What to do about the bird flu?
The latest statist fear mongering is centered around the so called possibility of a bird flu pandemic. Aside from this commentary by Steve Trinward over at The Medical Freedom Channel, the best response I've seen comes from Jorge, one of the co-conspirators over at Sunni Maravillosa's blog. In this post, I learned of Jorge's response to a Jacqueline Passey blog post on the subject. His response:
Yup, those are the only things the government can do that'll have any sort of positive effect.
What should the government do? In no particular order:
-- Eliminate patents which are an immoral grant of monopoly, thereby drastically lowering the cost of vaccines.
-- Eliminate the FDA (and equivalent agencies outside the US), thereby drastically reducing the cost of vaccines and drastically reducing the time to market.
-- Eliminate all licensing laws, thereby increasing the availability of medical personal, lowering the cost of services, and lowering the cost of infrastructure (by not requiring "licensed" electricians, plumbers, etc)
-- Eliminate all drug laws, including those requiring prescriptions for medication, that way people can medicate themselves if they choose, without wait for medical personal, and can get their vaccines from where ever they think best.
-- Eliminate all regulations for the medical, building and transportation (to name just there) industries, so that the necessary infrastructure can be built faster and more people can provide treatment.
-- Eliminate all taxes, thereby lowering the cost of vaccines, increasing the purchasing power of those who need the vaccines, making transportation and storage of the vaccines much cheaper as well. This will also make it cheaper for charities to purchase vaccines, to help those few who still cannot afford them.
-- Eliminate all immigration laws, including all types of visa requirements, thereby allowing medical and other workers to travel freely to where ever there services are needed.
If someone infects someone else, restitution is owed. Courts can also order a person confined if they pose an active threat to others.
Freedom is the answer. What is the question?
Yup, those are the only things the government can do that'll have any sort of positive effect.
posted by freeman at 10/24/2005 07:11:00 PM
3 Comments:
Since when is failure to respect intellectual property rights an indicium of a "freedom is the answer" policy?
Well, so-called intellectual property rights are not natural property rights. They amount to a state granted monopoly privledge (with all the inefficiencies and other problems associated with monopolies) that actually infringes rather than protects natural property rights.
Not only is a form of protectionism in that regard, but it is also a form of socialism when you consider the wealth distribution that results from them.
For these reasons, defenders of liberty refer to these bogus rights claims as being examples of socialism, or state capitalism.
Perhaps you should check out the resources provided by the Molinari Institute on the subject of intellectual property rights and why they actually violate liberty.
Not only do they violate liberty, but in the case of medicine they also threaten the lives of people who may otherwise benefit from cheap generics that are forcibly kept out of the marketplace by such corporate socialistic protectionism.
Additionally, Jorge wrote an extensive post on the issue of patents tonight in response to critics of his proposal to repeal patents. Click here to read it.
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