Centrally Planned Scarcity

Barack Obama, Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Political Economy, Regulation

In a free market, consumers direct supply and demand. And in a free market, increased demand leads to increased supply, as producers compete with one another to meet the demand.

We are being told that there is a “shortage of crucial medicines including cancer drugs,” and that “President Barack Obama on Monday signed an executive order aimed at remedying the shortage.”

Remedying? Really? At least one of Mr. Obama’s regulatory sleights of hand will increase the scarcity it seeks to remedy: hounding drug sellers for “charging exorbitant prices for scarce medicines.” High prices for scarce goods are what help to harmonize supply and demand.

Alas, “You can’t fix stupid”. The reported shortages in 178 drug—most involving older, generic, cancer drugs administered by injection, as well as antibiotics to treat infections and nutritional drugs for patients who can’t eat—would have been rectified in an unimpeded market:

The shortfall of supply has obviously followed a sudden urgent demand for these drug. Large demand and short supply would initially send the prices of these drugs rocketing. Profits in an unhampered pharmaceutical market would signal to the many drug makers that it’s time to enter into production.

Mr. Obama, however, has taken further action to shortcircuit the street signs of the market—profits.

When there is a shortage of a good in a highly regulated market such as ours, it is safe to say that it is a result of government incursion into the economy. Somethings gets between the market and the consumer—in the case of these drugs, the culprits are Food and Drug Administration regulations and the patent system, which gives a drug company a lengthy monopoly over manufacturing.

UPDATED: Snarling Sister Is Back, In Time for Halloween (Winnie Mandela/Madam Obama)

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Conflict, Critique, Politics, Racism

Michelle Obama has managed to lie low since the times I described her as “Militant Mama Obama” (February 22, 2008). In that column, I ventured that, “If anything, her charmed life has made Michelle Obama more racially militant.” As the woman complained in a blatantly banal university thesis, “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before.”

But she’s back!

The Washington Times has details of the strategy undergirding M’s latest moaning:

… She will go to the opulent homes of rich people across the country to tell them how rich people are to blame for America’s woes and guilt them into giving millions for her husband’s campaign. … [How] rich people (white, of course) certainly don’t want black people to succeed. They want to squelch success based on what people look like, how much money they have. … And the Princeton graduate will tell supporters they simply can’t comprehend the significance of what’s occurring today in America. ‘It can be hard to see clearly what’s at stake – because these issues are so complicated …’

MORE.

Michelle Obama’s sentiments seep out from that festering reservoir of racial animosity—the same cesspool wherefrom the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson launch their perennial strikes.

UPDATE (Oct. 1): WINNIE MANDELA/MADAM OBAMA. Robert, there is a similarity in anger levels between the two women, although Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had considerable cause for anger. The woman had it tough. I mention Winnie in the book you just reviewed on Amazon. Winnie, moreover, was a looker, unlike MO. I saw Winnie in person when I attended Tutu’s inaugural with my dad. She was then drop-dead (if deadly) gorgeous. But I mean Beyonce beautiful.

Springtime in Israel

Economy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Technology, Terrorism

The crazies are threatening it on the north (Lebanon & Syria), the south (the lovely Egyptian revolutionaries), and the east (the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and beyond), but, as the US and most of Europe decline, Israel’s economy flourishes. Here are Israel’s fiscal fundamentals, courtesy of Bloomberg.com:

• GDP growth of 4.8 percent this year
• A raised credit rating of A+
• Very low unemployment
• “60 companies traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any nation outside North America after China.”
• “The largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.”
• A ranking of “third in terms of projected growth this year among MSCI’s list of 24 developed economies, after 6 percent for Hong Kong and 5.3 percent for Singapore, according to the IMF.”
• “Israel’s exports are high-added value exports like informatics and technology”: This means the stuff the Israelis make adds real value and jobs, unlike Obama’s state-manufactured jobs, which are a result of moving money around.

SADLY, that thing we in the US celebrate and anticipate—the Arab spring—threatens commence, innovation and economic prosperity in the region’s most productive oasis. Some “spring” …

UPDATE III: On The Political Cesspool: Argument Über Alles (The White Al)

Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Old Right, Propaganda, Race, Racism, Reason, South-Africa

I will be talking Pat J. Buchanan, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” flash mobs and the Occupy Wall Street “sleepover,” with Keith Alexander and Bill Rolen of The Political Cesspool. Time: 4:00 Pacific. Day: Oct. 29.

The hard left is baying for Mr. Buchanan’s blood for his recent appearance on the controversial show. Buchanan is standing his ground. He’s no Imus. Boy, is Patrick J. Buchanan refreshingly forceful.

In my prior visit with these broadcasters, I found them to be intelligent and courteous. If James Edwards and Bill Rolen were hostile to an individualist’s perspective, they did not let on. Both Bill and James addressed the arguments advanced in my book. That’s the sum-total of a good interviewer.

Ultimately it’s all about the argument. My position is that one cannot properly undermine a claim by undermining the motives, character or associations of its claimant. To undermine my book, the politically correct (left, libertarian, etc) will have to deal with its arguments (which the paleo establishment has so far conveniently skirted). The rest amounts to smear tactics, a variant of the ad hominem fallacy.

UPDATE I: ROUTE TO FREEDOM. Sorry to disappoint, but it was a terrible interview. I was handed over to a gentleman who wanted to emphasize a racial angle in the conversation, in crude terms too. I did not cope well. I think I reflect Western man’s disdain for race as an organizing principle, and for broad generalizations. Good luck with organizing modern westerners around race. I prefer to beat back the state so that individuals regain freedom of association, dominion over property, the absolute right of self-defense; the right to hire, fire, and, generally, associate at will. That’s the route to freedom.

UPDATE II: It’s just not in a civilized person’s nature to speak as though he were a negative image of Al Sharpton. Would you not agree?

UPDATE III (Oct. 31): To the kind comment below: On his MSNBC show, Al Sharpton behaves just like my host conducted himself. The white Al talked over me constantly, went with his own angle, rather than with the book’s tack, and made it virtually impossible for me to defend my perspective or speak to individualism and to the points made in my book—a grisly, gory book which glosses over nothing in terms of the color and cure for crime in SA and beyond. I’ve been re-reading sections such as “Racial Voting Coming to a Polling Station Near You.” The well-sourced, analytical points made in that section deserve to be elicited by an intelligent interviewer. The same holds for other sections.

I’m done with intellectually incurious dim bulbs who want to promote their perspective, rather than explore another. How is that edifying? And how is it civilized to railroad an invited guest? And how like Al that is.