Category Archives: Private Property

The Private, Online Alternative To Gov.Con.

Government, Healthcare, Private Property, Socialism, Technology, The State

If you’re going to let the government herd you into Gov.Con., go to HealthSherpa.com to “Instantly compare premiums for health exchange plans.”

No, this simple, working site is not a government stopgap. “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work” explains why a command-and-control fix will always fail.

HealthSherpa.com was designed by “three 20-somethings.”

three young men from San Francisco, George Kalogeropoulos, Ning Liang, and Michael Wasser, did what the government has not been able to do: build an easy to use site where people across the country can get quotes and compare different health care plans through the federal exchange.

A couple of kids built the site the state could not build. It took them three days. It cost a few hundred dollars, while Gov.Con. contractors have conned the taxpayer out of half a billion dollars and counting. And the Gov.Con. site will likely never quite work. (What’s the incentive to get it to work? Close to none. Read why.)

UPDATED: WND & EPJ: Unfettered Market-Place Of Ideas (Knockout Reporting)

Free Markets, Free Speech, Journalism, libertarianism, Media, Private Property

THE WND EDITORIAL SPREAD SHOWCASES the site’s tradition of good, vibrant debate. Like it or not, WND is always at the forefront of journalism. Has been since the late 1990s. No censorship, no party-line to toe; just an unfettered market-place of ideas.

The caption places my weekly column’s case that, “Firearms are meant for self-defense, not needless killing”—a case that, if anything, bolsters the 2nd Amendment and the absolute right to self-defense—against Jeff Knox’s utilitarian argument for Esau’s way.

HuntWNDCapture

The libertarian equivalent of WND is Robert Wenzel’s lively EPJ. Robert is another editor who knows how to mix it up.

UPDATE: WND was first to “document [the] hundreds of examples of the Knockout Game around the country over the last two years.” Now Fox News is taking credit for being first to do journalistic diligence to this story. Not so.

UPDATED: Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work

Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Objectivism, Private Property, Republicans

“Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

At every opportunity, Jedediah Bila, a regular among the pig-ignorant panelists paraded on the Fox News and Business channels, parroted Bill O’Reilly’s “not ready for prime time” line. The premise of that fatuity is that given time, Obamacare could be readied for prime time.

A “scandal” bleated another cipher in a skirt—a Republican, naturally—about the error-riddled Obamacare website, when she should have been explaining that HealthCare.gov not working is no more a “scandal” than waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid, perpetrated by program administrators, program recipients, elected and unelected officials alike.

Failure and fraud is business as usual in government.

Liberals are incapable of grasping economic truths. That goes without saying. But why are “conservatives” every bit as dumb about the dynamics in a nationalized enterprise as opposed to the workings of a market society? Republicans appear incapable of articulating why it is that centrally planned systems fail.

The gold standard for stupid is this Republican riff: “Government would work much better if it were run like a business.” It is in violation of the Law of Identity. A is A. Things are what they are. Government is government; it is not business. The task of a rational man, advised Ayn Rand, is to perceive reality, not to create or invent it.

Rep. Fred Upton does Jedediah Bila one better. “Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars [have been] spent for a system that still does not work,” complained the Republican from Michigan.

Wrong. Government spends trillions of taxpayer dollars on systems that don’t work (the military included). That’s what government does by definition; by virtue of being government.

The problem is not so much the 55 contractors involved in designing Barack Obama’s signature Web portal, but the Central Planning Board that selected inept coders—and the kinky incentives to which any federal agency in charge will subject any and all contractors under its control.

The same web developers generally do a great job on each of our personal computers; in other words, when handling private property. If they don’t …

Read the complete column. “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work” is now on WND.

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UPDATE (10/24): To add to the litany in “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work,” show me a company in the private sector (which is not the recipient of government handouts) that is shielded from bankruptcy. An audit would reveal that most government departments, the Obamacare bureaucracy included, are insolvent. Yet the fact that the taxpayer is forced to bankroll them indefinitely with tax dollars, immunizes these systems against all forms of accountability, fiscal and other.

You have to be a dimwit to want care from such an establishment.

1-800-ObamaCare-Political con

Barack Obama, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Private Property

Wall Street Journal: “In an era where Google is making self-driving cars and Amazon offers next-day delivery for just about anything, the White House plunged ahead with a system it knew to be defective and is relying on the technology of the 19th century as the fall-back.”

As if government can ever be a source of innovation in delivering consumer products and services. Only in a profit-and-loss system, which in turn is predicated on the presence of private property, can consumers get what they want.

“Remember when Mr. Obama said you could keep your policy if you liked it?”

Insurance companies are also already sending out notices to millions of consumers cancelling individual policies because they are non-compliant with ObamaCare’s new mandates. Kaiser Health News, usually a cheerleader for the law, reports that “Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state.” Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people, Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20% of its individual market customers, and Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia is dropping about 45%.

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