Democracy As Mob Rule

For all of its virtues, democracy can be a dangerous thing, which can easily deteriorate into mob rule. That is the genius behind the constitution. The founding fathers were concerned about a majority abusing their power at the expense of the minority. That is why we have two houses of congress which are elected in different ways. It is why we have three distinct branches of government, which are chosen differently. It is the reason behind the, often misunderstood, Electoral College, and it is the reason some states refused to ratify the constitution until the Bill of Rights was added. As brilliant as the constitution is, it is not bullet proof. It can still be abused and used to allow a majority to assert their superior numbers and impose injustices upon the rest.

This isn’t as hard to understand as we may like to think. Most of us try to live according to our belief system. That belief system may be skewed by self-interest, but skewed or not it is what we believe. Thus there was a time when many white men and women believed black men & women to be lesser humans, and as such, it was as acceptable to use them as slaves as it was to keep beasts of burden. We may look upon that now and decry that belief system to be barbaric, but people believed it and acted on that belief. The fact that it was believed primarily by people that profited from that belief, only serves to warn us to examine our motives for accepting what we may claim to be obvious truths.

The same holds true of those who believe that it is the government’s role to take care of us. If your belief system is that people can’t be trusted to make responsible decisions, you may logically believe that it is the responsibility of government to make those decisions for them. The obvious pitfall that government decisions are made by people and people who can insulate themselves from the more negative consequences of their decisions is overlooked.

So, here we are with Democrats running both the legislative and executive branches of the government ramming through a health-care bill without regard for the rights, beliefs or protests of constituents at home or Republicans in congress. The arguments originally were that we had to curtail the escalating cost of health-care and provide benefits for the nation’s uninsured. In the headlong race to get something past, we seem to have forgotten the goals.

Republicans wanted to make insurance more affordable, and therefore more available utilizing several methods to achieve that goal. And this without undermining what is arguably working right with the present system.

Much of the cost of medical care today can be attributed to litigation. Between the cost of malpractice insurance, and the need for doctors and hospitals to practice defensive medicine resulting in unnecessary tests and procedures, we are all paying for the jackpot jury awards of the few that call 1-800- SUE-SOMEONE. So it has been proposed that laws be enacted to control outsized medical lawsuits. The Democrats refused to include any such provision in their health-care bill.

Because of an anomaly of wage controls imposed during WWII, medical insurance in our country today is considered largely an employer benefit. This has been codified by the fact that an employer gets to deduct the cost of providing medical insurance as a taxable business expense, without the employee having to declare it as income. Smaller employers often find it difficult to afford to provide health insurance. Even those that can afford it, find that the options available to smaller employers are less attractive than those available to a large employer. So it has been proposed that all health insurance premiums be tax deductible, whether paid for by an employer or an individual or family. The Democrats refused to include any such provision in their health-care bill.

Different states require different provisions in health insurance plans sold in their jurisdictions. The tighter the provisions the more insurance companies have to charge to cover the cost of those benefits. Also, because insurance companies have to apply to each individual state for the right to sell insurance in that state some insurers may decide to market their products in some states and not others. So it has been proposed that we be allowed to buy any insurance policy offered by any insurance company anywhere in the country. This would cause the money to flow to those policies and companies that offered better costs and services, increasing competition and lowering costs. The Democrats refused to include any such provision in their health-care bill.

Democrats have been claiming that they want a bi-partisan bill, but what they apparently mean by that is that they want Republicans to support their bill without using any of their ideas. Their solution is to mandate changes from Washington D.C. Studies have concluded that instead of lowering the cost of health-care, their provisions will increase insurance costs. The Democrats want to provide coverage for all Americans, but they are raiding Medicare, which is already going broke and underpaying for benefits. The Democrats have been vilifying insurance companies, who we can replace with another company if unhappy. Can we expect better from the government which we can’t change and who has the force of law to impose their decisions? The Democrats claim that their bill will not increase the deficit. However, they are using tricks of timing and hiding expenses in other bills to cover their deception.

The majority in congress and the White House are about to take away from us our right to control our health-care. They, aparently, do not think any idea put forth by the minority party worthy of considering. Power does indeed tend to corrupt. Not even the constitution can protect us from all abuses of power if the majority we elect are hell-bent on imposing their rule on the rest of us.

Rumors

Remember when senators, congressmen and celebrities stood up and declared that President Bush had lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I was not a fan of President Bush, but I remember how angry I was when liberals claimed that he lied about WMD. He was wrong. He may have been more eager to go to war against Iraq than he should have been. His idea of spreading democracy in the mid-East may have been naive, arrogant or both. But he had not lied about the weapons. Many in our intelligence agencies, as well as intelligence agencies around the world, let alone Saddam’s own generals, believed he had WMD. And Saddam did nothing to dispel that impression. Those that claimed he lied were lying themselves. It convinced me that they were not patriots, but partisans. They were willing to say or do anything for political expediency. They let their hatred for the President dictate what they chose to believe, or say about him. They knew, or should have known, the difference between lying and making a mistake. They seemed to be so blinded by partisanship, that they deemed the Bush Administration unworthy of either honesty or critical thinking. The way President Bush was treated was unfair, and won few, if any converts.

I have been getting emails for some time now showing President Obama standing with his hands folded in front of him, while men and women in uniform around him are saluting. The email accuses the President of showing lack of respect to the flag. If you watch a video of that scene, you will see that the President has just taken the stage to the band playing “Hail to the Chief”. It turns out his behavior is absolutely appropriate.

That is one example of many accusations circulating on the Internet. When I get these I usually do some research before passing them on. I often find them to be ill-founded and they go into my deleted files folder. I can give a litany of things I believe the President has done and is doing badly. With all that ammunition, why do we bother with accusations that he isn’t an American by birth, or that he is a Muslim. When these or other hate filled accusations are circulated, it may fire up the converted, but only puts the more provable and substantial arguments in a bad light. Let’s assume that he is a Muslim, communist, who was not born in the United States. If you don’t have multiple credible sources, which cannot be impeached by his defenders, circulating those accusations just gives those who are on the fence less reason to believe the other, more mundane arguments against the President’s policies. You know…those things that would sway the undecided.

When Senator Kennedy stood up in the senate & called President Bush a liar, he only proved to me that he was not honest in his criticism. Michael Moore may get something right every now and then, but I will never know it, because his bazaar accusations keep me from ever giving him an objective hearing. He past that point in 1989 when he produced “Roger & Me”.

If you think that President Obama is bad for the country, stop spreading rumors that only inflame his defenders and damage your own credibility. You may be right, but if you are too quick to pass on rumors and emails that don’t pass the smell test, you hurt your cause.

The Ecology of Economy

In my college days I learned how a hunting restriction on a deer herd in Southern Utah resulted first in a spike in the number of deer and then the collapse of the population due to overgrazing and starvation. It turns out that people had eliminated the natural predators and than eliminated man as a predator. We had thrown that ecosystem out of balance. By trying to do a good thing, people had caused more harm.

The economy is much like a natural ecosystem. When we try to tamper with it, we are more likely to mess it up than help. There are just too many moving parts and too many unknown nuances to keep track of.

That is why attempts to manage the economy so often backfire. Whereas minor tweaks designed to influence it can help, efforts to control it often end in disaster. There are just too many variables, and therefore too many things to go wrong when we get involved in the minutia.

When the financial system teetered on the brink, the proper response was to cut taxes and let the freed up money flow to those who would use it to buy goods, pay down debt, and invest in projects that would produce jobs and rescue the system. Directing the flow of money by the federal government, is subject to political favoritism and ideologically motivated efforts to send the money where the politicians think it will do the most good. But where it will do the most good is, as often as not, unknowable. Before there was a Microsoft or an Apple, nobody knew these companies would emerge to revolutionize the computer industry.

When trying to remedy the health-care system, the proper response is to facilitate the competitive pressures of the marketplace to determine the best use of health-care dollars. Demonizing insurance companies, as the administration and many in congress have been doing lately is political gamesmanship. Of course you can find examples of abuse by insurance companies. What makes us think that the government will be more beneficent? Does anybody think the IRS is full of virtue and light? The answer is to regulate the abuses (i.e., an insurance company ought no to be allowed to cancel coverage on somebody undergoing treatment), and permit more insurance companies to compete for the business by removing barriers to buying medical insurance across state lines. When you do that, more creative solutions to the problems will be found because there will be more people and companies looking for ways to compete for the business.

Those that want government to solve economic problems want to cure inequity. But we can’t. There will always be inequity. Government isn’t a scalpel. It is a chain saw. It is big, unwieldy, and loud. It is a fine tool for what it does well. But surgery is not what it does well. We should let the government do the work of freeing up markets. Allow money to flow to the entrepreneurs who will think of ways to employ it that the beurocrats and politicians won’t. Not that they aren’t smart enough. I’m sure some of them are, but we limit the opportunities to succeed when we try to use the government to manage the economy. Bill Gates developed software, a politician didn’t. Henry Ford developed a way to mass produce cars, a bureaucrat didn’t. The government’s job is to provide very broad rules and free up money, then get out of the way