Charlie Rose: “Define what libertarianism means to you” – Ron Paul: “The word I best describe it is something not a lot of people use. I call it non-intervention.”
Charlie Rose: “Non-intervention in personal life, non-intervention in foreign policy, non-intervention in…”
Ron Paul: “There it is. Because it’s sort of tells you what a conservative, a libertarian, constitutionalist, and liberal, classical liberalism has been used it’s closely aligned with libertarianism, but non-intervention as you say. I don’t want to interfere in your personal life. The one rule is you can’t hurt another person, that’s when government’s necessary.”
Ron Paul wants regulation by the market place. Fraud and many other things are not allowed.
Regulations become politicized.
We do not use prior restraint for speech. This would be censureship.
Prior restraint is to be avoided. In popular culture there is the fictional pre-crime in the Minority Report movie.
We can quickly stop the bad actors.
Allow corrections to happen. It is the only way to fix inbalances.
Points to consider:
No one has a right to medical care. If one assumes such a right, it endorses the notion that some individuals have a right to someone else’s life and property. This totally contradicts the principles of liberty.
If medical care is provided by government, this can only be achieved by an authoritarian government unconcerned about the rights of the individual.
Economic fallacies accepted for more than 100 years in the United States has deceived policy makers into believing that quality medical care can only be achieved by government force, taxation, regulations, and bowing to a system of special interests that creates a system of corporatism.
More dollars into any monopoly run by government never increases quality but it always results in higher costs and prices.
Government does have an important role to play in facilitating the delivery of all goods and services in an ethical and efficient manner.
First, government should do no harm. It should get out of the way and repeal all the laws that have contributed to the mess we have.
The costs are obviously too high but in solving this problem one cannot ignore the debasement of the currency as a major factor.
Bureaucrats and other third parties must never be allowed to interfere in the doctor/patient relationship.
The tax code, including the ERISA laws, must be changed to give everyone equal treatment by allowing a 100% tax credit for all medical expenses.
Laws dealing with bad outcomes and prohibiting doctors from entering into voluntary agreements with their patients must be repealed. Tort laws play a significant role in pushing costs higher, prompting unnecessary treatment and excessive testing. Patients deserve the compensation; the attorneys do not.
Insurance sales should be legalized nationally across state lines to increase competition among the insurance companies.
Long-term insurance policies should be available to young people similar to term-life insurances that offer fixed prices for long periods of time.
The principle of insurance should be remembered. Its purpose in a free market is to measure risk, not to be used synonymously with social welfare programs. Any program that provides for first-dollar payment is no longer insurance. This would be similar to giving coverage for gasoline and repair bills to those who buy car insurance or providing food insurance for people to go to the grocery store. Obviously, that could not work.
The cozy relationship between organized medicine and government must be reversed.
Early on medical insurance was promoted by the medical community in order to boost re-imbursements to doctors and hospitals. That partnership has morphed into the government/insurance industry still being promoted by the current administration.
Threatening individuals with huge fines by forcing them to buy insurance is a boon to the insurance companies.
There must be more competition for individuals entering into the medical field. Licensing strictly limits the number of individuals who can provide patient care. A lot of problems were created in 20th century as a consequence the Flexner Report (1910), which was financed by the Carnegie Foundation and strongly supported by the AMA. Many medical schools were closed and the number of doctors was drastically reduced. The motivation was to close down medical schools that catered to women, minorities and especially homeopathy. We continue to suffer from these changes which were designed to protect physician’s income and promote allopathic medicine over the more natural cures and prevention of homeopathic medicine.
We must remove any obstacles for people seeking holistic and nutritional alternatives to current medical care. We must remove the threat of further regulations pushed by the drug companies now working worldwide to limit these alternatives.
True competition in the delivery of medical care is what is needed, not more government meddling.
Ron Paul on Austrian Economics
Ron Paul: Well, I would think that the easiest explanation is that Washington, DC is permeated by Keynesian economic thinking. Very few even know the name of Austrian Economics and understand the business cycle. I was concerned about the building of the bubble since 1971 when gold was delinked from the dollar. So since that time, the bubble has been gradually being inflated, but it got out of hand in the 1990s as well as after 2000, Bernanke taking interest rates down to one percent.
To me, the biggest surprise, although I was very concerned in 2003, I was concerned before that, I was surprised it lasted to 2007. That’s when the bubble really burst, but it was amazing how long it last, and to me, the more amazing thing right now is not only has the financial system collapsed, which is very, very bad and very dangerous, I believe that we’re moving towards now is the collapse of the dollar, and the collapse of the dollar because it’s the international reserve currency, I think is going to be much worse than we have already witnessed.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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