From the unacceptable to the intolerable

by Richard North
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2012/03/from-unacceptable-to-intolerable.html

Note: In a libertarian society, there will be no public infrastructure as this is presently understood, because there will be no State. However, it is increasingly plain that the infrastructure privatisations of the Thatcher/Major Governments were fraudulent. They were transfers of monopolies built up with our taxes to various super-privileged corporations. We are compelled to do business with them, but no longer have any regular influence over them. There has been little meaningful investment in them. Much more than ever in the old days, they have become instruments by which ordinary people are exploited and members and clients of the ruling class are enriched. SIG

NOW…that’s what I call an idea

Bioluminescent trees.

David Davis

Bet you 50p you’ll see this at David Thompson soon, on Friday Ephemera….

Conservatives ought to know better by now

David Davis

Over at Guido’s place, someone called Tim Yeo, described as a “Conservative”, writes in the Guardian about increasing spending on “green” projects, such as windfarms and the like.

There is nothhing intrinsically bad about writing pieces for the Guardian, if that gets your rocks off for you. However, most liberals in the classical sense are more like classical conservatives than Guardian readers and contributors tend to be: they are also more skeptical than not, about the next neopastoralist-fad-religion such as GreeNazism.

Yeo of course, as you shall see, takes  one position where the placing of wind-farms is concerned if it benefits his pocket, and quite another where it will affect him personally regarding a particular one. This is standard GramscoStaliNazi behaviour and has been seen on countless occasions to date, in others.

I do not view these people while wearing quite the same charity-tinted glasses through which dear Sean Gabb looks, when he talks of the Enemy-Class. The extent of his magnanimity towards them astonishes me. To my mind, there can be no really useful place for many of the “top people” in this group, once an approximately libertarian civilisation emerges and becomes self-sustaining.

A Libertarian Perspective on the National Health Service

by Sean Gabb

Free Life Commentary,
A Personal View from
The Director of the Libertarian Alliance
Issue Number 185
18th August 2009
Linking url: http://www.seangabb.co.uk/flcomm/flc185.htm
|

The National Health Service:
A Libertarian Perspective
by Sean Gabb

 

 

 

During the past week, much of the English speaking world has been drawn into a debate on the merits of the National Health Service. For those unaware of this debate or its subject matter, I will say that the NHS, established in 1948, provides health care free at the point of use for everyone legally in the United Kingdom. It is paid for by the British State out of general taxation, and no account is taken, in treating patients, of how much they have paid or are likely to pay in taxes. The new American Government has proposed changes in the provision of health care that will move the American system to some extent in the direction of the British. This has been denounced by many Americans as a step towards an inherently sinister and inefficient system.

The debate has been joined by Daniel Hannan, one of the Conservative members of the European Parliament for the region in which I live. Speaking in America, he has said that to copy the British system would lead America towards bankruptcy “where we are now.”. He said further: “We have a system where the most salient facts of it you get huge waiting lists, you have bad survival rates and you would much rather fall ill in the US…. How amazing to me that a free people. . . should be contemplating, in peacetime, burdening themselves with a system like this that puts the power of life and death in a state bureaucracy.” ["Conservatives turn on MEP Daniel Hannan for anti-NHS tour in America”, The Times, London, 14th August 2009]

These comments have, with some mild dissent, united the British political media and political classes in denunciation. The Labour Government of Gordon Brown has leapt to defence of the NHS. The Conservatives have joined in. Mr Hannan finds himself an isolated figure, facing accusations that range from a lack of patriotism to something that approaches blasphemy. Indeed, except no one has yet issued a fatwa, he is almost the secular equivalent of Salman Rusdie in his gleeful sneering at what many in this country regard as an object of veneration. Now, I am sure that he can do without my support. Even so, the scandal that his behaviour has raised in this country gives me the opportunity for speaking, as a libertarian, on the legitimacy and on the merits of the NHS.

At the most fundamental level of analysis, legitimacy and merits have no connection with each other. The NHS is funded by compulsion. I am forced, as a taxpayer, to contribute to a system that provides health care of a kind and at costings that, given any choice in the matter, I would never accept for myself and those who look to me. I am also forced to pay towards the health care of strangers. I have no objection to charity. I try to be generous to those I know. I am prepared to be moderately generous even to those I do not know, and whom I might dislike if I did know them. But so far as I am compelled, paying for the health care of others cannot be described as charitable. It is as much an act of theft as if I were to be robbed in the street. The whole present system, therefore, is illegitimate. If it were, as we are continually assured, the “envy of the world”,my opinion would not alter. It is in itself unjust. I resent its existence in my country. I join with Mr Hannan in warning the Americans not to accept it for themselves.

This, however, is the most fundamental analysis, and no discussion can be regarded as complete without some examination of its merits. And in examining these, I fell an obligation to be as fair as possible. I will begin with the quality of health care provided by the NHS.

Here, I must dissent from much of the American condemnation. There is no doubt that the NHS is inefficient, and that it rations health care by waiting list and by explicit refusal to provide certain kinds of treatment to anyone, or by refusal to provide certain kinds of treatment to those deemed unlikely to benefit from them given their cost. But rationing in one form or another is inevitable to any system of health care. The demand for health care is unlimited. There is almost no one so ill that his life could not be prolonged, or his condition while alive not improved, by some expensive treatment. The problem is always at what cost. In a broadly private system, demand will be rationed by price. In the British system, it must be rationed by cost and benefit analyses undertaken by the doctors. It is easy for American critics to point to how long someone over here must wait to have his haemorrhoids cut out, or that he may be denied some drug that will put off or ease his death from cancer. But their own system is hardly perfect.

In attacking the British system, these critics seem to argue that their own is based on individual choice and free from any taint of collectivism. I am not an expert on the American system, but it does strike me as so heavily regulated and cartellised as to have little connection to a free market. The professional associations have worked to limit the numbers of doctors and nurses, even as they have obtained the exclusion of the unqualified from the provision of medical services. The drug companies benefit from patent laws and trade protections that raise the price of medicines far higher than in neighbouring countries. The insurance companies are regulated in the interests of medical suppliers. I am told that forty million Americans cannot afford health insurance premiums, and that millions more cannot afford what most would regard as appropriate cover. These people, I accept, are not denied all treatment. But the treatment they receive is often rather poor. Even those who can afford to pay as they go find that it can take years for new medicines or medical procedures to be allowed by the authorities. In particular, I am told that many dying of cancer cannot obtain adequate pain relief. It is legal for opiates to be prescribed in America. But the regulatory framework is so ferocious that many doctors are frightened to write out the prescriptions they otherwise would.

If I contrast what I am told about the American system with what I know from personal experience about the British, the NHS is not really that bad. In December 2007, my wife needed an emergency caesarean. This was performed by the NHS. At all times, we were kept informed of our options and our legal rights. I was allowed to stand beside my wife in the operating theatre. I was then allowed to sit with my wife and daughter until gone midnight. My wife spent the next few days in a room of her own, and was left to make as many calls from her mobile telephone as her work and family duties required. While there were visiting hours, I was allowed to come and go as I pleased. The quality of treatment was first class. Apart from the flowers and chocolates and bottles of wine that I chose to lavish on the medical staff when we left, there was no final bill for any of this. About ten years ago, the father of my best friend died of cancer. There may be more effective cancer treatments than the medical establishment prefers to see provided. But within the terms set by the medical establishment, he had excellent treatment. When all else had failed, he was allowed to die in peace under a broad umbrella of opiates. Another of my friends was diagnosed with prostate cancer about seven years ago. He is a university lecturer with a good enough knowledge of statistics to discuss his chances on an equal basis with the doctors. He remains well and has no complaints about the NHS.

Perhaps these cases are exceptional. I am discussing the experience of articulate, middle class people. We know what we should ask for and how to ask for it, and we know how to show gratitude when we get it. Perhaps I should think of the newspaper reports of people suffering needlessly in filthy, open wards. On the other hand, perhaps not. Those who get bad treatment from the NHS are mostly poor and ignorant people. I pity them. But they are the sort of people who would also suffer in the American system. I do not think the American critics are comparing like with like. They are holding up the best aspects of their own system with the worst of ours. They also do not seem to have noticed that increasing numbers of middle class people over here do have private health insurance. This gives us the ability to switch back and forth to the NHS as we find convenient. I am writing this article on a railway train. If there is a crash and I must be cut from the wreckage, I shall be taken to an NHS hospital and be stitched up and reset as well as anywhere in the world. If, on the other hand, there is no crash, but, somewhere between Tonbridge and Charing Cross, I suspect the beginnings of heart disease , I can use my insurance and be looked at by an expert within two days. If it turns out that I need an operation, this can be arranged within a few days more. If, on the other hand, I need continuous medication, I can present myself and my private case notes to my NHS general practitioner, who will then prescribe the relevant drugs at a heavily subsidised price.

I will add that the NHS is probably not unsustainable in the long term. It costs about £90 billion a year to run. But this is about eight per cent of gross domestic product, and is about half the American level. There are more doctors per head of population in Britain than in America. British life expectancy is higher than American. [Facts: "The brutal truth about America's healthcare", The Independent, London, 15th August 2009] And much of this budget is spent in ways that even slightly better management could reduce. I recall attending a speech that Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute gave in 1986. For reasons that I no longer recall, but found convincing at the time, he predicted that the NHS would collapse under its own weight within three years. That was not far off a quarter of a century ago. And the NHS is with us still.

This should not be taken as a defence of the NHS. I am simply pointing out that is is no worse on balance than the American system. They are differently organised and differently funded. Each has specific advantages and disadvantages. neither has much connection with a free market. In both countries, however, the middle classes are able to get very good health care. In both, the poor and ignorant do not. The NHS is not a bad institution relative to the American system. It is bad for other reasons – and these may be bad reasons that apply in some degree to the American system.

What is so fundamentally bad about the British system – its compulsory principle aside – is that it nearly abolishes individual control over health care. Compared with the system with which we entered the twentieth century, all real power is centralised into the hands of the professional bodies. A hundred years ago in this country, the market in medical services was decentralised and diverse. The professions themselves were lightly regulated. Most doctors lived on the fringes of genteel poverty. Many sold their services directly to clients – rather as lawyers and accountants do still. Others worked for charitable institutions. A few worked for the State, looking after the inmates of the workhouses. These were the two extremes of the market. The British population of a hundred years ago was about thirty million. Those who could afford to buy medical services directly numbered a few million. Those who relied on private charity or the workhouse numbered perhaps another few million. Those in between relied on private insurance. This was provided sometimes by employers, but mostly by friendly societies and trade unions. These were strongly working class organisations. They were autonomous of the State, and prized their autonomy. Their elected officials had the job of picking and choosing among doctors and other health professionals, and stating the conditions on which they would do business. By modern standards, it was a very basic system. Most people died in their fifties, and of conditions that are often no longer listed in the medical textbooks. Then again, medicine itself was only just into its really scientific phase, and England was, by our standards, a very poor country. But the system worked and was improving.

The growing state involvement in medicine that began with the National Insurance Act 1911, and culminated in the establishment of the NHS forty seven years later, was largely a power grab by the medical professions. Doctors were relieved of having to do business with ordinary working class people, and could deal instead with officials and politicians of their own class. These officials and politicians had their own status enhanced by the ability to spend vast amounts of the taxpayers’ money. For the rich and for increasing numbers of middle class people, choice remained – if at a cartellised price. For ordinary working people, however, medicine became something that was doled out by their betters. This was attended by a great increase in the quality of health care – though this was improvement felt in all other countries regardless of how it was financed. But the result here was a growing apathy among the working classes. Where health care was concerned, they were no long active clients, able and willing to negotiate for what they wanted. They were passive recipients. They paid through their taxes for what they received. But their only input was to vote for politicians who promised better funding or better management of a system that was now insulated from direct pressure.

This contributed immensely, I think, to the decay of free institutions in England. Freedom owes much to historic evolution and to paper guarantees. It owes far more to a people who are accustomed to take responsibility for their own lives. The main difference between us and our free ancestors is that, unlike them, we find ourselves trapped within a system that provides the amenities of life but over which we have no personal control. If we want light or heat, we must rely on vast networks of energy distribution that interlock with other vast networks of energy extraction and transport. If we want our life and property to be secured, we must rely on agencies that claim a monopoly of force and that are only formally accountable to us. And for most people, it is the same with health care. Whether public or private – and there may be little real difference behind the names – these vast, impersonal networks do encourage passivity in the face of authority. When everything but housing and food shopping is provided in this way for most or all of a population, it is no surprise if these people stop being sturdy, self-sufficient individuals, suspicious of the claims of government.

Add to this the fact that the NHS employs over a million people. It is not the only bureaucratic mass-employer in this country. But it is the largest. These institutions impose values of hierarchy and obedience on those within them that are hostile to liberty. People who are regimented in their working lives – and who do not rebel against this – will tend to accept regimentation in their private lives. They will accept it for themselves. They will vote for politicians who promise it for everyone. They will spread these values directly to others so far as they have contact with the public as providers of services.

Paragraph here deleted. I don’t withdraw from the position advanced, but feel that it is irrelevant to the main point of the essay

Certainly, we are lied to and oppressed in ways that English men and women before about 1940 would have thought unimaginable. Let me return to the NHS. Last month, while in Slovakia, I was called by the BBC to comment on the case of a young man denied a liver transplant on account of his drinking. I was supposed to denounce this as more NHS fascism. When the details were explained to me, I had to give a less forthright response. Apparently, this young man needed a liver transplant if he was to live. However, the doctors had told him that the transplant would have little chance of success unless he could stop drinking for six months. Because he was not able to give satisfactory guarantees, the doctors decided to give the liver to someone else. Undoubtedly, this was not a pleasant choice. Even so, there is a shortage of organs for transplant. And given that the NHS does not ration health care by price, this was the most rational use of resources. For all I know, private insurance companies in America make similar choices by way of setting premiums or authorising treatment.

But this is not the limit of how the NHS is coming to ration health care. Superficially analogous arguments are being used to regulate general lifestyle. For a generation now, the anti-smokers have been arguing that smokers place heavy additional costs on the NHS. The reply has always been easy. Whatever inflated figures are fabricated to show how much smokers cost, they never match the amount of extra taxes paid by smokers. And there is the alleged fact that smokers die younger, and so save on pensions and long term care. But facts never get in the way of an argument for oppression. And what began as an argument for higher taxes on tobacco has insensibly changed into an argument for the creeping prohibition of cigarettes.

Smoking bans are being justified on the grounds of saving money. And assuming the facts are as we are told – they are not, but let us assume they are – the argument may be a valid one, given the system we have in this country. The NHS involves a coerced pooling of risk. Given that the costs of the NHS are high and rising – and assuming that costs cannot be controlled by better management – it makes sense for those who spend our tax money to insist that those most likely to call on large amounts of that money should be required to change their lifestyles. Of course, by the same argument, homosexual acts should be recriminalised to reduce the incidence of AIDS and hepatitis, and all women over the age of forty should be sterilised to save on the costs of treating pregnancy complications. Equally, the athletic should be prevented from taking vigorous exercise, and  Asians should be forced to give up on spicy food. For the moment, political correctness stops these arguments from being put. But lifestyle regulation is a valid secondary principle to be derived from the primary principle of the NHS. Let there be a compulsory pooling of risk, and those who place themselves at higher than average risk become fair targets for oppression. Smokers and drinkers and the obese are current targets. It is only a matter of time before an increasingly degraded political culture allows other targets to be found.

I believe that similar calls for lifestyle regulations are being made in the United States. Many companies that contribute to the insurance premiums of their employees are already insisting on contractual agreements not to smoke or to drink excessively. Given that American political culture is hardly less degraded than our own – if for slightly different reasons and in different ways – this is a consideration for those Americans who oppose the changes currently proposed by their government.

Now, I have said what I, as a libertarian, dislike about the NHS. It should be plain what I am not proposing. But since misrepresentation of opinions is so common in any discussion of health care, let me be explicit. I believe that the NHS should be dismantled and replaced with a more diverse, private system. This does not mean that I want to cut off health care for millions of older people who have made no alternative arrangements. It also does not mean that I want to cut off state funding and leave the current system of cartellised and regulated health care otherwise unchanged. I believe in a radical attack on all state involvement in health care, and this includes an attack on all state-created and state-upheld monopoly in health care.

I believe that all drug patent laws should be repealed. These do nothing to encourage innovation, but are simply a means by which well-connected drug companies extract huge rents from the rest of us. I believe that there should be no controls on who can practise medicine. State regulation does less to weed out medical incompetence and fraud than to guarantee high incomes to middle class graduates who have learnt the approved techniques of medication. The common law of contract and torts is enough to deal with incompetence and fraud. I believe there should be no controls on the development and provision of medical products. The existing laws did not prevent Vioxx and Prozac from coming to market. Again, the common law is enough to ensure some standards of propriety. I believe there should be no controls on the advertising of medical products or services. The present restrictions simply prevent ordinary people from learning what options may be available to them. Again, the common law is all we need to deter inflated and fraudulent claims. I believe that everyone should have the right of self-medication. This means the right of any adult to walk into a pharmacy and, without showing any prescription, to buy whatever medical product he desires. If many people will buy and use recreational drugs, they can do that already if they know the right street corner – and it is not the business of the State to tell us how to live. Most people will have enough common sense to take some advice before swallowing or injecting their medications. The rest should have the right to experiment. If they fail, they will have themselves to blame. If they stumble across some truth so far unknown, they will deserve our thanks.

These reforms would bring down health care costs at once. They would also clear the way for the information technology revolution to transform the market in health care. I will not try to predict how all this will be funded, though it strikes me as reasonable that it will fall into the same pattern of direct payment, charity and voluntary mutual assurance as was common before the State took over. And when I speak of mutual assurance, I mean both for-profit insurers and not-for-profit organisations. The idea that only profit-seeking organisations are consistent with libertarianism is to take a shockingly arid view of the ideology. What libertarians should like about commerce is not its taste for profit but its distaste for compulsion. What legitimises markets, in libertarian terms, is that they are structures of voluntary association. This is what brings the friendly societies and much trade union activity, and so much of what in Victorian times was called “socialism” within the heritage of the modern libertarian movement. Health care reform should not be about providing yet more money-making opportunities for state-licensed professions and state-privileged corporations. It should be about disestablishing statist structures and allowing free people to associate for their mutual benefit. If some people make a lot of money from providing services that others want, good luck to them. But the key objective should be free association. Be assured – it will be the most solid foundation on which medical progress can rest.

I will repeat – cutting off state funding all at once, and leaving in place the present system of monopoly, would be cruelty and folly. It would easily result in a step away from liberty rather than towards it. But reducing this funding over several years, as part of a general attack on monopoly, would be a blessing, the fruits of which were plain even before it was complete.

And this would apply as much to America as to England. As said, the American system is hardly the sort of free market any libertarian would recognise. But if the Americans do follow our example, I agree with Mr Hannan that they would deserve to be pitied. Worse – we adopted our system before its faults had been fully realised. Anyone inclined to copy it now deserves as much contempt as pity.

NB—Sean Gabb’s book, Cultural Revolution, Culture War: How Conservatives Lost England, and How to Get It Back, can be downloaded for free from http://tinyurl.com/34e2o3

 

 

MPs and expenses… Lavoisier was beheaded for less than this. Should we be happy or sad?

David Davis

How is it possible to overclaim for tax paid, whe you, er, had to pay tax?

I am beginning to be not able to figure out quite what these people think they are entitled to.

Enemies of What State? « Little Alex in Wonderland

 

Enemies of What State?

Posted by Kevin Carson on 29 March 2009

Kevin Carson

On the economic fascism of  crony capitalism and irrational American common sense.

19 Mar 09 | C4SS

There are all too many people in American politics whose real concern, concealed behind all the “free market” rhetoric, is not so much “statism” per se as statism that benefits the wrong class of people. A good example: it was quite amusing to hear some Republicans, during yesterday’s Congressional hearings on the AIG bonuses, wringing their hands over the prospect of “interfering with the management of private business” and “altering the terms of contracts.” Last night Rachel Maddow ran clips of some of the very same people, last December, crowing about how they were forcing the UAW to renegotiate it’s contract and accept lower wages in return for bailout loans to the auto industry.

Another example: I don’t advocate Social Credit or greenbackism, but I don’t understand the reasoning of those who object to either as an increase in statism over the present system.

By way of background, Social Credit is a proposal to remedy corporate capitalism’s chronic tendency toward overinvestment and overproduction by periodically depositing a sum of interest-free new money, equivalent in aggregate to the demand shortfall, in the citizenry’s bank accounts. Greenbackism is a proposal that countercyclical deficit spending, rather than being financed by interest-bearing debt in the form of government bonds, should simply take the form of directly spending money into existence by the Treasury.

It seems to me the sticking point, if there is one, should be at the idea of government as regulator of the money supply by creating fiat money, or of deficit spending to meet demand shortfalls, in the first place. But these things are overwhelmingly accepted in principle by the mainstream public. So the sticking point about Social Credit and greenbackism can only be the sacred principle that the fiat money must be specifically lent into existence at interest, and that deficit spending must be financed by government bonds.

The problem is not the function itself, but only carrying it out in a way that doesn’t enable a class of coupon-clippers to skim the cream off the top.

It also seems to me, on the other hand, that if these basic functions are accepted in principle, it makes it more statist–not less–to compound the injury by doing it through private accomplices, and empowering them to charge interest for the function, rather than simply doing so directly.

It’s just another instance of a broader phenomenon, what the Libertarian Alliance’s Sean Gabb calls “economic fascism.” Economic fascism is his term for the phony regime of “privatization” advocated by such organizations as the Adam Smith Institute. It doesn’t get government out of the business of performing particular functions. It just delegates the function to nominally “private” corporations that perform the function with public money, with government protection from free market competition, and with a guaranteed profit for performing the function (on the regulated utility’s “cost-plus” model).

Under this vulgar libertarian model of “free market reform,” the only thing that matters is the comparative percentages of functions which are carried out by nominally “private” and nominally “public” organizations–not the substance of things. But it seems to me that if a corporation receives its revenue from the government, is protected from competition by the government, and is guaranteed a profit by the government, it IS the government. The only significance of the entity’s profit is to increase the overall cost of performing the function, and thus increase the total injury to the taxpayer.

And while we’re at it, let’s be honest about something. Given the existence of a corporate economy on the present model, countercyclical government spending is absolutely essential to prevent its collapse. Those who advocate a return to the Reaganism and Thatcherism of the ’80s, or the cowboy capitalism of the ’90s, absent high government spending, are either delusional or disingenuous. Reagan was the biggest Keynesian of them all.

There are only two alternatives: to eliminate the existing–statist– structural causes of overinvestment and underconsumption, or to continue adding new layers of statism to counter the chronic crisis tendencies. Either more and more statism, or forward to anarchy.

The American corporate economy has been statist to its core since its beginnings in the late 19th century. There wouldn’t even be a national market at all, or national corporations serving it, had it not been for the land grant railroads and other subsidies to long-distance shipping that made possible artificially large firms and market areas. There wouldn’t be stable oligopoly markets had it not been for the cartelizing effect of patents, or the stabilizing effects of the Clayton and FTC Acts’ restrictions on price warfare.

To repeat, the system was statist from its beginnings. There are all too many on the Right who like to refer to a mythical “free market” system that prevailed before 1932, and to pretend that the “statism” only began when government started intervening on behalf of workers and consumers. But in fact, all the “progressive” interventions of government under the New Deal were secondary, aimed at ameliorating the side-effects of the prior interventions that created corporate capitalism in the first place. Had it not been for the secondary, ameliorative interventions, corporate capitalism as we know it would have collapsed in the 1930s.

Returning to my earlier point: if we are to have statism at all, and we are reduced to quibbling between Democrats and Republicans over what kind of statism it is to be, I make no secret of the fact that I prefer the kind of statism that weighs less heavily on my own neck.

If phony “free market” Republicans accept NLRB certification of unions in principle, and only want to quibble over the Employee Free Choice Act because it makes it easier to certify unions without harassment, intimidation and punitive firing of organizers–well, why would I, a worker, prefer a system of certification that suits the bosses’ interest?

If we’re going to talk about a genuine free market labor regime, then let’s eliminate the Wagner Act–and with it Taft-Hartley’s prohibitions on sympathy and boycott strikes, and its mandatory arbitration and cooling off periods. Let’s eliminate the Railroad Labor Relation Act’s provisions that prevent transport workers turning local and regional disputes into general strikes. In short, let’s eliminate all the legal prohbitions on the tactics that unions were using to win before Wagner was ever passed.

But if we’re going to have government certification of unions, let’s have a form of certification that fulfills its stated purpose–determining the intention of workers–as accurately and automatically as possible.

Likewise, if we’re going to have a welfare state, let’s eliminate the costly and intrusive welfare bureaucracies and spend the same amount of money on a guaranteed income. If we’re going to have a regulatory state, let’s eliminate all the agencies and replace their functions with pigovian taxation of negative externalities.

My goal is the abolition of the state. I would welcome all these things tomorrow, if I thought they were genuine steps toward the abolition of the state altogether the day after tomorrow. They certainly wouldn’t be net increases in statism.

C4SS Research Associate Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective, both of which are freely available online. Carson has also written for a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and his own Mutualist Blog.

Enemies of What State? « Little Alex in Wonderland

If in doubt….PAYRISE!

Fred Bloggs

In the face of the current economic crisis (some might say fiscal armageddon) the goverment has devised a plan, which consists of, briefly, giving themselves a 60% pay rise. No doubt this “plan” will solve all the economic problems in the world, feed all the starving Africans, raise Atlantis, and with all its well-crafted majesty, scare the Russians so shitless they’ll give Lenin a haircut. Or, well, maybe not.

Apart from the Atlantis bit.

Find out more Here.

Death by paper cut.

Mummylonglegs

It’s Me, Mummy. Mr D has only gone and asked me to rant on here as well. This Mummy is very, very flattered. So here is my first post on The Libertarian Alliance : BLOG.

Who does this sound like?………..

“It is unacceptable that the pursuit of targets was repeatedly prioritised, alongside endless managerial change and a ‘closed’ culture, which failed to admit and deal with things going wrong.”

Sounds like a description of the Labour government to me. Unfortunately this is a description of Stafford Hospital which is run by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. The actual statement said……..

“It is unacceptable that the pursuit of targets – not the safety of patients – was repeatedly prioritised, alongside endless managerial change and a ‘closed’ culture, which failed to admit and deal with things going wrong.”

Can you spot the difference?.

This is a shocking but not very surprising story. What the hell did Alan Johnson expect? For the last 12 years Labour have messed around with the NHS and have just about destroyed it. Why? How? Because they could. No other reason really. Because they are control freaks. Because they think if you set a target and tick a box every thing will be just fine. Because they think that the NHS can be run like a private Doctors surgery, maximum profit for minimum out put. Because tax payers money/NI contributions are an endless pot to be dipped into, as and when you need it. Because not one of the idiots that dreamt up the million and one targets/tick boxes/schemes/ideas/drives that will bring this institution to it’s knees has ever set foot in an NHS hospital, let alone been treated in one. They don’t use NHS GP’s, NHS Polyclinics, NHS Nurse Quacktitioners, NHS Direct, NHS Dentists, NHS Paramedics, NHS Ambulances, NHS Midwives, NHS Mental Health Services. In fact they don’t use anything NHS at all. They go to Harley Street, they go to The Priory, they go to The Portland Hospital, they go to the States, they go private, they go anywhere but to the NHS. I wonder why?

Lets fisk shall we………….

It said there were deficiencies at “virtually every stage” of emergency care and said managers pursued targets at the detriment of patient care – Managers, not Doctors, not Nurses. Managers chased targets. Managers forced their staff to obey these targets, regardless. Targets set by who? ah Labour.

Mr Johnson said: “On behalf of the government and the NHS I would like to apologise to the patients and families of patients who have suffered because of the poor standards of care at Stafford Hospital”. - Sorry seems to be the word of the week. Nice of you to apologise on behalf of the hospital, Mr Johnson, How about apologising on behalf of all those that ’Targeted’ this Hospital right into the ground?

“There was a complete failure of management to address serious problems and monitor performance. This led to a totally unacceptable failure to treat emergency patients safely and with dignity”. – It’s them pesky Managers again.

Its report cited low staffing levels, inadequate nursing, lack of equipment, lack of leadership, poor training and ineffective systems for identifying when things went wrong. – Let’s look at this bit here. Low staffing levels – Why?, you have money, employ staff. S*** nursing – that’ll be because Nurses don’t nurse anymore, they quacktition. So nursing is left to Non-nurses aka Plebs. Lack of equipment – again why? Lack of leadership – that’ll be even worse now, since you sacked most of the Doctors (MTAS etc). Poor training – well what can I say, we have Plebs doing nursing, Nurses doing doctoring, Doctors doing nothing cos they can’t get a job and Sally from accounts running the whole s*** and shebang. They are all trained, but they are doing jobs that don’t relate to their training – duh, it’s not rocket science.

It said that:

• Unqualified receptionists carried out initial checks on patients arriving at the accident and emergency department - Receptionists are not Nurses.
• Heart monitors were turned off in the emergency assessment unit because nurses did not know how to use them - What Nurses?, they are too busy being quacktitioners, I think you mean Plebs.
• There were not enough nurses to provide proper care - All the Nurses were on 4 week courses learning how to do the job of a Doctor, can’t blame the Nurses, they weren’t there. So it must have been the Plebs (or the Managers).
• The trust’s management board did not routinely discuss the quality of care - Who would they discuss it with, the Doctors are unemployed, the Nurses are on quacktitioner courses so that just leaves the Plebs. And most of them don’t speak English.
• Patients were “dumped” into a ward near A&E without nursing care so the four-hour A&E waiting time could be met - And who’s fault is that. Did the Managers, Doctors, Nurses or Plebs come up with these targets. No. Labour did.
• There was often no experienced surgeon in the hospital during the night - There was often no experienced ANYBODY in the hospital at night. Or during the day for that matter. You could have had a squillion surgeons but with no Doctors or Nurses to make initial diagnosis they would have been pretty idle.

The trust’s chairman Toni Brisby and chief executive Martin Yeates resigned earlier this month. The interim chief executive, Eric Morton, said lessons had been learned and that staffing levels had been increased. - It appears that neither Tony or Martin were Doctors, I am certain if they were they would have had Dr before their names, but they may just be shy. If so Eric is the shy type aswell. He doesn’t appear to be a Doctor either, but hey, that’s cool. You don’t really need to be a Doctor to understand how to run a medical facility do you. As long as you hire more Plebs staff it’s cool isn’t it.

The health secretary added: “The new leadership of the trust will respond to every request from relatives and carry out an independent review of their case notes. This will be an essential step to put relatives’ minds at rest and to close this regrettable chapter in the hospital’s past.” - Oh, with 400 cases on the books, and quite possibly many hundreds/thousands more to come it sounds like Eric isn’t gonna have much time left to actually run ANYTHING.

So, what have we learnt from Mummies Fisk. Well I think it is safe to say that Labour has F***** the NHS. Big Time. I could extend this fisk to all other aspects of the NHS. GP’s, Dentists, Emergency Peeps etc but it would just take too long.

I know that out there in the blogosphere there is a list of pointless NHS jobs, many peeps posted it up a while ago but for the life of me I cannot find it now, Sorry. If some one has this link, please could you give it to me. After 12 years of Labour the NHS has a multitude of Managers and Plebs but not many peeps that understand the whole medical/caring side of the NHS. And it is very sad, and it results in stuff like this.

I am not a medical person, but I got into blogging via the likes of

Dr Crippen

Tom Reynolds

Stuart Gray

Mark Myers

Spence Kennedy

and of course last, but by no means least, the very lovely, very funny, very georgous in pink tights,

Kal

These guys are on the Front Line of what is left of the NHS. Every day and every night. If you take a moment to check their Bloggs you will find out that this problem is not just in Stafford Hospital, it’s in the NHS as a whole. Those that work the Front Line hate it. Those that work the Front Line get up every day to do their jobs. They do it because they care. And no amount of Managers, Quacktitioners or Plebs will ever be able to replace those Front Liners, so please Labour, stop trying to.

Nice Message to Mr D – I hope this is ok. If there are any problems with this please edit as you see fit, I reckon the only bit I may have messed up was the ‘Do it in Dark Blue, Italic.’ I couldn’t understand this bit so I put my name, Mummy, made it Italic and then linked it to my blogg. If this is not what you meant, please change it. Thank you for letting me be a Guest Blogger here. I hope you will ‘have me again’

Mummy x

p.s I think I remove all the swear words.

Mexico coming undone at the seams: why ALL drugs should be legalised absolutely everywhere.

David Davis

We stand aghast, at the possibility of “military intervention by the USA” against – of all places – Mexico. We know that, since “drugs” are grown in Latin America, and since Mexico is in the way of their transfer to “Film Stars” and wannabes in British North America, where these things are officially illegal to have or trade, that therefore mexico will be on the road of transfer.

This is all very well and ought not to matter. Cars and lorries carrying cocaine and other stuff whose names I can’t remember ought to be able to cross Mexico as though it was anywhere. The problem arises because – and only because -  it is locally illegal to have, sell or use these substances, in the points of destination.

This has several effects:-

(1) It makes the substances themselves more desirable in the eyes of certain people. They will want it more because “The State” says they shouldn’t have any at all at all at all, for their own good at all at all at all .   Nsty useless Hollywood delinquents film stars will leak details of their use of it, and because they are pretty and shaggable (and that’s just the men) you will want to do it too, as you are sheeple because the liberals Stalinists have told you to become so.

(2) It makes it risky and unprofitable and demoralising, for legitimate businesses to supply the stuff. If you wozz an off-licence, would YOU want to supply cocaine to any willing buyer, if you got raided every week by the rozzers for doing it, and had your shop smashed up by them (rozzers) and were put in jug?

(3) It makes the risks of supplying it worthwhile, for shysters and hoods, who don’t mind having to shoulder the boring business of killing people including police and soldiers, in the course of securing their hold on the distribution of of their stuff, to you. The £5-a-day habit, if the stuff was legally sold through chemists even including the impost of State Taxation, becomes the £100-a-day habit if you have to buy it through hoods who have to insure themselves – at your cost -  for their own risk against both the State and against other hoods who want to compete, for what is really a rather small niche sector.

(4) it makes jobs for Police rozzers. Rozzers are inherently tormented people, who ought not to have got like that; they need psychiatric help, and quickly.  Just as you ought not to want to be a criminal, also you ought not to want to be a policeman in the 21st century: what does that desire say about you, and your morals, and world-view, as a person?

So the way forward is quite clear. ALL drugs have to be legalised, in all jurisdictions, preferably by yesterday. This will have a number of good effects:-

(1A) The “Police”, currently a pantomime collection of gamma-minus droids unfortunately increasingly supplied with real guns as opposed to things that shoot out a flag which says “bang”, and who are “employed” by their “states”  not in chasing real muggers, robbers, burglars and killers but in harrassing “drug dealers”, “motorists”, “paedophiles”, “racists”, “terrorists”, “non-payers of council tax”, “TV-license-evaders” and “climate-change-deniers”, will find that their workload is decreased alarmingly. We will “need” fewer of them. Good.

The main solution to civilisation’s ills is

fewer Laws,

and more and better people.

There may even be “calls for” “FEWER POLICE ON THE STREETS”. I think that in a civilised society, the police ought to be invisible: see poll below.

(2A) The use of “drugs”, which is to say substances currently classified as drugs”, by all people, will fall dramatically. or it may not: I do not know. But I think it will fall.

(3A) The legalisation of “drugs” will mean that Galxo-Smith-Klein, Schering-Plough, Ciba-Geigy, and all the others, will be abot to compete legally for whatever market they think they can get. Adverttisisng will be allowed. Advertising is the best way to garotte bad stuff fast. The purity and quality of products will thus rise, and the price will fall to the point where the “State” will come in.

(4A) The “State” will take a take. Where GSK wants to sell you your Ecstasy for 50p a go, via the chemist down the road in Shaky-street (PR8  . . . ) , the State will take £4 or so, making it about the price of 20 fags. What’s the point of going and doing crime, if it’s only that much? You can get it from your dosh you that get “on the sick”.

OK so the “State” wins, win-win in the short run. But it’s got to justify how it needs to spend so much less on policing, since there’s so much much less less petty crime going on down.

That in itself will be tremendous fun to watch.

As it gets colder, and sterling becomes toilet-paper, we shall be glad to be able to have chip-butties.

David Davis

I have even met builders, with whom I worked a bit last summer as a second-fix trade-polisher on a housebuilding job, who had crisp-butties for their tea-breaks (many.)

The Landed Underclass tells us, I am happy to relate, that the Vegan stuffed vine leaves are off in 2009 because of Sterling’s continuing fall. I can’t say I’m very sorry about that, although I do like stuffed vine leaves, preferably full of a nice lemony mixture of minced lamb, rice, pine nuts, coriander and other poncy (but scrumptious) Wireless Tele Chef type comestibles. However, his main point is the most cunningly marvellous exposition about foods in general by a proper doctor, the kind who knows about war and stuff. We’d all really prefer to get treated by guys llike that whom he describes, if push came to shove: and not the sneering hectoring sub-types of “professionals” like State “dieticians” whom I met in a certain famous children’s hospital not 30 miles form here, a few years ago when our new-born (now five) was rather less well than he orta-av-been.

The problem arises of course where the State, whether nanny, jackbooted or otherwise (I can’t tell the difference) steps in. I quote from landed’s quote from the Daily express:-

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said …: “As prices rise and incomes fall, people will be drawn to the cheaper, less healthy processed foods, which are precisely the sort of things we are trying to wean people away from. Once habits change, it becomes hard for people to go back, especially because cheaper junk foods are so seductive.”

I have not previously heard of the “National Obesity Forum”, but I bet it’s (a) not a national movement and (b) it’s anything but a forum in which people engage in civilised discourse.

The libertarian issues are as follows:-

(1) If people are to be “weaned” off certain foods, and forced to eat others which they desire  less, then they are the state’s farm animals. I do feel quite sure that this is what “Tam” “Fry” does truly intend, although he’d not see it like that. he’d be “helping” people. Like Stalin did.

(2) If there was a real market in food, then the price of Vegan stuffed Vine Leaves would reflect demand and also the affluence (or otherwise) if the clientele that would go for it.

DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peter Davis

Within the last hour of this post, the value of the Pound Slerling has gone below the value of the EURO!!

this is a terrifying prospect, but as of 23:11 GMT, £1 is worth 0.72 Euro cents (my keyboard cannot do euro signs, funny though, because it can do everything else though, even these: Ψ Φ ♦ ♣ ← ↑ → ↓↔ θ Ξ ¿)

“RAMBLERS”, walkers, theft of property by government. I’ve thought of a solution which will please all lefties.

David Davis

Earlier, we wrote here about the State Plan to steal nationalise open for all to enjoy, a 10-metere-wide strip of coastline all round the British Isles. (Bet they won’t include Ireland.)

I have thought about hbow to deal with this, so as to satisfy the nazis RSPCA and the Gramsco-Marxian anti-farming-brigade the Greens.

In return for their property being stolen opened for the outdoor enjoyment of all, people who have been defrauded have willingly handed over their property rights will be allowed to breed or sponsor the introduction of wild bears, wild wolves, pumas and fierce predatory dogs, or other large vertebrate predators that they might care to specify, which will be allowed at all times to live freely in the “zone”.

I presume it will be fenced?

Otherwise, how will the “ramblers”  know where their ill-gotten gains end, and real human beings’ property begins?

Quite funny

From A Nation of Shopkeepers. Truly, we are in the shit, and it’s ‘coz we have just been rather asleep and have not been paying attention to what the buggers were up to in the undergrowth.

Climate Change Terrorism: the sub-human homophobe-droids (who hate real humans and everything we stand for) are starting to turn nasty…

UPDATE: and here’s some stuff I said about these protest-droid-guys a long time ago….

David Davis

This just in. I guess they’re just practising for Heathrow and Gatwick, right now, but we shall see more of them later. Hopefully famed in gunsights, but maybe not.

I wonder why they are not doing this at Peking or Moscow-Sheremetyevo….or even O-Hare?

The comments by some of the “pro testers” are illuminating and humorous. One Lily kember, a 21-y-o “Third year” “Anthropology” “student” at Edinburgh University (what’s she doing down there not studying, when she should be up there?) thinks “that is so much CO2″……

They should stick to hugging trees. Less harmful and less irritating: and people with business to do can then ignore them.

But I think it will get worse.

Gordon brown will “give back” some of our money with one hand…

…but take it back with the other. And Gerald Warner gets it quite right here.

David Davis

Spotted here about five seconds before I was going to write about it. But perhaps I don’t really need to convince people on here that the modern British State is a giant money-hoover, attached to a shredder, which then blows your money out again at you, prior to resucking it in for “recycling”.

It would be a fine day when “the masses” wake up and spot how they have been had all along, by Fabian tax-grappers and redistributionists. But I guess it won’t be that soon. Here’s the Westminster Waltz, by Russ Conway, then:-

Some of that will be nice too:-

Well, the Guardian is happy, anyway, that “top earners” will be clobbered for another seven-and-a-half-grand…I wonder how many of the really milkable ones will simply, er, go away…..again.

“Das Kapital” to be turned into a Manga comic (…er, what’s a Manga”?)

David Davis

Hey, man! Cop a load of this nonsense!

Oh, by the way, we comment on the spoilt and wicked Marxist neo-murderer “Ché” Guevara here. You youngsters might appreciate it.

Destruction, failure and death, "for the children"

I don’t yet know what a Manga is, but I guess I could read up about it later tonight. Wonder if it’d be a good format for “The Wealth of Nations”, or “Atlas Shrugged”?

The wiki article about the great bullshitter does not seem to find room fo a mention of his son, fathered by him with his wife’s maid, and who went to work for the Great Northern Railway, as a blameless young man who was brought up by his mother. It’s all in Paul Johnson’s “Enemies of Society” under the chapter “howling gigantic curses”. Karl Marx…the killer of so many millions….I wonder if the poor wretched maid loved him perhaps?

Not that I care a toss if he shagged his wife’s maid (in their house.) It’s his life after all. And presumably she must have liked his black moustache, or perhaps he was great in bed. I do not know.

But it sort of kind of, er, makes him somewhat hypocritical, since he was slagging off those kinds of people who made a practice of the very same thing, on the side.

For freedom to flourish, we need liberty (as I keep saying.)

David Davis

Hayek particularised this relationship between whatever “State” authorities there may be, and individuals, by stating that “to be controlled in one’s economic pursuits…..is to be controlled in everything”.

Today we learn that the Forestry Commission, a body statist to its very fibre (no pun intended) from its inception to its present activities, is to terminate ancient rights of individuals to collect fallen timber and dead wood for any purpose, on the grounds of “health and safety.”

I am not convinced that the right is enshrined in Magna Carta, as my copy does not appear to explicitly state it. But the point is that this is a symbolic act by a “big statist” QUANGO, designed further to separate individuals from victimless rights, which is to say natural ones as we have always described. it is nothing to do with “political correctness gone mad” – as if PC was something designed to help civilisations operate sanely and rationally anyway.

No: the plan to forbid people from gathering their own dead wood, instead “licensing” “local timber merchants” to sell it to them, merely is another act in the sordid sham of “bringing government closer to the people it serves”. Just like death-camps “served” the Jews and others under another socialist state I shan’t mention: government was brought closer to them than was good for their health and well-being.

Like my post the other day, on the true importance and meaning of revising history with regard to Agincourt (and why what the French revisionist historians are doint is TOTALLY relevant to the fight for liberty) what the Forestry-gauleiters are up to is yet another little detailed skirmish in the long retreat of liberty from the lives of ordinary people.

This gradual confiscation is designed to make it harder and harder for us to climb back out of the Dark Age in store for us, to a state where real Natural Rights can again be exercised in a minimal-statist environment. Successful conferences like ours which has just closed in London last night, will do great good in firing up the officers of libertarianism for the future. But officers are no use unless the “lesser folk”, for whom it is all about in the end, and of whom there are many many millions, understand what’s at stake, and how to use liberal philosophy to combat petty local assaults on natural rights.

Grand think-pieces will not be forgotten. But, in the even grander strategic context of British libertarian thought and tactics for re-engineering liberty for humans, this blog will increasingly take the role of exposer of petty, nasty, bureaucratic destruction of liberties, especially ancient ones.

Ahhhhhhh….so that’s it then. How stupid of us not to see it….

David Davis

The continual and extending sexualisation of free-people’s children was written about earlier on here. Now, Trooper has made the connection with earlier but still fairly modern fascist Utopian literature on the subject, which could give us reasons why our children are all being sexualised by the State.

This may or may not have anything to do with why I, running this blog, now find it useful to outreach previously un-libertarianised groups in British society and elsewhere, such as young British men.

There’s nothing wrong with sex. I even agree with the horrible Paul Ehrlich that it’s nice. It is the reward, programmed into the operation of our bodies, and contrived from first principles for us by our genes, for us being successfully able to pass them on before we fry. They (our genes) are toast, otherwise. Er, that’s why it’s nice. Otherwise we wouldn’t be programmed to spend time working out obessively how to do it with someone.

But what he forgets is that the tragedy of civilisation, language, morality and goodness versus evil has crept into the woodwork. Matter has at last reached the state of consciousness where it contemplates its own existence, its origin, its possible fate, and what it ought to do in the meantime.

,

Thank God I don't yet look like that...He's had too much sex, clearly. (Terrible hands.)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism…Libertarian Alliance Conference week celebration post 6 :Milton Friedman on slavery and colonisation

David Davis

There appear to be 40 eco-dilemmas…..

David Davis

…..and you can read all about them here.

And we ought to watch out more for these guys:-