A team of hard-working entrepreneurs and scientists have developed a paradigm-shifting solution to air pollution that combines living organisms and sophisticated computer technology to provide a self-sustainable biological air filter.
The post Entrepreneurs Invent City Bench that Absorbs More Air Pollution Than a Small Forest appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
By Tim Moen
How would a libertarian Prime Minister of Canada address the Trump Tariffs? This is what Tim Moen would say.
Visit Libertarian.ca. Subcribe to Tim’s YouTube channel. Follow him on Twitter.
Instead of bans or legislation which has proven to be entirely ineffective at preventing school shootings, a high school entrepreneur has invented a device that will save lives without violence.
The post Innovative Teen Invents Device to Stop Mass Shooters in Their Tracks—Without the Police State appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
By Curtis Stone
Is farmers market fraud a real problem? Some stalls at farmers markets got their produce from a central supplier instead of a local farm. What should be done about it? Some, including the mainstream media, are asking the government to get involved. Curtis Stone, author of The Urban Farmer: Growing Food for Profit on Leased or Borrowed Land, explains why he thinks that’s a horrible idea.
Curtis Stone is a successful urban farmer in Canada. Subscribe to his channel on YouTube, follow him on Instagram, and buy his book here.
You may be quite surprised by how people answered this question on Facebook. I posted the question in the headline to my Facebook profile, and I got dozens of responses. Obamacare has resulted in much higher insurance premiums, lower quality care and more red tape, and I have talked to so many conservatives that desperately want Congress to do something about it. Today, Americans spend more on health care per capita than anyone else on the planet, and yet we have one of the unhealthiest populations in the entire industrialized world. We must do better, and I believe that we can do better.
In this article, I would like to share my thoughts on just a few of the comments that were left on my Facebook profile. The original comments that were posted by others are in bold, and my responses follow each one…
“The Federal government should not be involved in health care.”
I definitely agree with that. Whenever the federal government gets involved in anything it tends to get worse. We once had the greatest health care system in the world, but the more that federal bureaucrats have gotten into the mix the more it has declined.
“A free market system!”
This just seems like common sense to me, but unfortunately most members of Congress don’t seem to agree. Free markets work if you allow them to, but the trend all over the globe is to move toward socialized healthcare. Personally, I believe that we need to move toward free market principles throughout our society, and true competition would do much to dramatically drive down health care costs.
“Crack down big time on Medicare fraud, leave feds out of healthcare.”
Medicaid fraud costs us about 140 billion dollars a year, and Medicare fraud has been estimated to be somewhere around 60 billion dollars a year. So if you we could just crack down on those two things, we could save up to 200 billion dollars a year.
“Break the FDA big pharma monopoly.”
Yes, there are way too many executives going back and forth between the FDA and the big pharmaceutical companies. I don’t understand why Republicans and Democrats both don’t want to fix this.
“Go hard after big pharma and hospitals for being the greedy pigs they are.”
Greed is a major problem in our health care system. Way too many are in it just to make as much money as possible, and that should not be what drives people into this profession.
“Let people join medical clubs like Sean Hannity proposes.”
Rand Paul has also suggested the same thing. We should allow any group of people to band together to purchase health insurance. That would greatly level the playing field between us and the big health insurance companies, and it would definitely help drive down costs.
In addition, models such as direct primary care that cut out the big health insurance companies completely should be encouraged. Health insurance companies are the number one factor driving up health care costs, and collectively they now make about 15 billion dollars in profits a year.
“Stop the illegitimate lawsuits based on greed. Again, doctors are human and unfortunate outcomes happen even when care was provided correctly. There are risks in everything.”
Tort reform is going to have to happen state by state, but it is desperately needed. Malpractice insurance has become exceedingly expensive, and doctors pass those costs along to their patients. If we ever want to drive down costs to where they should be, this is something that must be addressed.
“Be like Canada!!!!”
That sounds good, but it isn’t the solution to our problems. I personally know Canadians that have come down to the U.S. for care because they can’t get the care that they need back home in Canada.
“Legislation needs to be introduced that forces health insurance companies to compete across state lines.”
This is something that President Trump has been pushing for a long time, and I very much agree with him. Competition across state lines will drive down rates, and this is something that should be implemented as soon as possible.
“More emphasis on nutrition, education about whole foods and natural healing, non- GMOs.”
I very much agree. Today, most doctors only have two types of solutions to offer: drugs or surgery. I believe that natural solutions need to be incorporated much more extensively into our system of health care, and that is something that we should all be able to agree upon.
“Force all US Senators, Congressman and their families to be on whatever healthcare system they force on us peons. No exceptions!”
That only seems fair, right? If I am elected, I am going to push very hard to make sure that the same rules that apply to all of the rest of us also apply to all members of Congress. And if you would like to help make this a reality, I would encourage you to visit HelpMichaelWin.com.
Ultimately, I believe that we need to rebuild our system of health care from the ground up, and that begins with medical school. For decades medical schools have been greatly restricting the number of medical students, and now the growing doctor shortage in this country is becoming a major crisis.
Like others have proposed, I believe that we need to double the number of medical students immediately. And we need to do whatever else we can to promote more competition and the implementation of free market principles in our health care system.
It won’t be easy to fix things, and we have got a lot of corrupt politicians that we need to kick out of office, but I believe that we can get there if we all work together.
As Democrats fear monger over the loss of Obamacare, according to Republican Senator Rand Paul, they need not be scared, as the GOP bill is not a repeal at all.
“I think the longer the bill is out there, the more conservative Republicans are going to discover that it’s not a repeal, and the more that everybody is going to discover that it keeps the fundamental flaw of Obamacare.” Paul said on CBS’ Face The Nation.
As Paul notes, the GOP bill maintains the fundamental flaw of Obamacare which is that this was never about giving people affordable health care and always about making health insurance companies super rich by forcing all Americans to become customers of major health insurance providers.
Through Obamacare, insurance companies are literally using government force to mandate that everyone in the country buy their product, via penalties and threats, and the GOP plan keeps this in place.
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“It keeps the insurance mandates that cause the prices to rise, which chase young, healthy people out of the marketplace, and leads to what people call adverse selection, where you have a sicker and sicker insurance pool, and the premiums keep rising through the roof.” the Senator urged.
By using the state to mandate everyone purchase their product, insurance companies were given a windfall of massive profits. Even the heavily left-leaning Salon.com reported on this windfall last year:
A Salon analysis of regulatory filings found that the top five health insurers — UnitedHealth, Anthem, Aetna, Humana and Cigna — have doled out nearly $30 billion in stock buybacks and dividends from 2013 to 2015. (The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Affordable Care Act in 2012.)
Meanwhile, the increase in customers that these health insurers received under ACA has helped raise the stock prices of the top five insurers — some 80 percent for Anthem and 165 percent for Aetna since the high court ruled on June 28, 2012 that Obamacare was constitutional.
While Americans continue to fork out more money, insurers are doing great.
In the interview with Face the Nation, Rand Paul acknowledged the same trend. “I mean, we promised the voters for four elections. They elected us to repeal Obamacare, and now we’re going to keep most of the taxes, keep the regs (regulations), keep the subsidies, and create a giant bailout superfund for the insurance companies. I just don’t see it,” Paul said.
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As Justin Gardner noted for the Free Thought Project last month, the health care “debate” has been portrayed as Republicans and Democrats valiantly fighting for the interest of American citizens. But as Ron Paul points out, the actual difference amounts to slightly different degrees of government control over health care, all of it stifling free market solutions and driving up costs.
Exhibit A is the recent move by Democrats and Republicans alike to ban the importation of prescription drugs from other countries such as Canada. While the American Health Care Act takes all the headlines, Congress is quietly passing the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017—the framework of the Big Pharma protectionist racket.
While the two parties debate superficial and stagnant aspects of the Health Care bill, Republicans and Democrats alike meet behind closed doors with the insurance lobbyists they’re beholden to, in order to figure out ways to increase their bottom lines at the expense of you — the US taxpayer.
“They get enormous profit from the group plans, and then they lose money in the individual markets and they whine, and they come to Washington, they write the bill, and they get bailed out. It’s a terrible situation.” Paul urged.
Sadly, Rand Paul is one of the only politicians in Washington who is unafraid of calling out the medical industrial complex. And, in spite of his best intentions, we can likely expect the Republican bill to pass, causing even more divide between the left and the right — while the big insurance companies watch profits soar — and very little changes in regard to health care.
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The circus sideshow of health care politics is providing yet another smokescreen for the real agenda of the corporate 2-party dictatorship. Contrary to the “different visions for America” portrayed by MSM talking heads, Democrats and Republicans vigorously agree on a fundamental principle: Big Pharma will continue to rake Americans over the coals, with the help of federal government.
The health care “debate” has been portrayed as Republicans and Democrats valiantly fighting for the interest of American citizens. But as Ron Paul points out, the actual difference amounts to slightly different degrees of government control over health care, all of it stifling free market solutions and driving up costs.
Exhibit A is the recent move by Democrats and Republicans alike to ban the importation of prescription drugs from other countries such as Canada. While the American Health Care Act takes all the headlines, Congress is quietly passing the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017—the framework of the Big Pharma protectionist racket.
As Rolling Stone reports, only a few weeks ago Democrats and Republicans came together to defeat an amendment that “would have allowed for importation of drugs from FDA-approved facilities in Canada.” Senators who supported importation in January suddenly reversed their position, voting no when it seemed the amendment could actually pass. As expected, “no” votes came from senators who receiver copious amounts of money from the pharma lobby.
Every time a lawmaker is pressed on why they vote to deny Americans the ability to get cheaper prescription drugs—a simple free-market solution to outrageously high American drug prices—the lawmakers play the bogus “safety” card. Without providing a fact-based rationale, they simply suggest that we can’t “ensure foreign drugs meet American safety standards.”
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“In fact, an astonishing 40 percent of all pharmaceuticals sold in the United States are already imported, as are 80 percent of the chemical ingredients. These imported drugs and drug ingredients arrive by way of more than 300,000 foreign food and drug manufacturing facilities that are regularly certified as safe by the FDA.
These drugs come from manufacturing facilities not just in Canada but across the globe, from the first world to the third, sometimes using the same kind of degraded and underpaid labor forces we bemoan in other industries.”
It doesn’t take much inspection to discover the blatant, cruel way that Congress protects Big Pharma. President Trump is on board, too. Campaign promises to bring down drug prices for Americans have evaporated, as industry lobbyists have filled his administration. Sure enough, in mid-June it was revealed that the “White House task force [on drug pricing] echoes pharma proposals.”
That’s not where it ends, though. The FDA Reauthorization Act is also known as the “user fee” bill because this is where Big Pharma pays FDA for the privilege of fleecing the masses. According to Stat News, the bill “spells out how much branded and generic drug companies and medical device manufacturers pay to support their product reviews at the FDA.”
Several amendments in the “user fee” bill opposed by Big Pharma were shot down, including drug importation, one that would have “kept branded manufacturers from using certain strategies to delay generic drug launches” and another that would “encourage pediatric studies in cancer drugs.”
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While federal government gladly intervenes in the functioning of the health care market, lawmakers continually prohibit federal and state governments from negotiating lower prices for bulk purchases. Whatever price the industry wishes for its patented products, it gets.
Hospitals, too, are prevented from getting discount drug prices at the behest of Big Pharma.
“Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, used a recent oversight letter to echo the pharmaceutical industry’s longtime concerns with a controversial drug discount program that largely benefits hospitals. That inquiry may lead to a congressional hearing — one likely to be far better for pharmaceutical companies than hospitals, Republican committee leaders told STAT.”
Government has become expert at protecting the financial interests of various industries while pretending to “debate” over the best interests of Americans. This protectionist racket comes at the expense of human health and lives.
The issue was underscored last year when the price for a life-saving injection for children called the EpiPen was hiked to $630, causing a public furor. Other outrageous examples include pills that cost $1,000 in America but only $4 in India.
The public is well aware they are being fleeced, as 77 percent of survey respondents say drug prices are “unreasonable” and 71 percent favor the importation of drugs from Canada.
But public opinion and free market solutions have no place in a system where Big Pharma lobbyists have lawmakers in their pockets. PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) spent $7.9 million in the first three months of 2017, deploying an army of lobbyists and outside firms to Capitol Hill, while individual pharma companies spent $20 million during the same period.
“That spending doesn’t count campaign donations, either. The website OpenSecrets, maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics, estimates the industry gave about $27.9 million to candidates on both sides of the aisle during the 2016 cycle.”
In the coming days we will be inundated with partisan nonsense over Obamacare and Obamacare 2.0, while the real scheme orchestrated by the corporatocracy is already set in motion.
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Socialists have attempted many times to put their ideology into action. Socialism has been applied in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China (before Deng), North Korea, and by many other less-famous regimes.
In each case, the result has been economic impoverishment and political authoritarianism.
But the die-hard socialists refuse to give up. "Don"t judge communism based on these results, " we"re told. "Socialism has simply never really been tried."
Indeed, in a recent back-and-forth between John Stossel and Noam Chomsky, Chomsky denied that the Venezuelan regime is socialist at all:
I never described Chavez"s state capitalist government as "socialist" or even hinted at such an absurdity. It was quite remote from socialism. Private capitalism remained ... Capitalists were free to undermine the economy in all sorts of ways, like massive export of capital.
The thinking goes that socialism cannot work unless it progresses all the way to "full socialism." No partial effort will suffice, we are told, and socialism keeps failing because the some elements of "private capitalism" remained.
So long as any aspect of a state is not full-on socialism, the thinking goes, then the regime is not really socialist. Moreover, the failure of the regime"s socialist policies — such as expropriation of private companies and expansion of government-owned industries — are to be blamed on capitalism, not socialism.
Naturally, were socialism able to achieve it"s final state — and all elements of capitalism expunged — we"d know it by its ushering in of a society marked by unparalleled prosperity and total equality.
Nevermind that for all intents and purposes, Lenin did achieve nearly complete and total nationalization of the economy during the Russian Civil War in 1922. The people began to starve soon after, and Lenin retreated to the partial socialism under his so-called "New Economic Policy."
The Lenin example is steadfastly ignored, of course, and we"re repeatedly told by the likes of Chomsky that mere half measures don"t work for socialism, and only total socialism works. Anything short of total socialism, it seems, will fail miserably, as it has in Venezuela. Yes, the government can seize many factories, shops, and even whole industries, as has happened in Venezuela. But, unless the state seizes every single shop, then it"s not real socialism. Thus, don"t blame socialism when the whole thing crashes down.
Note, however, that this isn"t a problem in the opposite direction. If we take a middle-of-the road interventionist economy and start introducing partial, half-way free-market liberal reforms, does this cause the economy to collapse?
Certainly not. Indeed, everywhere we look and find a relatively less socialistic economy, the less poverty and more prosperity we find.
Historically, this is obvious. The countries that embraced free trade, industrialization, and the trappings of market economies early on are the wealthiest economies today. We also find this to be the case in post-war Europe where the relatively pro-market economies such as those in Germany and the UK are wealthier and have higher standards of living than the more socialistic economies of southern Europe — such as Greece and Spain. This is even true of the Scandinavian countries like Sweden, which, as Per Bylund has noted, historically built its wealth with a relatively laissez-faire regime.
This is all the more true when we compare Western Europe with Eastern Europe.
In none of these cases is any economy totally free-market (or even nearly so) or totally socialistic. What we do find, however, is that in countries where the economy leans more in the direction of markets — the standard of living is higher, there is less inequality, and poverty is less awful in general.
This is also true in Asia. South Korea and Japan are by no means free-market economies. Both countries" economies are characterized by a wide variety of trade restrictions, crony capitalist deals, and a massive regulatory state.
But North Korea and Vietnam, which are much poorer, are characterized by far more government ownership of industry, and much smaller private sectors than is the case in Japan and South Korea.
And yet, by the logic of the socialists, the problem with North Korea and Vietnam is that they don"t have enough socialism. If those countries could only rid themselves of the capitalists who are "free to undermine the economy" then North Korea will finally be prosperous and Vietnam will rival Japan in its productivity and wealth.
This is nonsense, of course. If North Korea wants fewer famines it need only move in the direction of less socialism as South Korea has.
Unlike socialism, market reforms need not be total, complete, or utopian in order for their benefits to be recognized.
This is why market advocates never need to say "market reforms didn"t work in Country X because that country never achieved full and true capitalism! If only all the socialists been liquidated, then true capitalism would have been realized!"
This is never said said because even half-measures in the direction of laissez faire improve economic growth and standards of living.
We saw this in West Germany after World War II with the reforms of Ludwig Erhard, who helped usher in a period of immense economic growth with only half-way reforms. By abolishing price controls and other government-imposed restraints on the economy, the Germany economy took off while more socialistic economies — like that found in the UK at the time — were more stagnant. "If only East Germany had had more socialism!" we can only conclude. Then East Germans wouldn"t have risked death trying to escape to West Germany.
Obviously, in this case, the West German state did not adopt "pure" capitalism. They merely adopted relatively more laissez-faire. And the economy expanded. In fact, according to Hans Sennholz, the West German state rather accidentally stumbled upon its free market reforms. And yet, we call the results "the German economic miracle."
Another modern example is Latin America. When we look across the region as a whole, we find repeatedly that the regimes that have embraced even half-hearted pro-market reforms — such as Chile, Peru, and Colombia — are the countries that have seen some of the greatest economic growth in recent decades.
Meanwhile, those countries that have most enthusiastically embraced the so-called pro-socialist "Pink Tide" have seen some of the worst growth rates:
But what is the excuse for the lack of economic growth in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela? All those countries have in recent decades embraced economic populism — namely, more government ownership, more government regulation, and more government control of the economy.
So why haven"t those countries outpaced the more market-oriented Latin American states? According to the logic of the socialists, the problem is that none of these states has embraced total socialism.
What a blessing for the socialists, then, that every time some socialist reforms are tried - and fail - the ideology has a built-in excuse: socialism never works unless it"s fully implemented.
Just imagine if the same were true of markets, though. Since no ideology is ever likely to be fully realized in its entirety, this would mean that humanity would be doomed to abject and grinding poverty forever.
Fortunately for us, market reforms need only be partial and haphazard to make us all better off. Unfortunately, governments are often committed to moving in the wrong direction with central banks, wage controls, price controls, more regulation and more taxation. The assaults on markets are continuous and widespread. Fortunately, all it takes is movement back in the direction of freer markets to improve matters again. We"d do well to learn from Eastern Europe, West Germany, Latin America, and all the other regimes that have, reluctantly or not, gotten out of the way and allowed markets to work.
The socialists can keep dreaming about their paradise to be realized some day when total unadulterated socialism is achieved. Meanwhile, markets will continue to improve matters for billions of people in real life.
Authored by Hunter Lewis via The Mises Institute,
Noah Smith, writing in Bloomberg, says that middle class America has indeed been fleeced by our national economic policies. We agree. But which policies have been responsible?
Smith mentions and immediately dismisses trade, immigration, economic regulation, and welfare policies.
The real villain in his view is an alleged turn toward managing the economy on free market lines: “Your prosperity was taken by the very people who promised to ensure and enhance it. The decades from 1980 through 2008 were the age of neoliberalism -- the ideology of the free market.”
This is a story that we hear more and more. Neoliberals, the favorite new epithet on the left for free market exponents, have ruled the roost for decades ( note how the Obama administration is simply ignored in the preceding quote), and have left the poor and middle class far worse off than they were.
The truth is that the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama era had much in common, and it was not free market principles. It was an era of unrestrained crony capitalism, in which special interests formed stronger and stronger alliances with government in order to secure economic monopolies and other privileges.
It was also, not coincidentally, an era of repeated boom and bust, as the Federal Reserve and other central banks created immense amounts of new money to keep the crony capitalist game going. The Fed did not create all the new money to help the poor and the middle class. They did it primarily to support the government debt machine, which they worried was on the verge of collapse in 2008. The result is that government debt has now doubled in the few years since then.
Can Noah Smith, an intelligent writer and economics professor, really believe that free market principles prevailed in recent decades? The only possible excuse for this is that crony capitalists tend to hide their actions behind free market slogans. This is genuinely confusing.
Today, for example, we are told by most commentators that we have a choice between “free trade” and “protectionism,” and the free trade position is represented by people like Hillary Clinton and Hank Paulson, the Bush Treasury Secretary during the last Crash who rescued his old firm, Goldman Sachs, and coincidentally the value of his shares in that firm, and who more recently supported Hillary for president. To describe these people as supporters of “ free trade” is a joke. They are supporters of “ crony trade” in which so-called free trade agreements are actually written by special interests in order to escape the pressures of a genuinely free market.
And does Smith really believe that giving government even more control over the economy will achieve anything other than making crony capitalism worse?
Oh well, at least Smith did not equate what he called “neoliberalism” with fascism, as many on the left are now doing in books and articles. That makes a lot of sense, does it not? Proponents of more liberty in economics and other areas of our lives are somehow like Hitler or Mussolini?
Lewis nails the dismal science but we leave it to econfinjunkie"s comments to sum up the farce...
If anyone needed one more reason to hold Noah Smith and mainstream economics in contempt, read that article.
It is so much easier for those in the mainstream to be ignorant and publish crap like that than for, say, an Austrian economist to do the same. How can anyone with an advanced degree in economics say that our society is based on free market principles? It makes you wonder what they teach after high school.
Starting in intro classes all the way to PhD coursework, didn"t anyone ever think to point out to the future Dr. Smith and his classmates that "oh, by the way, all these principles of free markets we"re talking about, they"re the ideal; they don"t apply to our own economy since we don"t have a free market/society, because we have a central bank, minimum wages, millions of pages of regulations, bank bailouts, and on and on"?
There can be a conversation about whether all these things are justified, but to say that our economy reflects a free market is to put your ignorance on full display for all to see.
Authored by Michael Lebowitz via 720Global,
“The record of history is absolutely crystal clear. There is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.” - Milton Friedman
Whether one thinks of a market as barter, a grocery store, internet commerce or the New York Stock Exchange, the concepts behind each of them are identical. In all of these marketplaces, people have resources which they are willing to give up in order to gain something else they deem as more valuable.
If I own a coop full of chickens that produces two dozen eggs every week, then I am not likely to pay for eggs in the grocery store. More likely, a grocer may be willing to buy my eggs for re-sale to his customers. If my portfolio is over-weighted with technology stocks, then I am less likely to seek new technology stocks to own. If I need money to pay for my daughter’s college tuition, then I may need to work harder and/or sell some of my assets in order to meet the obligation. This simple set of examples is intended to reflect the decision-making human beings face when considering resource allocation. In the 720 Global philosophy statement we put it this way:
To emphasize the important linkage between resource allocation, economic success and the role of markets, a basic review of the terms scarcity and prosperity is important:
- Scarcity is defined as a deficiency in quantity or number compared with demand. It is a universal, natural condition whereby resources such as time, labor and material wealth are limited. In a world where desires are, by nature, unlimited, people are required to make prudent decisions about the use of limited resources.
- Prosperity is defined as the condition of being successful or thriving; economic well-being. It is a manufactured condition whereby the economic well-being of a person, community or nation is determined by the millions of choices citizens and government leaders make every day. Prudent decisions regarding the use of our limited resources produce prosperity.
In the opening quote, the free enterprise system to which Milton Friedman refers is the system whereby people are free to engage in a vocation of their choice as a means of fulfilling their desires by producing something others need or want. Economic value, the basis for free market exchange, is subjective. What has great value to one person may be of little value to another. Because anything a person could desire is to one degree or another scarce, each of us must prioritize our values by our individual preferences and means. This not only applies to purchases and consumption but, just as important, how much we produce and how we spend our time.
When people are freely allowed to come together and cooperate in pursuit of their own self-interests, everyone benefits. The fewer needless restrictions imposed on a society, the more the individuals in that society are incentivized to innovate and produce as a means of satisfying their desires. This is how human beings deal with scarcity. Given our infinite desires and the natural limitations of time, energy and capital, markets determine how we navigate these exchanges.
From Scarcity to Plenty
According to Adam Smith, “If men work together and cooperate, they can combine their land, labor and capital to greatly multiply their ability to produce even greater and more complex things.”
Although evident in many ways, the power of Adam Smith’s observation is highly apparent in the technology and innovation that drove the industrial revolution and mass production. The impact of mass production is seen not only in the technology and specialization of tasks, but also in its effect on prices. When goods are mass produced, the increased quantity of goods and lower costs of production drive down prices, which in turn makes them affordable to even more people. Increasing productive capacity and deflating the cost of production is one of the primary reasons that western civilization so successfully fought scarcity and experienced prosperity.
Law and Liberty
In contemplating how markets allow humans to meet their most basic needs and desires, it is important to discern the mechanisms that have allowed the United States and western civilization in general to be so prosperous. Some nations deprived of resources are prosperous, while others, rich in resources, suffer from acute scarcity. Therefore, one must look to the degree of freedom in markets to determine why scarcity is more problematic in some countries and societies than others.
Law and liberty set the context for how markets function. The United States is a republic that operates under the rule of law. The rights and laws as originally established by the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution are the principles of right and wrong by which citizens and the government must abide. Among these, and vital to the engine of wealth creation, is the right to private ownership of property. Through this, a citizen owns what he or she produces or what they are paid by an employer for their production. As originally constructed and put forth in the founding documents, Americans are protected against unwanted intrusions. Simply put, one cannot take what is rightfully owned by another. In all of the aforementioned documents it is established that the government’s primary purpose is the defense of those rights. Those documents make it perfectly clear that the unalienable rights bestowed upon all citizens are primarily intended as protections against governmental abuse.
The rights and protections decreed are not just about right and wrong, as they thoughtfully serve as the bedrock for efficient markets and importantly engender the incentives that drive productive work in America. The ability to fulfill desires in a vocation of one’s choosing inspires individuals to work, save, invest and consume. In a word, it is the path to contentment. These incentives compel men and women to deliver goods and services as efficiently as possible. An individual’s productive effort not only renders the resources by which one can meet their own needs and desires, but taken in aggregate, it propels the wealth of the entire populace.
Interestingly, despite simple logic, modern central bankers try to convince the world that deflation is evil. They preach that they must intervene to stoke inflation at all cost for the good of society. The truth of the matter is that deflation is a beneficial by-product of innovation and productivity gains. Said differently, the incentives that inspire work and creative ingenuity produce prosperity and work against scarcity.
Productive deflation, which reduces scarcity as described above, benefits a society. It especially benefits those at the bottom of the economic ladder as the issue of scarcity is a more profound problem for those with less. So why does modern society give central bankers the benefit of the doubt when they undertake such measures as debauching the currency in efforts to incite inflation?
Summary
The prosperity of a nation and its people comes about through the availability of goods and services to more people. Free markets, upheld by the rule of law, incentivize people to be productive through work and acquire the means to fulfill their desires. It is in this elegant yet simple virtuous cycle that productivity growth, prosperity and contentment flourishes and scarcity diminishes. The benefits do not solely accrue to those most motivated, the wealthy or those politically well-connected, but to everyone in society.
Most local grocers and butchers have been replaced by the likes of Costco and Amazon. The days of trading shares of individual companies has morphed into trading esoteric derivatives, ETFs, and a host of complex products. These intricacies are signs of innovation within maturing markets. The issue with which we must concern ourselves is the friction introduced to markets, not the market’s degree of complexity. When unnecessarily intrusive policies, laws, and regulations restrict our ability to be productive, incentives are diminished. Without proper incentives, productivity falters and the wealth and prosperity of a nation suffers.
As Milton Friedman said, “the record of history is absolutely crystal clear”. A free market, capitalist system, despite all its imperfections, when properly protected by government as required by the founding documents, produces prosperity that benefits all of society.
Authored by Shaun Bradley via TheAntiMedia.org,
Ever since governments began banning and licensing different parts of the economy, the black market has made sure people still have access to the things they need. Unstable governments always turn on their own citizens by using price controls, heavy taxes, and even the threat of imprisonment to prop up their failing systems. As conditions inevitably deteriorate, as they have in Venezuela and Greece, the underground economy becomes invaluable to those living through the crisis.
The shadow economy refers to more than just the trade of illegal goods. A grey market, for example, provides legal products that have become difficult to find. Since basic things like toilet paper, medicine, and even food have disappeared from store shelves in Venezuela, the peer-to-peer network has become the only reliable way to secure life’s necessities. In desperate situations like this, the existence of independent merchants can mean the difference between life and death.
Even the value of Venezuela’s currency has started to move away from the government’s control. At one point, the official exchange rate was fraudulently set at 10 bolivars per U.S. dollar, while on the black market it was trading at 1,000 to one. This action hurt millions by suppressing wages across the country and eroding any remaining trust. Inflation has quickly become the most imminent threat to the Venezuelan people, stealing the value of their labor and savings. For years, the bolivar has experienced hyperinflation, increasing the cost of living almost exponentially.
The State’s desperate response was to institute price controls, but that has only led to shortages across the board. Luckily, the unregulated markets have been able to determine the true value of goods and provide vital support for the struggling communities. Many people think that so-called price gouging is unethical, but isn’t it better to buy what you need at twice the price than to not be able to get it at all?
Greece is going through a transformation of its own — but in response to a very different set of circumstances. The Greek people have endured a series of tax increases and pension cuts over the past several years to fund debts owed to the European Union. These austerity measures have created a dire situation for those trying to secure their financial independence. The result has been widespread tax evasion, which has helped grow Greece’s underground economy to nearly 25% of the country’s GDP.
Surprisingly, it’s not only the poor who are utilizing the shadow economy in Greece, but also the professional class. Those earning large amounts of money are subjected to extremely high tax rates, driving many business owners and entrepreneurs to either seek better opportunities abroad or take steps to conceal their income.
By persecuting the most successful members of society and not allowing them to keep what they earn, authorities are only encouraging disregard for the law. Without the grey market in Greece, many more skilled workers would have already left the country. Even though the black market is consistently blamed for taking away tax revenues, it ironically may be the only thing keeping the debt crisis from spiraling even further out of control.
Scarcity is more than just a mindset; it’s a harsh reality that people born in developed nations rarely see firsthand. But any time a bankrupt government seizes control over their citizens’ lives and the economy, the end result is always despotism. The consolidation of power into the hands of a few is rationalized during chaotic times but ultimately puts the rights of all citizens at risk.
Just last year, Venezuelan law enforcement carried out raids that killed 245 people. There was no accountability regarding whether the shootings were justified, but reports claim that many of the victims posed no threat and some were even killed after being taken into custody. Such violent crackdowns are the inevitable result of governments attempting to maintain control amid the chaos of broken economic systems.
In 2011, Robert Neuwirth wrote a report for Foreign Policy that highlighted the importance of this untaxed, unlicensed, and unregulated global marketplace. He called it “System D.”
“They say that inventive, self-starting, entrepreneurial merchants who are doing business on their own, without registering or being regulated by the bureaucracy and, for the most part, without paying taxes are part of ‘l’economie de la débrouillardise.’ or, for street use, ‘Systeme D.’ This essentially translates as the ingenuity economy, the economy of improvisation and self-reliance, the do-it-yourself, or DIY, economy.”
The nanny state has done an excellent job attacking anything outside of the government’s jurisdiction, but a lack of regulation is what allows for the most rapid growth and productivity. Legislators notoriously overestimate their influence on the millions of people they attempt to rule over, but ultimately, grassroots decisions made by individuals have the greatest impact. People who rely on their own skills and reputation rather than a bureaucratic stamp of approval are labeled criminals, but they’re the ones providing real value to society in many cases.
Merchants in these off-grid markets are often associated with danger and violence, but in reality, they provide the purest form of voluntary transactions. Negative aspects, like organized crime, are only made possible because of the profits created as a result of prohibition. Without the State intimidating the public at gunpoint, there would be no incentive for people to seek out the services of nefarious organizations.
These organic free markets are only strengthened with the circulation of assets like cash, bitcoin, and precious metals. Anonymity mixed with technology is empowering people in ways never imagined. The adoption of cryptocurrencies is bringing the shadow economy into the digital age and expanding its reach internationally. This new economic system represents a very real threat to the current financial and political structures.
However, innovators in this environment have to be careful, and after the Silk Road was taken down, real legal implications became apparent. Most famously, Silk Road co-founder Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison and targeted specifically for challenging the existing system.
The growing progression towards decentralization he attempted to catalyze is on a direct collision course with the central banks and their war on cash. As the public’s faith in fiat money continues to wane, there will be more and more opportunities to show the benefits that come from peer-to-peer networks over central planning. Those who recognize the inherent extortion of the old system have to lead by example and educate others, regardless of which tactics of intimidation are deployed against them.
Via The Daily Bell
Monopolies Are Worse Than We Thought ... Economists are increasingly turning their attention to the problem of monopoly. This doesn’t mean literal monopoly, like when one utility company provides all the power in a city. It refers to market concentration in general -- when an industry goes from having 20 players to having only 10, or when the four biggest companies in an industry start taking a bigger and bigger share of sales. This sort of creeping oligopoly acts much like a literal monopoly -- it raises prices, limits market size and tends to make the economy less efficient. - Bloomberg
Market concentration hurts workers according to this article. It"s true, but makes no distinction between voluntary monopolies and imposed monopolies.
In some cases, monopolies are valuable and adopted voluntarily. For instance, light bulbs are standardized. This is a form of voluntary monopoly and customers do not react against it from what we can tell.
Then there"s the Federal Reserve, which has been given the power to regulate and print money.
The Fed is a government monopoly with all the negatives we associate with this kind of monopoly. It runs money for the sake of a handful of people and not for the larger good.
Additionally, the idea that the Fed could run money and regulate banks for the larger good is suspect anyway. It is not going to turn into an eleemosynary institution just because it has the ability to exercise a monopoly.
More:
I suspect that creeping monopoly will prove to be one of the main reasons for decreasing business dynamism. And it could even be a contributor to slow productivity growth.
In other words, many of the diseases in our economy can probably be traced, at least in part, to the problem of market concentration. In a previous post, I mentioned a couple of potential causes. The obvious culprit would be a more lax attitude toward antitrust enforcement.
If free-market fundamentalism caused the U.S. to be friendlier toward big mergers since the 1990s, this could have encouraged concentration. One problem with this story is that antitrust fines have actually been on the rise: Regulation can increase monopoly power by raising barriers to entry.
Even within a couple of grafs the author says two contradictory things. First he says the antitrust enforcement has made monopolies more common. Then he says that antitrust fines have been on the rise but that they too can encourage monopolies by creating barriers to entry.
The article says that if regulation is the main reason for monopolies than he will have to become "much more libertarian." In fact it is already established that regulation is a main cause of monopolies.
However, the article doesn"t see it this way. Modern regulatory trends, he declares, have only been around since about 2000. Therefore blaming regulation for monopolies must not be true.
Additionally, the article mentions a recent paper claiming that a few "superstar" companies in various fields have naturally emerged as quasi-monopolies. Modern technology may simply have change the way companies relate to each other and to the market. "Those companies could simply be out-competing their rivals."
Yet a third reason could be because technology has broadened competition and top brands are now far more ubiquitous. Big corporations can now more easily push out smaller ones.
Probably none of this is true. What builds big corporations with monopoly tendencies is what we have been saying all along: Monopoly force exercised through the court system, and by the legislature.
Remove intellectual property rights and corporate person-hood and you would go a long ways to naturally reducing the overly large size of corporations.
If technology is the culprit, then the problem will be complex indeed. But technology is not the culprit. America"s judicial system and legislature has created the problem and can solve it in large part by walking back a few of decisions.
Of course the chance of this are fairly minimal. The current system only makes thing more complicated over time.
Conclusion: But if the court at the federal level could be compelled to reexamine its decisions and then to change them, the US would become a much better place. Involuntary monopolies would become far fewer. And that would help everyone.
In what is sure to be misinterpreted as the horrors of the evil free market, a prescription drug has increased in price in the US more than 7,000 fold. The problem here is that the price increase was solely a function of a government-granted monopoly on the drug that has been on the international market for years.
In a Thursday press release, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval for a drug by Marathon Pharmaceuticals, a US company focused solely on the development of new treatments for rare diseases. They may now begin selling the corticosteroid drug Deflazacort, under the brand name Emflaza.
Thanks to the FDA, Marathon now has a monopoly on the drug and, without competition, they are now able to sell this beneficial treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy for $89,000 a year — a sharp increase from the international market price of $1,200 a year.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a rare genetic disease that causes heart and respiratory conditions, usually in younger men. As DMD progresses, patients lose muscle strength and usually end up confined to a wheelchair by the time they reach their early teens.
According to the FDA, patients with DMD typically do not live past their 20s or 30s.
“This is the first treatment approved for a wide range of patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy,” Billy Dunn, director of the Division of Neurology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in the press release. “We hope that this treatment option will benefit many patients with DMD.”
However, thanks to the FDA, it will only be beneficial to those who can afford the insane price tag of $89,000.
READ MORE: Pharmaceutical Giants Caught Supplying Cartels With Tons of Bulk Ingredients to Produce Meth
Fret not, however, as Babar Ghias, Marathon’s Chief Financial Officer, says that drug is still in the bottom 10 percentile of rare disease drug prices. Ghias also says that after rebates and discounts, the price will drop to an affordable $54,000, and with insurance and financial programs most patients will pay “zero to low out-of-pocket expense,” according to the Washington Post.
Marathon, in their press release, says the stark increase in price is due to significant investments the company made in research and development to bring the drug through the approval process.
The company claims they extensively researched the drug and they cite a 196-person, 52-week study trial as evidence. However, that study was completed in 1995. And, the study only cites Marathon’s contribution as funding for editorial assistance.
“It seems like it’s yet another example of gaming the system,” Aaron Kesselheim, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told the Post.
“Instead of making the price at a level that is reasonable for patients, they make it a very high price and offer this pathway that patients may not qualify for, they may not know about, there may be limitations on it. So it’s a marketing move and not really a public health solution,” he said.
If anyone knows about government aiding the pharmaceutical industry in creating and maintaining their monopoly on drugs — many of which they never had a hand in creating — it is Harvard’s Aaron Kesselheim.
As the Free Thought Project reported last year, Kesselheim was the co-author of paradigm-shattering research on drug prices, which led to the Journal of the American Medical Association officially recognizing why drug prices skyrocket in America. Big pharma is granted a monopoly by the state which effectively eliminates their competition and allows them to charge any price they want — so they do.
READ MORE: A voluntary world without force or violence is just around the corner
The paper, published on August 23, The High Cost of Prescription Drugs in the United States: Origins and Prospects for Reform, set out to “review the origins and effects of high drug prices in the US market and to consider policy options that could contain the cost of prescription drugs.”
What the paper’s authors, Harvard Medical School doctors Aaron Kesselheim and Jerry Avorn, and jurist Ameet Sarpatwari, found and subsequently admitted, shatters the very assertion that government regulation in the market is needed to keep medical care costs low. In fact, their findings were quite to the contrary.
According to the paper:
Imagine that.
It seems that Marathon also knows this and has, like so many companies before them, chosen to game the system.
By Vin Armani
On this segment of The Vin Armani Show, we are joined by our friend Peter Kallman, a Mises Institute Ambassador, about using agorism to live free and starve the state. Also how technology has made black and gray markets safe and accessible.
The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. The liberal intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) guides them. Accordingly, they seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order.
Watch the full broadcast here.
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Vin Armani is the host of The Vin Armani Show on Activist Post, TV Star of Gigolos on Showtime, Author, DJ, and Agorist Entrepreneur. Follow Vin on Twitter and subscribe on YouTube. Get the weekly podcast oniTunes or Stitcher.
