Monday, April 14, 2014

The Free Market vs. the Interventionist State

Richard Eleling emails:
I have a new article on the news and commentary website, "EpicTimes," on, "The Free Market vs. the Interventionist State."

I argue that more than twenty years after the fall of the socialist central planning ideal with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has still not escaped from the collectivist mentality.

What people call the "free market" in the United States and around the world is in fact the regulated economy -- the Interventionist State.

I explain the defining characteristics of a truly free market economy, as defined for example by the Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises. And I contrast this with the meaning of the Interventionist State under which we all live.

The Interventionist State distorts the economic activities of all those in society in various ways. But, in addition, it undermines human liberty in general, and breeds corruption, political abuse, and disrespect for the very notion of "the law."

But it need not be this way, and I try to explain why.

11 comments:

  1. -- What people call the "free market" in the United States and around the world is in fact the regulated economy -- the Interventionist State. --

    How many times in my many discussions with socialists have they required me to show an instance of a totally free-market while at the same time blaming the free market for the many economic downturns of the last 50 years. The lack of consistency with proggies and socialists is always to be expected.

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    1. Example of the free market? Garden of Eden. Dirty woman tricked man into eating an apple and serfdom followed.

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    2. Re: Jerry Wolfgang,

      -- Example of the free market? Garden of Eden. Dirty woman tricked man into eating an apple and serfdom followed. --

      Ah, so you decided to reply to someone, at last! Ah, good! It's a shame that you decided to say something as boring and pedestrian as the above.

      Anyway, this coming from the guy that said you could have overcrowding and overconstruction in the same sentence.

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    3. He also, many months ago, basically said the debt and the deficit are one and the same.

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  2. Free Market = Garden of Eden.

    Interventionist State = Fallen Man

    All caused by a woman. Note that interventionist state is called a nanny.

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    Replies
    1. Garden of Eden = no scarcity = communist fantasy

      Free market = real world

      JW = troll, basement dweller, sock puppet ravager

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    2. Re: Jerry Wolfgang,

      -- All caused by a woman. Note that interventionist state is called a nanny --

      So you decided to explain economics by using biblical references. Must be so lonely wherever you mind happens to be...

      By the way, there was no market in the Garden of Eden because there was (according to the myth) no scarcity. Instead, the Fall of Man would've made it imperative for man to produce and trade. But I should not be surprised about your twisted use of concepts when you were the one that said there could be overcrowding and overconstruction, in the same sentence.

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    3. This is not for Jerry since he's just a troll but for everyone else:

      Maybe you could say Eve was the first feminist. She decided to do it HER way and look what happened. ;)

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  3. The FDA Returns to Its Dark Ages


    Revisions responsive to some FDA concerns and meetings with senior FDA officials did not break the deadlock. I then went in to talk with Kessler, who initially defended the agency party line. For rhetorical purposes, I asked David if he wanted to revoke the HIV fast track, which he had no interest in doing. I then pressed him on the moral distinction between accelerating drugs for HIV patients but not for patients dying of cancer and other fatal diseases. Knowing David was a pediatrician, I also shamelessly included some devastating diseases of childhood.
    David had no answer to my morality question. His face softened, and he relented. In 1991 the FDA approved Genzyme’s Ceredase for a very rare fatal condition called Gaucher disease in a non-blinded trial of only 12 patients; the drug has allowed almost all patients to lead almost normal lives. In 1992 HHS substantially adopted the McIntosh plan and allowed accelerated approval of drugs for all life-threatening diseases.
    Unfortunately, the battle had only begun. The FDA’s lead examiner for the first drug to be approved under the accelerated approval regulations recommended against approval, but was overruled by a more senior official, Dr. David Finbloom. This pattern continued for many years with the same examiner and others putting up roadblocks against innovative therapies until Finbloom bulldozed through those roadblocks. As a result of his vision and determination, critically important new drugs for cancer, multiple sclerosis, and rare diseases became available to patients under the accelerated approval regulations. When David Finbloom died in 1999 , America lost one of its greatest patient advocates.
    In subsequent years the FDA continued to use the accelerated drug regulations for some cancer indications, but quietly retreated for most other diseases. Accelerated approval is broadly popular among patient groups, and Congress has tried to push the FDA back on the right track multiple times since the promulgation of the 1992 regulations. In 1997 and 2012 Congress codified and expanded FDA’s accelerated approval authority, but the agency has not fully implemented those statutes.
    In addition to not moving forward in the ways that Congress has mandated, the FDA keeps trying to defend its stubborn march back to its Dark Ages of drug approval.
    In short, the FDA insists on looking only at the risks of taking a drug, and only rarely considers the risks of not taking a drug. That bloodless philosophy rejects the lessons taught by the HIV activists and amounts to a death sentence for tens of thousands of Americans each year. Patients are increasingly up in arms.

    http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/fda-returns-its-dark-ages_786828.html?

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  4. Leaving aside the idiocy of people like Jerry Wolfgang, here is a perfect example of how government intervention not even meant to "keep us safe" but existing for some unfathomable reason, the FDA wants to make beer and whiskey makers to treat the spend grain normally sold directly to cattle and horse owners (at dirt-cheap cost) as if it were pet food, with the same level of cleanliness, which would mean the beer makers would either have to spend tons of money drying or packaging the feed, or landfill it. The new rule comes out of a new sweeping food safety law signed by - guess who??? - president Obama.

    Goes without saying that there is practically zero chance of spend grain being dangerous to cattle or humans. The practice of selling the spend grain to cattle ranchers has been going on for centuries. The government seems to know better - or rather, the CORN growers have a hand on these regulations. since spend grain competes directly with corn for cow feed.

    http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/fda-regulation-cow-happy-hour-105349.html

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