Donovan for Liberty

“State policymakers should review current and proposed licensure schemes to determine whether they truly serve the public or instead fence out competition.  As millions of Americans struggle to find productive work, one of the quickest ways legislators could help would be to reduce or remove needless licensure burdens.”[1]

 “License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing documents the license requirements for 102 low- and moderate-income occupations—such as for barbers, massage therapists and preschool teachers—across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. From this wealth of data, we found that occupational licensing is not only widespread, but also overly burdensome and frequently irrational.”[2]

“…Maryland county officials for shutting down an unlicensed lemonade stand and fining the children who operated it $500.  As Jason explained, that kind of tyranny will persist until judges “become more engaged in deciding constitutional cases instead of deferring reflexively to the supposed wisdom of legislators and regulators.”[3]

Whether we are talking about food trucks, lemonade stands, day care providers, interior designers, doctors, barbers, or beauticians, government licensing tells Americans we don’t have enough sense to figure things our for ourselves.  In fact, all government licensing is little more than the few people in the government telling millions of Americans that government knows what is best for us.

Government doesn’t trust us to decide where we get value for our hard earned money.  Instead, government forces free Americans to ask permission to engage in business.  They tell us there is no one outside of government capable of making a logical judgment about what we consume, who we hire, and how we operate our tools, our vehicles, and our business.  Do you actually think the same government that consistently brings us endless traffic jams, poor school performance, a failed economy, massive debt, impenetrable tax codes, war, prisons, and executions is really capable of making the correct choice of a hair stylist for us?

“…cosmetologists need 10 times the training as emergency medical technicians (EMTs), who literally hold lives in their hands. Yet that is what most states require. In fact, 66 occupations face greater average licensing burdens than EMTs.”[4]

Government offers what it calls protection, but what it accomplishes is a violation of our basic rights to freedom of contract, freedom of association, and freedom of trade.  Worse yet, Americans have become used to accepting this faulty logic and to further trusting government despite government’s long track record of cronyism, corruption, tyranny, and failure.

“Irrational and overly burdensome licensing laws do not protect public health and safety. They keep some people out of work so those with licenses face fewer competitors and can command higher prices. That is why consumers rarely advocate for licensing laws, but industry insiders do.”[5]

So what is it, do we have freedom of choice or not?

Let’s stop trusting government and stop being so afraid of letting freedom win.

MORE ON ECONOMIC LIBERTY

• The Institute for Justice, www.ij.org

VIDEO

• “I am IJ: 20 Years Litigating for Liberty”             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po9O_XNT0ug

“Capitalism is either a viable economic system or it is not.  An active policy of government intervention in a free market business system is a contradiction in terms.  Trades of private property are either voluntary or they are not.  One cannot legislate the free market or create competition.  To have a free market the government must leave the markets alone.  To have the state make markets free is again a contradiction in terms.  Critics of antitrust policy who pretend to be concerned with the free enterprise system have either not realized or have refused to realize this fundamental issue.

Is there business monopoly in the present economic system?  Of course there is – government favors, privileges, patents, subsidies, tariffs, and franchises can and do allow certain corporations to hold and to employ monopoly power, i.e. governmental power for economic advantages.   Such “plutocratic devices” as William Graham Sumner termed them, are the essence of monopoly and they are absolutely improper in a free market system and should be ended.  The monopolies of the FCC, the CAB, and the ICC maintain could not last a day without government support, but this kind of monopoly has nothing directly to do with antitrust.  Antitrust supposedly was aimed at free market monopoly problems and the marginal competitive problems that would arise when business was left to pursue its own self-interest.  Yet ironically the essence of the monopoly in the market place is governmental.  Certain elements of the business community have never desired free competition and the uncertainties and irrationalities often associated with it.  They have sought and gained economic subsidy and protection through the political system.  They have been anxious to use the government to regulate competition because it was supposedly tending toward monopoly.  Antitrust therefore, may be an even bigger hoax than anyone has imagined.“ - The Myths of Antitrust, later revised and  published as Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure, by Dominick  Armentano https://mises.org/store/Antitrust-and-Monopoly-P296C1.aspx

“The rhetoric and imagery of American antitrust law has always been procompetition and proconsumer. However, the reality has always been the opposite. As demonstrated by Dominic Armentano, Tom DiLorenzo, and others, it has been not only a pervasive violation of property rights but also anticompetition and anticonsumer.

Antitrust keeps superior products and marketing strategies from harming rivals, but since every innovation that benefits consumers takes business away from rivals, halting such innovation harms consumers. It inhibits superior firms from passing on their efficiencies to consumers in lower prices; it does so by restricting their ability to cut prices for some (without enabling them to raise prices for others), or by invoking the mythical bogeyman of predatory pricing. It also restricts their growth, even when consumers will be better served by moving more production into the hands of lower cost firms. And the list goes on.” - Revealing the Reality of Antitrust, by Gary Galles,  http://mises.org/daily/4864/

CHUCK’S COMMENTS

Americans fear monopolies.  They are told that greedy, profit-centered, unscrupulous business owners are out to hurt consumers.  Their evil plan is to reduce prices in order to lure in consumers and to simultaneously destroy competitors who get damaged by unsustainable financial losses.  Eventually the competition is crushed and consumers are at the mercy of any price the monopolist decides to charge.

That is the myth.

Reality is quite different.  There has never been such an event.

“It is an ‘economic unicorn’.” – Joe Salerno, ‘The Myths of Anti-trust’ 40th Anniversary

America’s so-called Anti-trust Laws do nothing to protect consumers.  In fact, they hurt consumers and protect competitors who cannot keep up with better run, more efficient, and higher quality companies.

Government tells us Anti-trust laws are for consumer protection, but such laws violate business freedom of trade, association, and contract.  They damaging to the market and to consumers.

The real monopoly Americans should fear is government.  Government continuously violates our freedoms of choice and trade, violently cuts out their competition, forces us to buy their overpriced “products”, and viciously increases prices and costs to all Americans.

Let’s stop trusting government to save us from the lower prices businesses want to offer to us.  We should not be afraid to let freedom win.

MORE ON ANTITRUST

• Monopoly, Competition, and Antitrust, Thomas J. DiLorenzo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBYopktmL6Y
• Revealing the Reality of Antitrust, Mises Daily: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 by Gary Galles, http://mises.org/daily/4864/

VIDEO

• Dominick Armentano: The Case for Repealing Antitrust Laws http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBT-fnJsfo0
• Dominick T. Armentano on Antitrust and Monopoly – (3 Parts) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA16PlnwRLQ

 AUDIO (Podcast)

• ‘The Myths of Anti-trust’ 40th Anniversary, Presented at the Austrian Economics Research Conference. 23 March 2013 at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.                                                                http://mises.org/media/7912/The-Myths-of-Antitrust-40th-Anniversary

Americans all talk about problems with healthcare.  Among the topics included in our discussion are regulations, entitlements, costs, patient choices, and personal responsibility.  Below are a few facts in regards to Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA’s), and personal Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s).  These are two choices Americans have when it comes to their healthcare planning.  However, these choices are heavily regulated and are facing significant modifications under Obamacare.

I have said many times that we have made a complex mess of things and therefore the solutions are complex.  It will take the accomplishment of many tasks to improve healthcare.  Continued increases in the cost of healthcare and difficulties with access to it are caused by many factors including but not limited to: government regulation, government intervention, collusion between the AMA and the government that effectively reduces the supply of healthcare providers, collusion between hospitals and government that reduces healthcare locations, collusion between insurance companies and government that reduces competition in healthcare insurance, a bureaucratic “bottleneck” called the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) that effectively protects big pharmacy companies while reducing innovation and limiting patient access to new and improved drugs, and let’s not forget the effect of government monetary policy on healthcare prices.  That is not a complete list, but does anybody else see a common thread there?

Government’s rules, regulations, programs, and ultimately their badges, guns and jails, are the negation of freedom.  Let’s stop being enamored with government “solutions” to the healthcare challenge.  Government is not the solution.  Government is at the root of the problem.

Don’t be afraid to let freedom win.

HEALTHCARE FACTS

• The average flexible spending account holder loses $138 dollars each year to the use-it-or-lose-it rule, according to Natasha Rankin, executive director of the Employers Council on Flexible Compensation (http://www.ecfc.org).  That isn’t much, but it is a disincentive for those who would rather be saving for future medical needs.  http://ebn.benefitnews.com/podcasts/5-end-year-tips-avoid-fsa-losses-2729660-1.html
• FSAs are not just for “the rich”.  They are used primarily by the working middle class.  The median income of FSA participants is approximately $55,000.  From the Employers Council on Flexible Compensation (ECFC) MEMBER TOOLKIT, July 14, 2009, http://www.ecfc.org/files/ECFC_Save_My_Flex_Plan_Member_Toolkit.doc
• A 65-year-old couple retiring in 2012 is estimated to need $240,000 to cover medical expenses throughout retirement, according to the latest retiree health care costs estimate calculated by Fidelity Investments.^® This represents a 4 percent increase from last year, when the estimate was $230,000. http://www.fidelity.com/inside-fidelity/individual-investing/retiree-health-care-costs-2012
• The total number of HSA accounts rose to more than 8.2 million with assets totaling $15.5 billion, a year over year increase of over 22% for accounts and a 27% increase in assets for the period from December 31^st, 2011 to December 31^st, 2012. [1]
• HSA investment growth accelerates.  HSA investment assets reached an estimated $1.7 billion in 2012, a 55% increase since the end of 2011. The average investment account holder has an $8,918 average total balance (deposit and investment account), almost 4 times the average accountholder balance.  [1]
• Average account balance steadily grows. The average account balance at the end of 2012 grew to $1,879 from $1,807 at the end 2011, a 4% increase.  When you eliminate identified zero balance accounts that average rises to $2,283, a 7% year over year increase.[1]

• ---

  [1]  January 29th, 2013 | Health Savings Accounts Grow to $15.5 Billion in 2012
http://www.devenir.com/2013/health-savings-accounts-grow-to-15-5-billion-in-2012


It seems no matter where you turn somebody is saying that old stuff is gone, new stuff is here to stay.  Cell phones are here, there is no room for phones wired into our walls.  Electronic publications are here and paper documents will soon be a thing of the past.  The Internet is here, and the days of libraries are numbered.  It has always been like this.  When radio came along people thought it would be the end of music.  When records came along people thought it was the end of radio.

And so it goes.

In military planning there is a nearly endless list of things that were supposed to be long ago made useless by new technology and new tactics.  In the 1980’s I flew a fighter jet designed in the late 1950’s that did not incorporate a gun because guns were supposedly made obsolete by guided missiles.  Then the Vietnam experience taught the world that fighter jets must have guns.  Today all new fighter jets have guns in them.  Down on the ground, is there any doubt that our war experience in the Middle East has taught us a thing or two about what is obsolete?

Now comes a discussion about the aircraft carrier.  Is the carrier obsolete?  It certainly is big and very, very expensive.  Does it have a place in today’s military world?

The report that caught my attention is titled “At What Cost A New Carrier”[1].  As you read these few excerpts, keep in mind that navy commanders have always had to contend with guns on the shore.  It is easier to place a bigger gun on the beach than the gun you place on the moving deck of a boat.  Get the boat too close to the guns on the beach, and your boat is at risk of being sunk.  If you don’t have the ability to fight your way past the shore artillery then your navy cannot project power to the enemy’s land assets.  That’s naval warfare101.

Ground based anti-ship missiles such as China’s DF-21D[2] could reach out and touch a carrier long before the newest planned strike aircraft, the F-35, will be within range of land targets.

“China could build 1,227 DF-21Ds for every carrier the United States builds going forward.”[1]

There is of course the question in any military of how to spend your military dollars.

“…life-cycle cost of an F/A-18 Hornet, that works out to $7.5 million per bomb. That is quite substantial when compared with the precision-strike Tomahawk cruise missile, which each cost a conservative $2 million.  …To achieve the same return on investment as the Tomahawk, Hornets would have needed to fly nearly four times the number of sorties and drop 100,000 air-to-ground weapons.”[1]

That puts it into perspective.  Those sexy “Top Gun” scenes are a lot more expensive than they looked before I knew this.

Time is also an issue.  To produce one carrier pilot a college graduate must make it through officer training and at least 2 years of flight training before actually getting into a combat unit onboard a carrier.

“The inefficiency of manned aviation, with its massive fiscal overhead of training, pilot currency and maintenance, is rapidly outpacing its utility.”

The question remains what we expect our Navy to do.

“The U.S. Navy must be ready to support the nation’s interests. It must commit itself to developing the reliable means to conduct precise, limited strikes on strategic targets such as leadership facilities, power relay stations or water treatment plants. After 100 years, the carrier is rapidly approaching the end of its useful strategic life. As arrows shot by English longbow men at Agincourt supplanted knights in armor on the battlefields of Europe and were in turn overtaken by muskets and cannon, the one constant in warfare is change. To continue to invest in aircraft carriers at this stage, to believe that the USS Ford, with a service life of 50 years, can see the carrier through to a 150-year life unchallenged upon the high seas smells of hubris. Advancements in surveillance, reconnaissance, global positioning, missiles and precision strike all signal a sea change in not only naval warfare, but all forms of warfare.”

The author is quite correct that we need to carefully consider further committing to the carrier as our naval centerpiece.  However, we also have to maintain a balanced approach.  Shore strikes are not the only thing navies do.  Future battles on the high seas are not out of the question and our carriers remain dominant in that part of the battle space.

When I was a young Marine Officer Candidate in training we had to have memorized answers ready for questions our instructors would snap at us.  I remember one particularly well.  “What is the most deadly weapon on the battlefield?”  The required answer was, “A Marine Corps rifleman and his rifle, sir.”  If you haven’t thought about it the first impression might be one of indoctrination.  Take another look at that answer.  The fact is that you haven’t finished a war until you have put your infantry, rifles in hand, on the enemy’s real estate.

What does this all mean?  Is the carrier dead?  I think the aircraft carrier has probably seen its zenith as a capital ship, but its usefulness remains and will remain long into the future.  Will its role be different?  Of course it will, but just as you have to commit your infantry to step onto the enemy’s real estate, you are going to have to commit your aircrew to the enemy’s skies.  Certainly there is a place for the carrier to launch and recover those assets in any future scenario.

Affording it is another question, especially for our already bankrupt United States.

The bottom line is that war is an ugly, violent, bloody business.  Don’t be fooled by terms like “surgical strike”.  War means killing, getting killed, and generally getting your hands quite dirty.  Don’t get involved in war unless you are ready to pay a big price and you are ready to finish it.  Also, don’t ever think that the enemy will cooperate with you.  None of your war plans will survive contact with the enemy.  There are no rules in war except that people will continue to die and the national treasury will continue to hemorrhage massive amounts of cash long after you have either won or lost.

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.” – Edward Gibbon, author of the 6 volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published 1776 and 1788

CHUCK’S COMMENTS FROM A LIBERTARIAN PERSPECTIVE

A few days ago I saw something that initially made me laugh out loud.  Then it made me angry because it is not only true, it is also dangerous.  Here is the quote on the back of a car with an NRA sticker on it.

“Next time there is a terrorist attack in the US, remember the government watches me with a drone.”

Think of this quote as you watch my recommended video below where an excited engineer shows off the capability of his drone sensor.

The government never keeps its emphasis on the things where it is needed.  Its emphasis goes only where politically feasible.  For example, drug raids don’t go where the drugs are, they go were the neighborhood has the least political pull.

Our elected so-called representatives are mostly interested in only two things, money and votes for their next campaign.  That is their goal and their limitation.

The only check on government is how we voters respond to the government.  If we quietly accept being monitored, catalogued, spied upon, regimented, and invaded by SWAT teams, the government will continue to do those things to us.  Complain about those things loud enough, and the government will clean up its act.

How the government monitors us is up to you.  Are you afraid of letting freedom win?

VIDEOS TO SEE


You will be amazed what the government can now monitor and store in its massive memory banks.  It looks like the movie “Minority Report” has almost come true.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=QGxNyaXfJsA&feature=player_embedded

“Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet”

• http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/03/13/matt-ridley
• Inconvienent FACTS about the benefits of carbon.

 AUDIO TO LISTEN TO

“E-Verify and National I.D.”, the Cato Daily Podcast for 3/12/2013

• http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-podcast/e-verify-national-id
• The next time you hear someone saying we need to do something about immigration, remember that the government e-verfied Chuck Donovan after 24 years with the same company and 7 years as a U.S. Marine Corps Officer and Fighter/Attack pilot.

“911 Didn’t Change Everything”, the Lew Rockwell Podcast for 3/12/2013

• http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2013/03/12/355-911-didnt-change-everything/
• The next time the government tells us they have to take away a little of our freedom in order to give us more security, don’t believe them.