Omar Khadr, war hero

Omar Khadr, a Canadian man who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 and held in Guantanamo Bay for 8 years without trial has been granted bail pending his American appeal. His present imprisonment is a travesty and his release will be a welcome scrubbing of a terrible stain on the collective Canadian conscience. The American government had no just cause to go war with Afghanistan. The events of September 11th, tragic and criminal though they certainly were, do not justify the invasion of Afghanistan. A's aggression against B does not give B the right to aggress against C.  What about the rights of the 20,000 some Afghani civilians who died during the American occupation of Afghanistan? And if you endorse the notion that A's aggression against B rationalizes B's aggression against C, that the actions of 9/11 justified aggression against Afghanistan, then surely if you look back in history just a little further than the American bombing of Iraq (prior to 9/11) or treatment of Palestinians by proxy justifies 9/11. But the attack on the World Trace Center was not justified precisely because murder creates a specific right of redress against the particular murderer and not a broader right of vengeance against a people or society.

So given that the American government had no right to invade and occupy Afghanistan then it is difficult to find fault with an individual who risked their life in order to fight off a foreign conqueror or more personally to avenge the death of his family who had just been immediately slaughtered in front of him. Far from being labelled a war criminal one must wonder if the appropriate label for Khadr is that of war hero.

At any rate we can celebrate the fact that Khadr, at long last, will soon be walking free, after 13 years of torture and incarceration.

walid khalfallah vs the province of british columbia

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti


Enraged by the tragic story of Walid Khalfallah, who was crippled by a two year wait for needed surgery, CMA President Dr. Brian Day is taking the province of British Columbia to court. Day and Walid are being bankrolled by the Canadian Constitutional Foundation and the cost of this legal challenge could run in the millions. At issue is whether or not Canadians can purchase medical services outside of the nationalized system. But is a two tiered system really the best Canadians can do? Or do advocates of a parallel private system not go far enough in suggesting health care reform?

Despite the constant pronouncements of officials and politicians about the supremacy of socialized medicine the history of the 20th century speaks loudly as to the efficacy and morality of central planning. If government control the manufacturing of widgets is so terrible then why is the health care industry uniquely suited for planning? If a price system derived from consumer preferences on the basis of supply and demand is so apt at organizing the rest of society why then does planning become superior when it comes to doctors and surgeries?

The orthodox communist position, that all industries are suitable for government take over, is scarcely worth refuting. Who can look at the history of the Soviet Union, or Cambodia, or Cuba, or Vietnam and sing hosannahs to central economic planning? There have been countless experiments in the 'common store of goods' approach throughout the human experience and all of them have ended in abject disaster. But the more nuanced view, that certain industries should be under state control, and the rest left to the free market (subject of course to regulation at the behest of our benevolent and ever wise rulers, of course) which is so prevalent today requires more careful consideration.

One of the myriad arguments put forth for single payer health care is an attack on 'profits'. Since profit is kept out of the equation health care will cost less. Of course profit isn't really kept out of the equation, since certainly the countless bureaucrats employed by the various Ministries of Health are not working for free. But is profit really such a dirty word? Entrepreneurs obtain profits only by serving consumers. By providing what people want when they want it. They are an essential means of ensuring that scarce resources are allocated towards their most efficacious ends. Ironically loss makers are often coddled by the government and profit makers assailed, when the former have proven themselves incompetent and the latter invaluable.

Another common argument is that health care should be universal and free to the end user.  That everyone, regardless of income or stature in society deserves the same treatment. But what if the only way this is possible is by dragging everyone down to a mediocre level? Let's say level of care is on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is absolute perfect care and 1 is horrible care.  Would it really be better to have everyone at a 3, instead of people at a scale ranging from 1 to 10 depending on the ability to pay?  Is it right to force those who could pay for a 9 level of care to have inadequate treatment, excessive waiting etc. just so that a bum can go from no care to mediocre care? We accept that beggars will not eat like a rich man. That's why instead of sitting around begging you go out and work hard, so that you can enjoy the finer things in life. So why should not someone who works hard, providing a valued good or service to the community enjoy the fruits of his labour when it comes to medical attention? Why must we all be dragged down to the same inadequate level, sacrificed at the altar of equality?

And what happens when health care is made free to the end user? When cost is zero demand is infinite. Why not go to the doctor for every runny nose when doing so costs you nothing? Why should the person who rarely goes to the doctor pay the same as the hypochondriac who runs to the hospital constantly just in case? Wouldn't a more rational means of paying for health care be an out of pocket expenditure in the case of basic care and insurance for catastrophic treatment?

Another much needed reform is an end to compulsory licensure of physicians. Why shouldn't a nurse practitioner, foreign trained doctor (or, *gasp*, a physician with a non-allopathic view of medicine) be able to practice his craft here in Canada? Compulsory licensure serves only to prevent competition and harm the public while benefiting doctors. Certainly anyone concerned about the level of care provided by these doctors would be free to only purchase services from someone who is accredited on the same licensing basis (or one that is even more strict) as exists presently.

Instead of advocating for a private system to co-exist alongside public care it behooves us who are in favour of the free society to set our sights a little higher and aim for a market based approach. There is no question that eliminating the state's control over healthcare would dramatically improve the quality and quantity of healthcare in this country. Shortages do not exist on the market where equilibrium pricing ensures that supply meets demand. There is no need for individuals like Walid to languish in perpetuity desperately waiting for surgeries which never arrive.

Free drugs for all

The incremental socialists are at it again.  Their target this time? A national pharmacare system. As Eric Hoskins, health minister in the Wynne government asked why should the poor have to choose between food and medicine? Don't we all deserve access to the same standard of care? Isn't health care a human right and aren't prescription drugs a key component of fighting illness and disease? And to hear proponents of this plan such as Dr. Danielle Martin tell it, the whole thing can be done without a net cost to the state.  Golly!

The cost of prescription drugs is an important issue. But is the high cost of these products a result of a limited supply brought upon by production costs or is the supply kept artificially low because of the patent system? And even if we accept the rational and likely premise that some people can't afford to purchase medicine which is necessary to their health, is the answer really to impose a bulky program on the totality of the industry or couldn't we handle the problem with targeted, voluntary relief? After all many people are already covered under private drug plans supplied by their employer.

For those of us who are hesitant to expand the already overwhelming scope of the state some lingering questions remain. Will this new program be funded through the imposition of higher taxes, and if so what will be the consequences to economy which is already performing tepidly? Or will the available pool of capital be tapped even further when politicians decide that it will be more popular to simply borrow the necessary funds? Either course of action will mean our nation is less prosperous as a result. And what happens to this program when politicians recognize that raising taxes is politically unfeasible? They will then turn back to the solution which they have imposed on our health care system, namely rationing. We will be taxed in order to pay for the drugs and then denied them in the name of expediency, just as now so many people languish waiting for hip surgeries or for an opportunity to see a specialist.

There are also certain moral hazards attached to this program. Already prescription drug abuse, specifically that of opiate based pain killers such as oxycotin, is an epidemic in our society. What will happen once these drugs are not only widely available but also free to the end user? We live in the high time preference society. Everyone is looking for a quick fix instead of hard work. We already rely too much on drugs and treatment instead of focusing of prevention. While there is certainly a role for drugs in the treatment of disease isn't it far better to live a healthy lifestyle and avoid the disease in the first place? A lot of drugs have very dangerous side effects. Since all demand curves are falling the lower a price the more of a good will be purchased. By eliminating the cost to the end user we are going to encourage more people to take possibly unnecessary drugs, which in turn will lead to less favourable health outcomes.

There are problems with the present market in pharmaceuticals, absolutely. There is an incentive issue with the regulatory process. When a drug is approved and it has disastrous side effects and ends up killing people then there is a backlash and the bureaucrat involved in the approval may lose their job. On the other hand when a drug is not approved, or it is delayed, and the people who could have been saved for it are not, nothing happens. So an overly cautious mentality is fostered at the expense of the general public. The best person to make a particular risk / reward analysis about the utility of a potentially dangerous drug is the person in question, in consultation with their doctor. Who is the state to deny a potentially life saving drug from a terminal patient simply because it is untested and risky? How is some far removed bureaucrat in a better position to make this decision for thousands or millions of people they will never meet than these people themselves? Instead of a byzantine process of regulatory approval we should scrap the entire process. Those who are critical of the safety or efficacy of a new drug need not take it; but those who are desperate for a cure for their disease should not be kept from medicine which may save their life.

Price controls have also predictably led to shortages of drugs and, counter intuitively, to higher prices given the way that the price controls work (the price of related drugs are tied together, making it much less profitable for a company to lower it's prices than it would otherwise be). Eliminating these price controls is the obvious and simple solution. Over two thousand years of failed experiments in price controls should surely be enough to convince planners of their ineffectiveness.  It's time to abolish the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board.

Reforms are needed in the pharmaceutical industry, but the solution is not a government takeover; it is de-regulation and the removal of unnecessary nanny state controls imposed by well meaning but short sighted do-gooders.

just say NO! (to the transit tax)

Invoking the much despised specter of congestion Metro Vancouver politicians have been working over time to promote their latest tax hike, in this case a .5% bump in the PST. Allegedly the money will be allocated towards transit which will alleviate the endemic gridlock which motorists so despise. The actual cause of gridlock is the fact that there is no price associated with road travel. Normally in a market when you have too much demand and too little supply price increases until supply meets demand. There are no shortages. But with socialism chronic shortages and uneconomic allocation of resources are endemic. Ironically the very politicians who create these problems then benefit by campaigning about them and the gullible public soaks it all up and pays the bill. Le sigh.

Many well meaning but stupid people have praised sales taxes but let us be clear - there is no such thing as a good tax. Savings isn't per se better than consumption. It's not our place to tell other people how they should be living their lives or spending their money. While it's true that savings are crucial for long term economic growth each individual's value scales are completely different, based upon the various ends they wish to achieve with their limited means. Only the person in question is qualified to say how their money should be spent. There is no such thing as a good tax. Be it on sales, incomes, imports or oil all taxes are bad and all taxes should be opposed.

Higher taxes and more spending on transit will not alleviate congestion. The best long term solution is to privatize the entire system of infrastructure, transit, roads, sky train, the whole kit and caboodle. Then you will see routes designed on the basis of consumer demand. Competition between firms will mean ever improving quality and costs will be contained. Road travel pricing will mean higher prices during peak times, which in turn will solve the problem of traffic jams. This would also mean innovation in road safety, as various infrastructure firms would be able to compete by advertising their improved safety records.

there's no justice like vigilante justice

On January 3rd, 2013, on a reserve in Manitoba, Cody Schmidt, armed with a rifle, came to the rescue of his brother, Zach Mosseau, who was being subjected to a brutal baseball bat oriented gang beating. His brother's assailants fled in a vehicle and were fired upon. One of them, Dean Alan Frank Unrau, died as a result. Another, Michael Unrau, was severely injured. While vigilante justice is widely condemned in our society who but the victim of a crime or their kin is in a better position to both identify the perpetrator and mete out their deserved retribution? Who else has as much a stake in seeing justice carried out as the individual who was hurt or those who are close to them? Or an agent they have contracted with.

Which isn't to say, necessarily, that Schmidt is in the clear. The facts of the case are still murky and a good deal of the commentary must be speculative at best. We don't know what slight or offence prompted the gang beating. Perhaps the initial violent assault was provoked by some other incident; perhaps it was a petty dispute over drugs, money or housing. This we do not know. All we can offer is conjecture. But the point of analyzing this case is not to arbitrate the events of that night, finally and forever, but rather to consider the broader moral issues which it brings in to question. But just because an assault on his brother occurred doesn't mean necessarily that Schmidt is justified in using lethal force. A key component of a libertarian legal system is proportionality. A group of men beating someone with a bat could very well end in a fatality but it didn't. The exact line of how much force can be used in retribution for an aggravated assault is an interesting question and in this case the answer is unclear but certainly an attack does create the right of the victim or someone else on his behalf to strike back, not only in self defense but also as punishment for the crime.

The point of a legal system is to protect person and property. Unfortunately our collective conception of jurisprudence has devolved over the years. There is a great body of law which not only fails to protect property rights but actually infringes upon them. It is as Bastiat said, in 'La Loi' La loi pervertie! La loi — et à sa suite toutes les forces collectives de la nation, — la Loi, dis-je, non seulement détournée de son but, mais appliquée à poursuivre un but directement contraire! Law has become perverted, from a tool for preserving the right to property into an instrument of plunder. Our entire system is corrupt. The law today is less about what is right and more about how can someone profit at another's expense. 


In 1765 English jurist Sir William Blackstone enunciated one of the tenets of the modern legal system, saying Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. Critics of vigilantism claim that mob justice will  lead to innocents suffering and in defense rof the legal status quo today it's true that someone who has not committed a malum prohibitum offencee is unlikely to be convicted, because of the legal protections afforded to them it's also true that many people who have done nothing which is malum in se suffer needlessly. But isn't Blackstone's dictum true on both ends? Shouldn't it be wrong to let 11 guilty people escape rather than one innocent suffer? Or at least there should be some point where you accept that you will occasionally get it wrong so that the rest of the time you can get it right. And it is from this perspective that vigilantism excels, in ensuring that criminals are in fact brought to justice. Unfortunately our society coddles those who commit acts of aggression against others (even elects them to it's highest offices). There is not enough emphasis on the victim and far too much compassion for those who harm others.

the great NAFTA foreigner cash grab

People trade because it is mutually beneficial for them to do so; they value what they are getting more than what they are giving up. Trade is a vital to the modern way of life. It's the reason why our ancestors attempted to circumnavigate the globe. Trade promotes not only prosperity but also peace, since nations which trade are less likely to engage in hostilities. The free trade movement grew out of the liberal reaction in Europe of the 17th and 18th century to the mercantilism and absolutism that preceded it. The idea was simple : that people should be able to trade free of government interference in their activities.

Part of the basis for the idea of free trade was enunciated by Adam Smith in the opening to his Wealth of Nations "The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity and judgement with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour." When individuals specialize it raises overall productivity. International trade enables the benefits of the division of labour to be reaped on a global scale. But nations also benefit from what Ricardo termed 'comparative advantage'. When nation A is more efficient in, for example, producing both television sets and cars than nation B, the benefits of specialization can still occur. Nation A can prosper by specializing in, for example, cars and then trading with Nation B for television sets even though nation A is more efficient at producing both. That is to say by specializing in only cars and trading for television sets nation A will end up with more cars and television sets than if they were all produced domestically (as, for that matter, will nation B). 

In more recent years governments have been trumpeting so called 'free trade agreements' ostensibly to reduce tariffs or other barriers to trade. Given the importance of trade and the historical success of the free trade movement it is tempting to laud these arrangements but unfortunately as is often the case in politics not everything which is called free trade is actually free trade. Agreements like NAFTA could more appropriately be considered 'managed trade' and these agreements can sometimes leave the Canadian taxpayer on the hook for a lot of money when they enable super rich foreigners like Matty Moroun to sue our government. Moroun, who owns a bridge connecting Windsor to Detroit, is suing the Canadian government for 3.5 billion dollars on the basis of NAFTA provisions which state his company must be treated no differently than a Canadian firm. This is hardly the only case of a business using NAFTA to sue the Canadian government; over $170 million in damages has already been paid out to foreign interests under the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) Mechanism.

We should welcome foreign investment in our shores. We should pursue an aggressive strategy of unilateral free trade. But our government should not be shelling out big bucks to foreign oligarchs under shoddy pretexts.

The Dread Bill C-626

There are three types of lies, lies, damned lies and statistics - Mark Twain.

In 2013 a 79 year old woman, Janet Churnin, was charged and convicted with refusing to fill out the long form census and sentenced to 50 hours community service. While her opposition wasn't to the census per se but rather to the fact that prominent American merchant of death Lockheed Martin had been contracted to handle the data and it's vulnerability with regards to the American government and the Patriot Act this hardly denigrates her courage and one cannot help but he filled with contempt for the idiot crown attorney who felt the need to take this case to trial. Our tax dollars at work. This may prove to have been the last - though certainly not the first - time a citizen was brought to court for refusing to fill out these forms since in 2010 the mandatory long form census was replaced with a voluntary National Household survey but perhaps not because on Wednesday Parliament votes on Bill C-626 determining whether the long form census should return. While it is likely - but not certain- this bill will be defeated the specter of the census' resurrection looms large on the horizon and the opinion molding class is agitating tirelessly for it's return.

The argument, repeated tirelessly, is that without the information collected by the census it is impossible to plan the economy. Well precisely so. We don't want or need the economy to be planned by officious bureaucrats and obnoxious do-gooders. The only planning that needs to occur can be done by entrepreneurs with the help of the price system. Government planning is morally and economically bankrupt. The free market system is in every way superior to that of state compulsion and control. Statistics have always been a means to bamboozle others and almost never a tool for elucidation. Of course it is wrong to compel individuals through the power of the court system to provide statistical data to the state but it is also unnecessary to collect this information in the first place, so eliminating the census is a great opportunity to spare the taxpayer some money and the annoying knocks on the door.

Far too often the statistical data gleaned from the census or other sources is used as a rationalization for government spending or intervention in the market. Economists are far too eager to call for state action on the slightest blip. A fall in unemployment brings demands for make work projects. A fall in oil prices mans we need more stimulus and a monetary policy of easy credit. The economy is slowing down? Better amp up the government spending. With sufficient motivation the data can be examined or teased to support any conclusion but seldom is this conducive to good policy.

Central economic planning does not work. Instead of having the government control and plan the economy we must revert to the free enterprise system. Leave the government blind, deaf and dumb, without the aid of statistical data as a means to plan and we will all be better off.