PrintDear Ruling Class: Learn about the Science of Reform
Our Canadian friends are concerned about their universal government monopoly health-care system. Most Canadians think reform is needed. However,
Attempts at reform have been routinely punished by anti-private care activists shouting warnings of “American-style, for-profit health care” and “there won’t be enough doctors and nurses for public health care if we allow privates” that have too often gone unchallenged.
General public opinion in Canada, according to Peter Menzies, is opposed to privatization because “we believe it would allow the rich to be better served.” Of course, the rich in Canada already get “better served” by going to the U.S. to get hip replacements.
Meanwhile in the UK, which launched its “free at the point of delivery” NHS right after World War II, experts agree that reform is needed. PM Sir Keir Starmer recently promised a 10-year reform plan, but “offered few details of the plan,” saying that the “previous Conservative government ‘broke the NHS’.” You’ll remember that the Brits celebrated the 70th anniversary of the NHS in the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony.
In the U.S., President Obama told us in 2009 -- as he was setting us up for Obamacare -- about a letter he got from a woman who wrote:
“I don’t want government-run health care, I don’t want socialized medicine, and don’t touch my Medicare.”
Yeah, I get it. Don’t expand the welfare state, but don’t touch my Medicare.
Here in Washington State this fall we have Initiative 2109 to repeal an “excise” tax that is really a capital gains tax. The official language on the initiative says
This measure would decrease funding for K-12 education, higher education, school construction, early learning, and childcare.
Of course it would! And probably put migrant children in cages.
But why? Why are all the great programs in crisis, and yet nobody does anything?
The answer lies in Law #4 of my Four Laws:
Government programs cannot work because government can never reform them.
Can’t reform? What is this? Isn’t modern government all about Reform?
No. Because “don’t touch My Medicare.” Instead, Kamala Harris is promising to reform Medicare by adding in-home senior care.
Can we agree, dear liberal friends, that my Law #4 is science? I’m not sure exactly what science. Perhaps it’s anthropology, for we know that hunter-gatherer tribes refuse to give up their land unless it is stolen by settler-colonialists. Perhaps it’s psychology, an archetype deep in the unconscious that makes us hang on to goodies given us by our feudal lord until the feudal lord is conquered by the Mongols. Who knows? But science it is.
Let’s review my other Four Laws.
- Four Laws: Socialism Cannot Compute Prices
Without prices the producers don't know what to produce
This is economic science, experts agree, created by Ludwig von Mises in 1920, and scientifically tested by social-scientist Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.
- Four Laws: The Man in Washington Cannot Outperform Consumers and Producers
Because there isn't enough bandwidth
This is economic science, experts agree, developed by Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek in the 1940s.
- Four Laws: Regulatory Capture
The regulators get captured by the people they regulate
This is economic science, experts agree, created by Nobel laureate George Stigler in 1971.
- Four Laws: Government Cannot Reform
“Don’t touch my Medicare.”
This is pure conjecture, developed by far-right prankster Christopher Chantrill, who is not a Nobel laureate.
Now I would say, dear liberal friends, that anyone that disagrees with the above laws is a science denier, straight up, especially since two of the lawgivers are Nobel laureates, and one of them should have been.
I have some questions for you, dear liberal friends, in the style of NYT heavyweight Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Please don’t take it personally.
Do you accept that socialism cannot work, because it cannot compute prices? Yes or No.
Do you accept that the administrative state cannot work, because bandwidth? Yes or No.
Do you accept that regulation cannot work because regulatory capture? Yes or No.
Do you accept that government programs cannot be reformed, because “don’t touch my Medicare?” Yes or No.
If you do not answer Yes to the four questions, dear liberal friends, I am afraid I am going to have to contact the Intelligence Community about an outbreak of Russian “disinformation.” Experts agree that if we don’t eliminate this sort of “disinformation” then “we lose total control.”
A century ago, when the Progressive world was new, all the best people fervently believed, with a saving faith, that the administration and regulation of a state by educated experts would bring us Heaven on Earth. But that was then, in the pre-history of the modern state, when intellectual cultists used to ignorantly recite the incantations of political shaman Karl Marx.
I hope that you, dear liberal friends, will now abandon your primitive shamanistic beliefs, and join us in the modern world of science and logic and reason.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
