Patents are a Necessity, Not a Hindrance, to the Free Market

In response to my comments regarding "Health care ‘deniers’, Terence McKenna replied that he disagreed with me and agreed with the letter. 

McKenna stated that we may not have literal rationing, but we do have "effective rationing," because many can't afford health insurance and thus "forego care until too late." He also noted, correctly, that we don't have a free market. He cites medical licensure as an example. He also cites patents as an example of why we don't have free markets, claiming they "no longer create incentives to invent, but are a bludgeon to preserve market power."

Here is my answer:

Terence, however you phrase it, rationing has nothing to do with affordability.  If it does, then the term loses all practical meaning. I cannot afford a Mercedes, but as long as no one is forcibly denying my right to buy it, there is no rationing.

Blurring the definition of "rationing" is an Orwellian tactic of statists to blur the distinction between politics (force) and economics (voluntary coexistence) in order to justify forced redistribution and government control. 

And what about free markets? The "free" in free markets means the absence of forcible government interference into the market (like occupational licensure). We haven't had a free market in healthcare for decades, and that's the problem. A free market is the best and only moral alternative to either the status quo or the even more coercive ObamaCare.

As to patents, their purpose is not to "create incentives to invent," which exist naturally in a free market. The purpose of patents is to protect the property rights, including intellectual property rights, of creators and inventors. Patents are a moral necessity. There are no coercive "barriers to entry" in a free market, because the government protects rather than violates rights to freedom of production and trade in a free market.

Related Reading:

Patents and Copyrights—The Ayn Rand Lexicon

The Left's False Alternative on Health Care

The Difference between Voluntary Exchange and Rationing in Healthcare

Is There a Parallel Between ObamaCare and Nazism?

The NJ Star-Ledger letter titled Health care ‘deniers’ by Ellen Chmiel, which I addressed in part yesterday, opened with these comments:

    Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, when liberating the Nazi death camps, ordered photos to document the atrocities. Still, deniers have arisen to challenge the Holocaust. People neglect history.    Repeat a lie often enough and the public, with its attention on celebrities, is hearing the drumbeat that we are all against the Affordable Care Act. Yet interviews show that people do not know that the ACA and “Obama­care” are the same.

I left this response:

As an aside re "Health care ‘deniers’", I've been grappling whether to respond to your Nazi comment, and I decided I just can't let it go unchallenged.

It's interesting you mention Nazi death camps in relation to ObamaCare. ObamaCare will encompass death panels-through-regulation, as all socialized health systems must. ObamaCare is forced redistribution (legalized theft) and government control through private companies. There is a name for this type of system—fascism. Here is Hitler:

“The party is all-embracing… Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good…This is Socialism- not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over all, regardless of whether they are owners or workers…Our Socialism goes far deeper…[the people] have entered a new relation…What are ownership and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.” 

That quote was from from Herman Rauschning’s The Voice of Destruction, as quoted in The Ominous Parallels, by Leonard Peikoff, page 231-232. Switch "banks and factories" to "health insurers and hospitals," and this perfectly describes Obama's mindset, ObamaCare, and the modern Democrat Party. They are America's national socialist party.

Obama is no Hitler. But his and his party's philosophy has definite parallels to Hitlerian ideas.

Related Reading:

Is ObamaCare Socialist? No, . . . and Yes: But Who Cares?

ObamaCare's Useful Idiots

ObamaCare Supporters vs. Opponents: Who Are the Real "Deniers"?

A letter titled Health care ‘deniers’ by Ellen Chmiel appeared in the NJ Star-Ledger. It said, in part:

    Rationing? We have that now via insurance companies.
    Best health care in the world? Only if we can afford it. And statistics prove it is not the best because other countries do it more inexpensively and better.

Her use of the word "denier" is a direct reference to Nazism. I'll address that tomorrow. I left these comments:

Since honesty is your theme, Ellen, let's "test it out," as Obama would say.

"Rationing? We have that now via insurance companies."

Wrong. Rationing implies a central authority to dictate who can get what healthcare and when. Only a government can ration, because only a government has a gun; i e., the power of law. Private insurance companies have no such power. If insurance doesn't cover something, you are still free to seek that healthcare on your own in direct voluntary contract with doctors.

"Best health care in the world? Only if we can afford it."

And the vast majority of people can and do. And if you can't afford it, does this give you the "right" to force others to provide it to you? Not in a civil society, where if you can't afford something you turn to private help or do without, but your need doesn't give you a license to steal. But ObamaCare does. It's all about forced redistribution of wealth, via taxpayer subsidies and forced higher insurance premiums on others. (Of course, healthcare is much more expensive than it should be because of the government-imposed third-party-payer system.)

Furthermore, in addition to our healthcare dollars, ObamaCare—which by the way, all but the totally clueless few knows is the "Affordable Care Act"—establishes the means and power for government officials to gain total control over our healthcare. Already, dictatorial government bureaucrats have imposed over 10,000 pages of new healthcare regulations on providers and insurers. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. ObamaCare is just getting started. You want real rationing, where you can't get the healthcare you need under any circumstances unless a government official approves it? Get ready. It's coming.

The only "denier" here is you, Ellen: You want to deny others the freedom and moral right to control their own wealth and healthcare.

Related Reading:

The Difference between Voluntary Exchange and Rationing in Healthcare

It's Rationing, Whether the S-L Wants to Call It That or Not

ObamaCare: "What the hell kind of reform is this?"—Ari Armstrong

Rationing vs. Freedom

Update On the "Mother-of-All-Healthcare" Battles

A year ago, I urged liberty lovers to Get Ready for the Coming Post-ObamaCare Battle, referring to the Left's push to scrap ObamaCare and go for broke—full socialized medicine. I subsequently dubbed it the Mother-of-All Healthcare Battles:

[T]he Left is ready to respond to the inevitable failures and shortcomings of ObamaCare—which they never liked—with Medicare-for-All. The mother of all healthcare battles is brewing, as the end game draws ever closer.

The battle is no longer between some incremental increase in government control of healthcare, such as the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP)—passed in the 1990s— and the status quo. The battle will be between full socialized medicine and a fully free healthcare market. 

In a sense, the battle began before Obama was elected, with the introduction of single-payer H.R. 676, or "Medicare-for-All". But the bill was overshadowed by the ObamaCare brouhaha. 

That overshadowing didn't last long, as evidenced by this 2012 article by Ray Stever. And as Paul Hsieh of FIRM points out, the "Single Payer Drumbeat" continues to heat up. Hsieh cites recent articles by the New Republic's Noam Scheiber and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in over-viewing the political landscape:

    The "single payer" advocates correctly recognized that this was politically unrealistic in the initial debates of 2009-2010, but hope that the political climate is more favorable to them now.
    Likewise, free-market advocates correctly see immense dissatisfaction with ObamaCare and hope the time is right for their ideas to gain more traction.
    I don't know which way the balance will tip, but I do think this will be the next big battleground of ideas.

Indeed it will, as the American Left has been fully consistent in its dream of socialized medicine. Will the American Right finally counter with an equally consistent vision of its own—a fully free, laissez-faire healthcare market? That's what it will take to implement the incremental free market reforms that lead away from single-payer. 

After ObamaCare, the Left no longer needs its incremental strategy. It has won the battle of incrementalism, which has brought them to the doorstep of their vision. On the other hand, the Right will not achieve a free market in one step. But it must present that vision as it seeks to reverse the socialist tide.

Related Reading:

The Left's False Alternative on Health Care

Get Ready for the Coming Post-ObamaCare Battle

As ObamaCare Failures Pile Up, Get Ready for the Mother-of-All Healthcare Battles

New Jersey's New Anti-Bullying Law is a Collectivist Travesty

In his article Bullying may not be what you think, Warren Cooper noted that New Jersey's new Anti-Bullying Law "requires bullying to be 'motivated by … any actual or perceived characteristic' of the victim" and is aimed at "what the law calls 'protected classes' of victims."

The Hunterdon County Democrat published my letter on the subject:

To the editor:

In his column “Bullying may not be what you think,” in last week’s Hunterdon County Democrat, Warren Cooper noted that New Jersey’s new anti-bullying law is aimed at “what the law calls ‘protected classes’ of victims” that “requires bullying to be ‘motivated by … any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion.’”

What is particularly disturbing about this law is the collectivist premise behind the phrase “protected class.” This is part of a broader trend in America towards the devaluing of the individual in favor of the group as the focus of moral concern. Collectivism is the same ideology that gave rise to all of the tribal strife of history, including the Nazi and communist horrors of the 20th century.

Only individuals exist. Groups, however they are described, do not exist. Group concepts like race, color and religion are abstractions denoting a number of individuals. It follows that only individuals, not groups, can be bullied. A properly structured law would objectively define bullying as coercive interference in any individual’s rights to his life, liberties, or property, regardless of the motives of the bully or any characteristic that ties the victim to some abstract grouping.

America is the nation of individual rights, in which all individuals’ rights are protected equally and at all times. But as Cooper notes, the state’s anti-bullying law singles out certain people for protection while implicitly excluding others. This feature violates the principle of equal protection under the law. The anti-bullying law is un-American and unjust, and should be scrapped and completely rewritten.

The more we devalue the individual by associating him to some group, the less respect we will have toward our fellow human beings. I project that this law will victimize a lot of innocent children, and let a lot of actual bullies off the hook.

Related Reading:

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Collectivism vs. Individualism in Letters

Forget Chinese and Indian "Pollution". Let's Go Full Speed Ahead on America's Industrialization

In America's Dirty History, the New Jersey Star-Ledger declared that, because China and India are enmeshed in the early, polluting stage of industrial development and are "unaware or unconcerned about the [environmental] harm they’re doing," the United States should "lead on this issue" by reigning in our own carbon pollution. 

Carbon dioxide emissions, you see, are doing the real harm, and America is the main culprit in the resultant disastrous climate change, the editors claim. Why? 

It’s our carbon dioxide, not theirs, that’s doing the most damage. The United States is responsible for 29 percent of the planet’s carbon emissions since the mid-1800s — more than three times China’s output over the same period, according to the World Resources Institute.

Get that? Never mind that America produced the highest standard of living the world had ever seen. Never mind that the U.S. has been and is the world's leading economic engine. Americans must apologize for her success, reign in her industrial might with ever-more controls, and shackle her standard of living.

Several commentators blasted the Star-Ledger. One said, "WHAT??!??! How dumb can the eco-nazis be on this? China and India don't care about their air quality, so we have to suffer for it. The reason behind that is to set an example?"

Another chimed in:

So the recommended course of action is to continue to give China and India a free pass to pollute as much as they like by manufacturing cheaply with no OSHA, EPA etc., while simultaneously making it even MORE prohibitively expensive to operate the cleanest, most environmentally safe factories here in the USA and Europe? Sounds like a recipe for the unilateral dismantlement of our manufacturing base.

I left this rather lengthy counter-editorial:

We should not ignore the fact that human life in pre-industrial ages was short, brutal, and filthy. Free-flowing animal and human waste and garbage disposal caused plagues and rat infestations. Kitchens were separate from the main house because they were so dirty. There were no bathrooms, only outhouses. Heat and the limited illumination that was available came from open fires.

Then came industrialization, and a steady progress toward an ever cleaner, healthier, and improving environment such that man never before saw. Yes, early stages of industrialization was dirty, but compared to what existed before it, life was better, just like in China and India today. The typical pattern is that as life and prosperity improves under industrialization, the cleanup progress can begin. Today America and other advanced Western nations are cleaner than ever.

Environmentalists know this, which is why they latched on to the idea that the life-giving trace gas CO2—about 4/100ths of a % of the atmosphere, the equivalent of 3/8ths inch on a football field, most of which predates the industrial revolution—is a "pollutant." All animal life produces CO2 to survive, and man is no exception. But, when the Bush Administration declared CO2 a pollutant, it handed environmental statists a potent tool of economic control.

Virtually everything man does produces CO2, starting with every breath he exhales, which produces 100 times as much CO2 than he breaths in. If CO2 is a pollutant that must be controlled, then so is human life. And that's the point. Never mind the "climate change denier" straw man. Nobody denies climate change, which is an everlasting natural process. And never mind that human industrialization likely contributes to it. Human beings are part of nature, too, so whatever the cause, the rise in CO2 is fundamentally natural. Industrialization and fossil fuels that drive it is a boon to the environment, from the premise that an environment supportive of human life and flourishing is a value. If climate change, whether natural or man-made or some combination, has some negative side affects, industrialization is our best means of adapting to it.

Rather than cripple our CO2-driven industrial economy and standard of living and the productive industries and businesses that drive it with more and more environmental controls in the name of "nudging" China and India toward "change," we should celebrate and promote our own industrial might as the clean, life-giving value that it is, enjoy the warmer weather, and sell the Chinese and Indians the pollution control technology they'll need and clamor for as they continue to industrialize and prosper.

And, finally, we should de-fang the environmental movement by removing the ridiculous designation of CO2 as a "pollutant."

Related Reading:

We Are Doomed Without, not Because of, Fossil Fuel Use

Attack on "Carbon Pollution" an Attack on Human Life

Aborting "CO2 Machines"

HAPPY NEW YEAR