Tom Bowden — VOICES for REASON

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the CEOs of both Google and Verizon have endorsed that portion of the FCC’s new National Broadband Plan that calls for “making high-speed Internet connections available to all Americans.” Oh, and by the way, the executives agree it should be accomplished with “minimal government involvement.”

Pardon me? Do these guys read the newspapers? The whole nation just witnessed what happens when government creates a new entitlement, and it sure ain’t “minimal government involvement.”

When Congress decided to make health insurance “available to all Americans,” the result was a sprawling bill that imposes unprecedented government controls on the health insurance industry. And of course, this entitlement mentality has a long history (think Medicare, Medicaid, and the prescription drug program) that demonstrates how controls breed controls.

And that’s the way it has to be. Once everyone agrees on any new entitlement—I don’t know, something like “making high-speed Internet connections available to all Americans”—then government must become involved. Why? Because the very essence of an entitlement is a claim by those who lack a value against those who have earned it. And government is the only agency that can enforce such a claim.

If the top executives of giant cellular and Internet companies can’t see that contradiction in their own op-ed, how can they hope to defend their companies from creeping regulation? What’s at stake here is the freedom that has allowed these industries to innovate, profit, and flourish—while more regulated parts of the economy stagnate.

Image: WikiMedia Commons

Amid the clamorous debate over health care, how much have you heard from the doctors? Very little. Nobody’s particularly interested in what they have to say. It’s taken for granted that they’ll always be there when you need them.

These are the forgotten men and women of American health care. They stand to one side, mostly silent, while self-important politicians noisily debate how to allocate “access” to health care. These legislators hold showy “summit” meetings of “stakeholders,” where doctors are outnumbered by the poor, the uninsured, the already-sick, the health insurers, the drug companies, and big corporations like Walmart. In this political universe of warring pressure groups, no tiny minority can expect to have much influence—even the minority that provides the services everyone is clamoring for.

Since professional organizations like the American Medical Association won’t rise to their members’ defense, it falls to the rest of us—those whose very lives may depend on a physician’s skill and dedication—to consider some pointed questions our leaders won’t ask: Read the rest of this entry »

We’re told that ObamaCare aims to make health care more affordable to more people, but in fact it threatens the rights of everyone involved in health care—doctors, patients, and health insurers—and thus the future of the industry.

Before Congress greases up yet another ramp on the already slippery slope toward socialized medicine, let’s pause to identify those endangered rights and some of the destructive consequences.

• Insurance companies are profit-making businesses, not social welfare agencies. They have the right to charge premiums that reflect actual risk. But ObamaCare would force them to cover almost every American—no matter how sick they already are, no matter how bad their health habits, no matter how high the cost of their exotic treatments–and to raise everyone’s premiums accordingly.

• Doctors are morally entitled to regard themselves as profit-making professionals, not public servants. They have the right to charge fees that reflect the value received by all parties to the transaction. But ObamaCare, by driving down permissible fees, will force physicians into a deadly conflict of interest: Either lose money by doing everything necessary to meet patients’ needs, or make money by satisfying some minimum bureaucratic standard.

• Patients are sovereign individuals, not particles in a social organism. They have the right to buy all the health care they deem necessary and can afford, without apologizing to those who can’t afford it. But under ObamaCare, patients will have the moral status of beggars at a soup kitchen who must uncomplainingly accept whatever gruel from the health-care pot happens to land in their dish.

Let ObamaCare be seen for what it is: yet another offensive in the long-running assault on individual rights in medicine.

Image: WikiMedia Commons

“The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy on behalf of a Supreme Court majority in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. He was referring to the speech bans that since 2002 have muzzled corporations under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

No more. The Citizens United decision struck down the ban, not only liberating America’s corporations to speak out during campaigns but also unleashing a torrent of commentary, both praising and denouncing the Court’s actions. As the heated debate gets hotter, a timely panel discussion is slated for Tuesday, March 16, in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and the Institute for Justice.

“Citizens United and the Future of Campaign Finance Law” will feature a lively debate among three lawyers who filed briefs on opposite sides in the case, and an academic expert on the history of free speech. I’m fortunate enough to be moderating the event, which will review the case in historical context, evaluate its merits, and look to the future. One crucial issue on the table is whether such regulations should survive at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

“On Jan. 21, poor Justice Holmes must have turned in his grave.”

So writes Mimi Marziani in the National Law Journal, lamenting the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, issued on Jan. 21, 2010. That’s the controversial case holding that corporations have a right to speak out on political issues without being censored.

What’s the connection with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who died back in 1935? Well, Holmes spent much of his long career arguing against the idea that the U.S. Constitution is a bulwark of liberty, a barrier to governmental infringements on individual rights. So Marziani is right that Holmes, if he were alive today, would have dissented in the Citizens United case—just as he dissented more than a century ago in the case forever associated with his name, Lochner v. New York. (In that 1905 case, the Court struck down a maximum-hours law for bakers.)

In fact, Marziani says, there’s a direct parallel between the two famous cases. Citizens United, she asserts, is “Lochner’s 21st century equivalent.” Why? Because both cases were driven by a conviction that the Constitution should be interpreted where possible to protect people against the awesome power of government to violate their rights. Along with Holmes, Marziani believes that the Constitution is agnostic on the relationship between individuals and the state. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know what Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez said the other day? He was speaking at a televised ceremony in his presidential palace. In the room were representatives of Chevron, the American oil giant, and other multinational oil companies. They had just signed on to invest billions of dollars to exploit oil in Venezuela’s Orinoco basin.

“Dear friends, partners, allies,” Chavez told the assembly, “you know you have all the guarantees of our Constitution and our laws.”

Really? And exactly how strong are those guarantees?

Chevron might want to ask ExxonMobil about that. Whatever Chevron’s reasons (or rationalizations) for going in, the record of Venezuela’s treatment of foreign companies speaks for itself. Less than three years ago, Venezuela nationalized massive oil facilities operated by Exxon and several other western companies. They all had signed agreements guaranteeing long-term concessions. Chavez just tore those up and tossed them away.

I call it theft by engraved invitation. I say “theft” because I reject the widespread view that a nation owns the natural resources within its borders and is therefore entitled to seize private assets; when a state like Venezuela seizes private assets, I think that should be regarded as a kind of theft. And I say “engraved invitation” in reference to the so-called contracts that western companies sign with eyes wide open, delivering their advanced technology—and the engineers and technicians who understand and operate it—to the custody of thuggish governments with long histories of seizing private assets whenever they please.

What would happen if companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil were to stand up and declare that nationalization is theft? What if they called upon their own government to issue similar condemnations? What if such companies ceased propping up the world’s failing socialist economies?

I’d like to see what would happen to Chavez and his ilk if they were deprived of victims.

Image: WikiMedia Commons

In honor of the 105th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s birth (February 2, 1905), I’d like to recommend Jeff Britting’s short but surprisingly comprehensive biography, Ayn Rand. Lavishly illustrated with items from the Ayn Rand Archives (a special department Britting manages within the Ayn Rand Institute), this biography is especially valuable because it pays close attention to the mental choices and processes by which Ayn Rand shaped her own character and ideology.

Britting’s biography traces Rand’s brilliant successes to the fundamental choices she made—choices about how to manage her own thinking and action. It started in early childhood, Britting observes, with a vigorously questioning attitude “aimed at understanding the things around her.” (p. 4) As she entered her teens, she “began asking why she liked what she did and, as a result, she began integrating her ideas into wider generalizations. She called this approach to integrating ideas ‘thinking in principle.’” (p. 13) Read the rest of this entry »

Montana has joined the short list of states that permit physician-assisted suicide . . . sort of.

It started with a court case brought by Robert Baxter when he was terminally ill with lymphocytic leukemia. His symptoms included infections, chronic fatigue, anemia, night sweats, nausea, massively swollen glands, digestive problems and generalized pain.

“I have lived a good and a long life, and have no wish to leave this world prematurely,” Baxter told the trial court back in 2008. “As death approaches from my disease, however, if my suffering becomes unbearable I want the legal option of being able to die in a peaceful and dignified manner by consuming medication prescribed by my doctor for that purpose.” Without court permission, Baxter’s doctor could not prescribe such a lethal dose without exposing himself to a charge of homicide.

The trial court granted Baxter’s petition—but tragically, not until the day he died.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Supreme Court is wrestling with a case involving a state-funded program of beach sand replenishment that’s threatening the property rights of private beach owners. But the conflict that gave rise to this case should never have arisen at all.

The lawsuit was brought by owners of beachfront property in Florida whose deeds include the beaches themselves. (That’s not always the case—in some states, private ownership of beaches is forbidden by state governments that declare them all public property.) Like many states, Florida has a program of beach replenishment to compensate for erosion from hurricanes and natural wave action. These programs pay for powerful dredging machines to pump new sand onto the beach at public expense.

The plaintiffs in the case (called Stop the Beach Renourishment Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection) object to the program because the new strips of sand become public property—raising the specter of sunbathers and surfers parading between the plaintiffs’ private houses and the ocean’s waves. The landowners say that’s a “taking” of private property by eminent domain, requiring a money payment to compensate for the diminished value of a beach subject to public access.

Notice how the beach replenishment program creates an insoluble conflict between property owners and taxpayers. The property rights of beach house owners—who presumably paid a premium for their own private stretch of beach—are violated when a public beach can be grafted by government fiat onto the shorelines of their property. But the property rights of all Florida’s citizens are violated when their money is taken to pay for beach replenishment, which is no part of a government’s proper functions.  Read the rest of this entry »

In a post of mine called “Eminent domain ‘abuse?,’” I wrote that eminent domain “has no place in a free society” and that it would be practical to build roads, bridges, and power lines without calling on government to seize land by force of law.

A reader challenged my position, noting that a private contractor who tried to build a road without eminent domain could not obtain the land at a price that would allow a profit. The closer he got to completion, the commenter worried, the higher the price each landowner would charge for the last pieces of the puzzle.

Here’s the kind of scenario this comment suggests. Suppose the New Road Company wants to build a highway from Point A to Point B. It starts quietly buying up plots of land along the planned route. After a year or so, however, word leaks out that millions of dollars have been invested in this route. The planned route is apparent from the locations of the properties being bought. And it’s obvious that the entire investment will become worthless unless the company can acquire a one-acre parcel owned by Joe Lucky, whose land offers the only practical entryway to Point B. “Kind of in a bind, aren’t you?” Joe says when the company’s representative comes calling. “Sure, I’ll sell my land–for $100 million.” The project collapses in debt, and the road never gets built. The implication is that modern transportation would grind to a halt without government’s power of eminent domain to seize property at lower-than-market prices.

Okay, let’s come back to reality. Consider the fact that successful developers are not idiots. No businessman with this little planning ability would ever be trusted with the millions necessary for such a project. On a free market, a typical developer would ensure (before spending millions on purchases) his ability to acquire the entire right-of-way for a reasonable price. How? One approach would make use of option contracts. In an option contract, a landowner agrees to sell his parcel of property for $X, but only if the developer can reach agreements with other owners permitting acquisition of the entire right-of-way for a reasonable price (that is, a price that will allow a profit). What’s more, a smart developer would be working on one or more alternative routes, to encourage price competition among landowners. No single landowner would be able to jack up his asking price arbitrarily, because the developer would never put himself in a position where he had to pay a price so high that profit became impossible.

The idea that public roads, built by eminent domain, are the only practical option for modern transportation is a myth that should long ago have been shattered. But we are too complacent. We sit idly in stopped traffic on inadequate highways and curse the rush hour, never imagining there could be a better option than a government monopoly built on coercion. Of course, a free market does not guarantee that every developer will invest his money wisely. Nor does it preclude the existence of landowners who refuse to sell at any price. The point is that on a free market, such people could do nothing to prevent others from making the necessary transactions to get roads built.

Just imagine, in this age of email, Internet, and FedEx, if someone argued that the only practical means of communicating across the American continent is through the federal government’s postal monopoly. That person would be laughed out of town. It’s high time people understood that not only communication but transportation can flourish under a regime of property rights and freedom of contract.

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