framework strikes you as being more rational.
A framework based on connecting physical productivity to profit rather than money to profit. Changing the idea that profits are monetary to the idea that profits is physical just the same as the American System from Benjamin Franklin to the Moon Shot.
Quote: People use markets to exchange what they can produce best and most easily for other things that they value more highly.
Well, the markets do seem to produce debt and derivatives better than anything else and markets say derivatives are highly valuable.
But is what the markets are saying true? Can I eat derivatives? Do they have any value for human existence? No, the markets are wrong because what the people in the market believe is wrong.
Quote: That’s been going on since the beginning of recorded history, and it seems to work, since it aggregates information about individual values and none of us are as smart as all of us, so to speak.
Complete nonsense. I’m am smarter than the so-called market because truth isn’t a opinion and just because the market decides on the “impartial spectator” of popular opinion doesn’t make the “market” right and me wrong. The market aggregates no information about value only human beings successive via inter generation relationships aggregate value i.e. people learn from their families and communities the fundamental relationships of value not so called “market forces.”
The market is only as “smart” people participating in the market so the question is how to make the people i.e. the nation “smarter?”
By the way how you Austrians define “smart” or you apriori assume in a feat circular logic the market is already the smartest there is because it like God is omnipresent, omniscient even if we poor mortal aren’t so divinely endowed?
Quote: “I don’t trust your proposed “planner” to be entirely trustworthy, to say nothing of his or her capacity for intelligence or empathy.”
My planner’s is requirements are determined of physical world around us and only thing for human beings to figure out how to figure out what is going in the physical world and therefore figure out rationally what to do in face of this changing world.
Today’s market says there are not much monetary profits in clean water and governments think they are limited by what money they can get through the bond markets and market won’t buy bonds for water projects.
Now the physical world tells us looking at the numbers of “fossil” water reserves and what is needed for continued economic growth presents a problem unless we start doing something very soon.
The entire problem of “unplanned” or “planned” has to do with your conception of man being driven by a fixed set of mental relations based on individual pleasure and pain or as the Austrian’s would say the “fixed logical structure of human mind” and therefore what humans do is limited to figuring out human action based on these parameters and therefore anyone interfering with an individual’s decisions based on the optimal utility of those decisions toward the maximizing or minimizing pain is violating their liberty.
So the conclusion of that view is that if an individual wants sell himself into slavery because of debt then that’s the free market at work and I can’t tell enforce my “economic planning” based on the universal principle that slavery is wrong.
If a “socialist” like Jesus Christ says if the Priest or Levite for very good economic reasons wants to ignore the man beaten by robbers they are violating natural law and that the only lawful action toward the victim is that of the Good Samaritan who acts the basis of the humanitarian principle without regards to personal monetary profit or whatever pleasure or pain he may personally receive then that man is dangerous to liberty because “economic planners” like Jesus Christ believe that every human life has immortal value and we must organize ourselves around that principles whereas the Austrians like to let the “free market” make those decisions.
I reject that British/Austrian view of man that the only basis human action is a calculus of pleasure or pain but rather assert the true liberty of his creativity ability to change the basis of his action toward himself and nature to higher and higher conceptions of man and nature just like the Good Samaritan can act on the basis of immortal value of another human outside rather than momentary pleasure or pain.
We can know universal truth and organize or society around those principles institutionally and thus the economy is planned around the good, the true, and beautiful because it has institutions of republican government i.e. institutions that rule by and for “common wealth” of the free people essentially creating what engineers called a “positive feedback loop” or greater action toward the “General Welfare” and that classical conception of a Republic i.e. dynamical national development.
There no greater assault on Liberty than the doctrine that human beings are incapable of reaching such higher conceptions of themselves and their relationship toward nature and are forever locked in a “digital world” of pleasure and pain without the ability to gain the immortal perspective that is in reality is necessary basis for moral action.
So as always British/Austrian Monetarism Delenda Est!
Good god, I’m getting a headache just trying to comprehend the above rant. No one can make anyone else smarter, you can only do that to yourself. Sep needs to study Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises, Capitalism by George Reisman
and Man, Economy and State with Power & Market edition, by Murray Rothbard. Then he’ll really know Austrian economics. and stop reading the Larouche nonsense about a physical economy. That Marxist crackpot has never been right on anything.
Barney, there are 250 million people who are covered by insurance, not 20 million.
We might wish to ask who is being disingenuous here? Any time you have a finite resource you will have rationing–it is not matter of whether healthcare rationed, but how it’s rationed–healthcare is after all a finite resource.
The current U.S. paradigm rations largely by an individuals ability to pay. For example, if you cannot afford insurance your only choice may be to wait until a conditon reaches the point where it becomes a medical emergency and you go to the emergency room. Additionally, those who have insurance are by no means immune from rationing: your insurance company often has leeway it what does and does not pay for. If your insurance company decides not to pay for a treatment, you’re on your own.
No one can make anyone else smarter? I suppose children teach themselves to read. Chess Players isolate themselves to get better at playing chess. People do make other people do things all the time, it’s called culture.
I’ve read Von Mises but have you read Friedrich List, Mathew Carey, or any American System economist? Have you read Marx, Smith, G.K. Chesterton, Henry George, P.J. Proudhon, or Rosa Luxemberg or anyone outside the Chicago or Austrian School?
Have you ever read the people who built economies in the real world that worked quite well.
You think that Larouche is the only who talks about a physical economy? You obviously don’t know any history or any economics.
You call Larouche a crackpot but he called the current situation way way before any Austrians in 2001.
So you can lie and call him a Marxist but Larouche and his organization have opened up for me a entire tradition of American and European thought that nobody else is willing to talk about from Nicolas of Cusa to the Carey Brothers.
I suggest you stop reading Liberty League wannabes and go to the original sources stop letting foundation funded operations like Cato and the von Mises institutue do your thinking for you.
Quote: “Any time you have a finite resource you will have rationing–it is not matter of whether healthcare rationed, but how it’s rationed–healthcare is after all a finite resource.”
Actually that’s only one half or the question. You have think about how you increase or change your resource base so that you have to ration less. If you focus on that part of equation you be getting somewhere.
I’ve read way too much of LaRouche’s writings including his crackpot Marxist economics text Dialectical Economics published under the Lynn Marcus pseudonym. LaRouche
has been a Marxist most of his life, a Reagan Conservative,
a Conservative Democrat, an atheist, a Christian and a violent homophobe who wanted to put all AIDS people in concentration camps in his 1986 California referendum.He has the wildest conspiracy theory going back to Aristotle.
The Birchers are pikers compared to him.
Now for the past decade he has been posing as a New Deal
Democrat. “A new Bretton Woods” is his latest slogan, very appropriate since the first one was organized by Soviet agent
Harry Dexter White.
I suggest you stop reading cracpots like List, Marx, LaRouche and actually learn something about economics.
Capitalism by George Reisman, Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises and Man, Economy and State combined with
Power and Market by Murray N. Rothbard. All are available
from Amazon.
Read all the authors except Carey. Rothbard totally destroys
George in above referenced book.
LaRouche has nothing to do with any American system, he just can’[t make up his mind if he’s a Communist or a Fascist-Nazi.
Nothing wrong with the Liberty League. The New Deal was a total failure and FDR was surrounded by Soviet agents like
Currie, Hopkins, White, ad nauseum. See The New Dealers War by Thomas Fleming.
Contrary to LaRouche’s utter stupidity, the New Deal was a big flop which is why he had to lie us into WW2.
See The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes for a critical analysis of the Hew Deal. Or is she part of the aristotelian
english empirical dopedealing conspiracy too ? Sep, like all
LaRouchie cultists you’d give an aspirin a headache.
Have no truck with CATO, they are much too compromised
for me and they opposed Ron Paul.
By the way none of the people you list ever built a garage,
much less an economy in the real world. You should read
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and deprogram yourself from
the LaRouche zombie cultists.
Chicago School is much too compromised for me and Rothbard has exposed them at length.
Finally, no one can make anyone learn anything. You have
to learn to drive or swim or play chess by yourself. Someone
can show you but you have to do it yourself. Only a LaRouchite would fail to grasp this elementary distinction.
I want to know why FedGov ever let this clown out of prison.
Louis, all resources are ultimately finite. You need to carefully reread the article this thread is based on since he explains why the market doesn’t ration anything. You haven’t
grasped his premise here.
Typoed “hew” instead of “New” when i
referenced the Amity Shlaes. She is
good on domestic policies of New Deal
but terrible on FDR’s lying us into WW2.
But then she works at the CFR.
Michael Hardesty, Amity Shlaes is a globalist CFR loon and has no economic training or background what so ever.
Take for example her denial that we where having a recession in 2008:
Quote from Amity Shlaes: “Consider what happened this week. While speaking with the Washington Times, Gramm said that the country was not in a true recession but a “mental recession.” He also said, “We have sort of become a nation of whiners” and “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.”
Gramm was right about the recession and stood by his recession comments on Thursday. A recession is two consecutive quarters in which the economy shrinks, and last quarter it grew. But no matter. Voters feel they are in a recession, and so they are, at least according to Campaign Econ.”
I guess she’s real authority now isn’t she?
Here brief snapshot to the absolute fraud of the Forgotten Man: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020603/fdr-failed-myth.
I suggest you look at the data which available online before you buy CFR/Globalist crap.
Quote: “Nothing wrong with the Liberty League”
Nothing wrong with the American Liberty League except the whole Business plot, and openly aligned with fascists. But what is little treason after it is against the big bad State.
Cato is project of the Mont Perelin Society and that Society created by London Bankers and European Oligarchs and promoted fascist coups throughout South American and are no friends of freedom unless you consider George Soro’s “open society” project the kind of freedom you want.
You called Larouchies cultists and then you go on to promote Ayn Rand. Pot meet Kettle.
I like Larouche but I don’t agree with his organization’s attacks on G.K. Chesterton.
Here’s a rather nice debate between Larouchies and Randians back in 2005 when the Randians/Libertarians where claiming all was fine with economy and claiming Larouchies where all doom and gloom. The Randians are reduced to saying “F the Constitution” and founders where wrong to set a government and it is perfectly moral to let people die of thirst if they can’t pay money.
Check it out here: http://wlym.com/mp3/20051115-ucla-debate.mp3
Quote from Michael Hardesty: “Finally, no one can make anyone learn anything. You have
to learn to drive or swim or play chess by yourself. Someone
can show you but you have to do it yourself.”
So you decided to potty train yourself? You decided what language would be your first? You decided what family traditions and customs you would follow? You cannot do anything separate from the past that produced you thus all learning is based in the culture you are part of and cannot originate in the individual alone.
As human beings the first economy we are part of is the economy of grace and we don’t have a choice as to what gift we receive.
Quote from Michael Hardesty: “By the way none of the people you list ever built a garage,
much less an economy in the real world. ”
So Friedrich List and the Careys have nothing to do with German or Japanese industrialization? I guess they have nothing to Pennsylvania Railroad or American Industrial Policy.
Sigh…..Friedrich List started out building a successful coal mine and then created the Little Schuylkill Railroad making a statement like just goes to show that reading all those Libertarian propaganda means that you don’t know any American history much less an economy in the real world.”
By the way, where you four months ago? I and other Larouche crazies were out organizing people against Obamacare and getting screamed at and now the people who listen are driving their congress critters into hiding and Obamacare is going down. Who do think started debated about euthanesia and government rationing of care against people’s will?
So I don’t want a lecture from a do nothing Libertarians about healthcare when I fighting your fight months before you Teabaggers got of you asses and did something.
Your pushing to audit the Fed. We are pushing to prosecute the Fed Peccora style and seize it. Who’s serious here?
Shlaes is a thoroughly trained economic historian. Her credentials are impeccable. Thost stats from McMiillion are phony. See Shlaes book for a year by year correction. By
1937 we were again in as bad a depression as 1932. We only
got out of the Depression in 1940 after a huge increase in defense spending in 1939. See The Roosevelt Myth by John T. Flynn and The New Dealers War by Thomas Fleming. See
Jim Powell’s book on the New Deal and see the new book,
New Deal Or Raw Deal ? all available from Amazon.
FDR had to get us into a world war precisely because the New Deal failed.
There was no fascist coup against FDR, that was a Communist-New Deal lie. The New Deal itself was fascist,
see As We Go Marching by John T. Flynn.
See David Gordon’s review of the excellent Shlaes book on the Ludwig Von Mises website.
Neither London bankers or Soros had anything to do with the
creation of Mont Pelerin. It was started by anti-fascists like
Wilhelm von Ropke, who had always opposed the corporate
statist policies of Hitler, Mussolini AND FDR.
CATO was started by Rothbard and financed by the Kochs
and it was fine until they moved to DC.
Individuals create culture, not vice-versa. I would still need to
learn how to use the toilet or read and after a certain age I
would then be capable of original thinking and able to challenge received views.
List has been refuted by Smith, Bastiat, Mises, Friedman, Reisman, Rothbard and every free market economist in history.
Objectivism is a philosophy, not a cult. A collectivist tribe like LaRouchites who mindlessly follow their leader through every conceivable ideological contortion IS a cult.
There are Randroids but even they are sane compared to the
LaRouche zombies.
No Austrian economists EVER said we had a good economic situation in 2005, not lewrockwell.com, not George
Reisman, not the Ayn Rand Institute, etc. I don’t know if you
are quoting Shlaes correctly but it would have no bearing on her book.
You people have discredited foes of Obama by making up that euthanasia lie. I remember in 1999 LaRouche was claiming that Gore was part of a Confederate plot to overthrow
Clinton !!!!!!!!! You people are either lunatics or agent provocateurs.
We libertarians want to abolish the Fed. Period. Not audit it or nationalize it.
The tea parties are weak because taxation ought to be abolished, not reformed.
By the way, people originate things all the time separate from their ancestors or received opinion. We do learn from the past but we are not slaves to the past. You assign to “culture” the same omnipotence racists do to genetics.
If you like LaRouche, there is something very wrong with you.
Every time I get through refuting you I feel like I need a bath.
National Review in 1970 exposed his meetings with the Soviets in NY at their UN consulate. Is Larouche a Nazi-
Fascist-New Dealer or a Communist is the only relevant question here.
LaRouche is a consistent statist, it is the only
consistent pattern in his public career. He
prefers Plato, the mystic statist, over Aristotle,
the empirical rationalist. He prefers Hamilton,
the authoritarian statist, over Jefferson, the
partial libertarian. He attacks Soros because
Soros is a Jew and because Soros correctly
wants to decriminalize all drugs. LaRouche
pretends to be a blackophile but then supports
the war on drugs which is responsible for the
great bulk of black incarceration aside from
their many real crimes like robbery, rape,
murder, burglary, mugging, etc.
When LaRouche rants about the British
and London Bankers, it’s a code word for
the Jews. See Dennis King’s book exposing
him. His “intelligence” review is the most pretentious
sort of utter nonsense exceeded only by his attempts
at Leibnizian “philosophy.” For years Larouche’s
paid goons followed Kissinger around at airports
screaming at him that he slept with small boys at
a DC hotel until one day Nancy Kissinger wiped
up the floor with the LaRouchite. Nancy was acquited
in the New Jersey court. In 1973 the Wall Street Journal
had a front page story exposing LaRouche’s violent
tactics against other leftist groups. Most leftists long
considered him to be an agent provocateur paid for
by US Intelligence. Some of us thought it was more
like the Soviets but it doesn’t matter if he’s a lone nut.
During the Bush 2 years LaRouche’s supporters held
rallies where they shouted for socialized medicine
and labeled anyone as a Nazi (National Socialist)
who opposed LaRouche’s National Socialism. Any
time you hear nonsense about UK bankers and the
physical economy you are hearing a LaRouche robot.
They always use the classic Communist tactic of
screaming an epthet at someone that perfectly fits
themselves. I hope these imbeciles are not leading
the protests against Obama’s state medicine because
they discredit everything they get involved with.
Give them a wide berth and they will perish in their
own void. “A new Bretton Woods now !” yeah, right.
That’s a slogan to mobilize the masses.
Two more great books on the failure of
the New Deal. FDR’s Folly by Jim Powell
and New Deal Or Raw Deal ? by Burton
Folsom, Jr. Great antidotes to the standard
FDR hagiography.
>>Shlaes is a thoroughly trained economic historian. Her credentials are impeccable.
Amity Shlaes, according to Wiki, has a 1982 BA in English from Yale. That’s it. Her own web site doesn’t mention any academic background whatsoever.