I am currently debating a friend of mine about the theory of natural monopolies. He has an economics degree from NYU. I have a degree in marketing but, I also study the works of the Austrian School of Economics. Clearly, his credentials are greater than mine on this topic but, in this case, natural monopolies is a myth taught at schools across the country.

In this video, Thomas DiLorenzo debunks the myth of the natural monopoly. You can find his written research paper here provided by the Mises Institute. The theory of natural monopoly does not logically fit with fundamental laws of economics.

The most popular topic in the political world lately has been health care. I have tried to refrain from writing about it because of its charged nature.  However, I haven’t been completely quiet about the issue. I have my opinions and Facebook has seen quite a bit of it!

First off, I am competely against the bill and the idea of universal health care. There is no such thing as a good bill that is thousand pages long and there is no such thing as a well run government system. Those are both fairytales.

It is entirely ineffective that those on the side of the bill resort to name calling in the form of the Bush Administration’s tactic of calling critics unpatriotic and the Obama Administration’s tactic of calling critics racists. Both are unproductive and not what a debate is about.

As expected, those who want the bill passed don’t want a debate; they just pay lip service to the idea. The real debate is not whether we should have reform or not. No one disagrees that the current system is imperfect and needs to be reformed. However, reform is a vague term.

There is no guarantee that any old reform will make things better. Things aren’t so bad that there is no way the government can make it worse. We aren’t at rock bottom.

The real debate should be what kind of reform we should have. The only way we can have an intelligent debate on is if we understand what the problems are and not how to solve the symtoms.

The problem is not that we have an estimated 45 million uninsured people in the United States. Having health insurance and having health care is not the same thing. For whatever reasons, we have become conditioned to believing that the two terms are interchangeable. It is how the media talks about it and it is how the politicians talk about it.

The underlying problem with health insurance is that we are insuring every medical procedure under the sun. It doesn’t matter if its a check up, a cold, cancer, or broken bones. The system insures it all. This is not the case in any other insurance industry. No one buys car insurance to cover oil changes and tune-ups. We don’t buy house insurance for carpet stains.

Insurance is to insure us from large, catastrophic events. If you break a bone, you could use insurance. If you want to insure against getting cancer, you should get insurance. If you have a cold, you should not be using insurance.

The only thing that happens when we insure everything is we increase costs with paperwork and allow doctors to charge the absolute maximum price because the consumer doesn’t pay for it out of pocket. When was the last time you went to the doctor and cared how much your visit cost? You only cared about the deductible because it comes directly out of your pocket at the time of the visit.

When you don’t know the price and don’t care what the price is, there is no reason for you to shop around for the best value. The system itself perpetuates higher prices indefinitely with no end in sight. Even while technological improvements should be reducing the price of medicine, costs are still increasing.

This doesn’t make any sense.

In every other field, technology brings prices down. How can it be that technology increases prices in medicine? How can streamlining the process cause prices to increase? If it weren’t for technological advances, prices would be even higher!

Now, why is it that health insurance companies don’t operate more like auto and home insurance companies? It is certainly not because the consumer is demanding that health care operate this way. Once upon a time, people did go visit doctors and knew what they were paying per visit.

Insurance didn’t always cover everything under the sun. The culprit is the government. They have created an environment where it is better for the insurance companies to cover everything. They have made it so that it is more expensive for individuals to buy insuranace and given companies tax breaks for providing employees with insurance. So, if you lose or switch your job, you lose your insurance. What sense does that make?

If there was no cost benefit for getting our health insurance from our jobs, we wouldn’t do it that way! It isn’t more convenient and doesn’t provide us with more freedom.

They have disallowed us from buying insurance across State lines. If an insurance company two States over offers a better plan for you and they are willing to serve you, why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so? I’m not saying it will be cheaper or better but, why don’t we have the option? The only ones who knows what’s best for us, is us.

It is economic law that competition drives down prices and creates greater value for consumers. Politically creating monopolies for local insurance companies do not benefit us.

While a group of people have decided to boycott Whole Foods‘ for John Mackey’s OpEd in the WSJ, he brings up very good points as to what the real health care debate should be. Not all of his recommendations may be right. His system at Whole Foods might not work everywhere–which should tell you that any national system would also fail–but, at least he is presenting real debate points.

Instead of just towing party lines.

There is no doubt we need health care reform. I don’t believe we need Obama’s reform. I would go as far as to say that it will make things worse. Until we are willing to have a real debate on the issue, we will never have reform that doesn’t need to be forced down the throats of Americans.

Unbeknownst to me, women were marching topless in Central Park on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009. I support their cause because this is an issue of Liberty. I like breasts as much as the next guy and I hardly believe any man would be too opposed to women walking around topless. Now, not all women are equal and there are breasts that we want to look at that those that we’d rather not. Different people like different things. But, the point isn’t whether men like breasts or not.

This is an issue of Liberty.

Because of that, it doesn’t matter if your breasts or young and perky or old and saggy. There should be no reason why women or men should not be allowed to walk around topless or even bare naked. As long one is out in a public place, there is no legitimate reason to disallow anyone from presenting themselves in any way they wish.

If one is on private property and the owner of the property doesn’t want it, they can ask that you be clothed and in the same light, if they allow you to be naked, you can be naked within their property.

There are some who believe this is wrong as the Daily News article quoted:

“This is extreme liberalism and why America’s in decline,” shouted one woman, who said she was a doctor but declined to give her name. “It’s degrading to women to tell them to expose their breasts publicly.”

America is in decline for many reasons–none of which is due to excess Liberty. The women’s opinion is as valid as anyone else’s opinion. Other women might say its degrading to tell them to hide their breasts in public! Is there something wrong with breasts? Why should women be forced to hide them? All such opinions are valid. The beauty of Liberty is that nothing is judged on opinions. It is a matter of property rights. We own our bodies and if we want to put clothes on it, we can; if not, we should also be allowed to do so.

The opinions of the majority change with the times. Natural rights do not.

France has a law that specifically states women are allowed to be topless. While I agree with the idea of the law, I do not support having a law that tells us what we can do. A system of governance that starts writing laws for what we are allowed to do is a bad precedence. We should be allowed to do whatever we want as long as no one else’s Liberty is violated.

While I have no intention of telling my mother, sister, cousins, girlfriend, or friends to go walk around topless–nor do I want to see all of that, it doesn’t give me the right to tell them they can’t do it. Whether I like it or not is irrelevant. We have no right to control another person’s Liberty.

That’s what this issue should be about. It isn’t about whether women should bare their breasts in public or not. It is about whether we live in a nation founded on Liberty or not.

Almost everything the government has done to rescue our faltering economy has been kicking it while it is down. From the bailouts to the stimulus packages to cap and trade and universal health care bills, it is a miracle the economy is functioning at all. It is crazy to criticize saving the economy, the environment, and improving the standard of living for Americans so that is not what I’m doing. I want the economy to come back, the environment to be clean, and the standard of living to be high.

The disconnect is that while the government says they want to do all those good things, they will end up accomplishing the opposite.

I’ve talked plenty about how the government’s attempts at rescuing the economy is the equivalent of giving a drug addict more drugs, how man-made climate change is a load of crap, and how the problem with healthcare is the excessive amount of government involvement. So, I won’t beat a dead horse. I will instead tackle another unpopular topic: the minimum wage.

If it was up to me, the minimum wage would be $0. The minimum wage is promoted as a means to create wealth equality and provide all Americans with a livable income but, the reality is nothing that is promoted. A minimum wage keeps more workers out of work.

The government is essentially saying that if you do not have the skills to warrant whatever the minimum wage is, you should not work. Sound backwards? It’s not. There is no reason for a company to hire you for $7.25 to do a job that is worth much less. So where there was a chance for people without skills to take a lower wage to learn the skills so that they can get ahead in life, the government takes it away.

If you made some wrong decisions or life just threw you a bad hand, you no longer have the means to work your way up. The government eliminated the steps at the bottom of the ladder and if you can’t jump high enough to reach the new bottom, you are screwed. To fix this unemployment problem, the government puts a band-aid over it by offering welfare for the people the government put out of work! How grand.

To compound the problem, the government via the Federal Reserve inflates the money supply to fund all their welfare/warfare projects and our cost of living goes up. To solve this problem, the government raises the minimum wage because it is now more expensive to live. The increased minimum wage puts more workers out of work and the government needs to offer more welfare by printing, borrowing, or taxing and the cost of living goes up more! This is the vicious cycle created by government and further made worse by more government intervention.

No one in Congress is going to vote no to the increase in the minimum wage because it is politically unpopular–except Ron Paul and a few others who understand economics and unintended consequences.

No one wants to see the actual picture of what the minimum wage does. When people criticize the minimum wage and call for its abolition–like myself–we are labeled as monsters who do not care about the poor. I am not multi-millionaire and I don’t make that much money. I just understand economics. I don’t care about the poor as much as I care about myself–I won’t lie about it.

I find little wrong with putting yourself, family, and friends first before random strangers. It is terrible that people are living in poverty but I am not so far away that the policies I support will benefit me at the expense of the poor. It will benefit everyone.

It is an economic lie that the minimum wage is good for the economy. If the minimum wage can solve our poverty problems, why not just make it $100/hr and everyone would be rich! Obviously, we can see that it would be disastrous and practically everyone will be out of a job or prices will be sky high for everything.

So as usual, the government is kicking the economy while it is down with this minimum wage increase.

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Honestly, I don’t know much about Chuck Norris outside of the Chuck Norrisisms and the movies that I’ve seen. It was a very pleasant surprise when I found this. Chuck Norris writes an intelligent piece advocating the abolition of the Federal Reserve or at least the passing of HR 1207–Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Bill.

Last week, the Senate blocked the bill even before it was introduced on the floor under “procedural grounds”. What the hell is that?

The truth of the matter is that the leaders in the Senate do not want the Federal Reserve audited. It is their “cash cow” so to speak. The Federal Reserve doesn’t make money the way the rest of us do, they make money by literally “making” it with paper and printing presses. This is good for the politicians who want their programs funded, bad for the rest of us.

Norris quotes Henry Ford on the banking and monetary system–controlled by the Fed–of the United States:

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

I believe that the nation would be in revolution if we all knew the reality of the Federal Reserve and how they manipulate our monetary system. So let’s inform the people!

In the many efforts to close the budget gap in New York, Governor Patterson is proposing to free the sale of wine to supermarkets. It is unfortunate that this only being discussed now that the government needs money. There are no good reasons why supermarkets aren’t allowed to sell wine now. Ideally, any store that wants to sell wine should be allowed to.

Why do wine and liquor stores get a monopoly? We know that monopolies are bad. The more competition there is in the market, the better it will be for the end consumer–us.

I’ve seen little flyers at my local supermarket in support of this and I’ve heard the arguments against it. Those against the freeing of wine sales have a weak case at best.

“In addition to charging grocery stores franchise fees of varying amounts for the right to sell wine, it would nearly triple the excise tax on wine sales and eliminate financing for the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, a trade group.”

An increase in excise taxes is a bad thing but the elimination or reduction of government financing for the New York Wine and Grape Foundation is perfectly fine. Why do they need subsidies in the first place? If the foundation cannot exist without government aid then it shouldn’t exist at all. The active participants in the wine industry can maintain their own foundation.

As a consumer, I would love it if I could buy wine at my local supermarket. However, I wouldn’t expect any specialty wines at a supermarket. There will always be a market for specialty wine and liquor stores. It will likely be a smaller market and their business models may have to change but, that is how business is. There is never a guarantee that your market will stay the same forever nor a guarantee that you will stay in business forever.

The mere fact that the government grants wine stores a monopoly on the sale of wine makes consumers worse off. The availability of wine will increase and the price will decrease. This is better for the wine industry as a whole as the market will expand.

“A coalition known as the Last Store on Main Street, representing 2,742 New York wine sellers and liquor store owners, says the move would force more than 1,000 such stores out of business and lead to a loss of more than 4,000 jobs.”

Those who lose their jobs due to this can find jobs elsewhere. There is no reason why millions should suffer just because thousands will lose their jobs. The benefit to society is greater than the loss.

“I’m a parent,” he said. “For the 25 years I’ve been in business, I’ve been extremely conscious of people who try to buy liquor when they’re not legally entitled to it. So I’m concerned kids might be able to get alcohol more easily. I don’t want those kids on the road.”

The argument of an increased sale of alcohol to minors is asinine. Supermarkets already sell beer and card their patrons. The process of the sale of beer can just as easily be applied to the sale wine. This is clearly a moot point. Ideally, there would be no age restriction on the purchase of alcohol but, this is the society we live in.

“And are more people going to drink more wine just because it’s in a grocery store? I don’t think so,” Mr. Massoud said. “I think the demand is finite.”

That is just a gross misunderstanding of economics. Demand is always infinite. It is supply and price that keeps demand in check. We always want more things. If prices are lowered, demand will go up. It is an absolute certainty that more people will drink wine if it was more widely available and cheaper.

It is about time NY got rid of the wine monopoly. It will be better for all of us.

I finished reading Tom Wood Jr.’s book, Meltdown, a while ago and I loved it. Tom does a fantastic job of explaining sound economics in layman’s terms. Anyone can understand what he is saying and his explanations of what is going on in the current economic crisis and previous depressions.

Tom is entertaining and informative in this 50 minute speech. You need to watch this!

Politicians love comparing the Great Depression to what is going on today. The reality is that it will never be as bad as it was in the 1930’s. Not because we have such great government institutions in place to make sure something so devastating never occurs again–in fact, we have the opposite in place–but, technology and the free market has improved everyone’s lives so greatly that it would be very difficult to literally relive the 1930’s.

There may be comparable numbers in terms of relative stock market losses, unemployment, etc. but, we still have the technology that we didn’t have back then. No matter what happens, unless we go back to the stone age, we are going to live through this depression in a much more comfortable state.

Now that we have put things into perspective, the heads of state attending the G20 Summit in London are using the threat of a world wide Greater Depression to further undermine people’s Liberties and make the situation worse for the masses. Obama is pitching his monkey-devised economic rescue plan to the world in hopes that everyone will adopt it.

I plea to the rest of the world to ignore what Obama has to say. He is either intentionally trying to feed poison to a weakened world economy or he has no economic understanding–either one is bad for all of us.

“We cannot afford half-measures and we cannot go back to the kind of risk-taking that leads to bubbles that inevitably burst,” he (Obama) said Wednesday.

This line is mostly meaningless. Who is taking risks? What the hell are half-measures? Obama has never said anything meaningful so this is certainly not something new. He is all about vague ideas of hope and change. Obama’s economic stimulus plan is an economic disaster.

The stock markets have rallied in the past week. Some people may call this the beginning of the new bull and that we’ve hit a bottom. It could be possible but, that is highly unlikely. The more likely scenario is that this is a bear market rally.

The sad reality is that ever nation at the G20 has the same plan. They want to argue over how much regulation here and there but, the ideas are all the same. They want to pump in enormous amounts of money into the economy. It doesn’t take an economic genius to understand that you cannot solve the problem of too much spending and credit with even more spending and credit.

However, it is the economic geniuses who will tell you we need to spend more and go deeper into debt to solve the problem of being in too much debt! There is no financial wizardry that makes this a workable solution. Natural laws cannot be defied by government!

The entire G20 hocus-pocus is to make it look like world leaders are doing something to save the world economy from ruin. There is nothing they can do that they also like to solve or mitigate the problem. The real solution is to shrink the size of government all over the world. Politicians don’t like to do that. Why would they want to take power away from themselves?

The real point of the G20 Summit is about how governments around the world can make this economic crisis worse.

This isn’t really a versus, it is more a verbal beat down from Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for South East England, to Britian’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. The man speaks truth to power and tells it like it is.