Healthcare Part I: How did we get here?

As a brief introduction I will let my readers know that this is the first of five posts that will be aimed at analyzing the current issue of Healthcare. These posts are primarily for my own pleasure, for the purpose of elucidation and crystallizing my own opinions. Informing anyone who reads this is only a secondary consequence.

Anytime a person gets sick or infected it is important to diagnose—before a remedial process can begin— what the sickness is, and how it came into existence. It is no surprise that the same is true when analyzing the problem of our current healthcare system. Therefore, the first and initial procedure in this investigation is to discover how our nation got into a Healthcare catastrophe in the first place:

However, today this step is being seriously evaded.

It is ironic that today, millions of citizens are rioting at town-hall meetings and at tea-party’s all clamoring that they don’t want Washington bureaucrats intervening in their health care—without realizing just how much the bureaucrats already interfere.

Today, everyone seems to have a different take on how to solve America’s healthcare problem. But notice that every solution offered involves some elaborate new system of government controls. Different proposals include a “public option,” mandatory insurance for individuals, government-supported health-care exchanges, government-sponsored “efficacy research,” government-supported co-ops, and as many other ways of dictating consumer and producer behavior as can fit in a 1,000-page bill.

However more regulation will not fix our Healthcare problems.

Currently, everyone has failed to see that the reason our healthcare system does not work is because The U.S. government has had its hands in every aspect of the system for decades—regulating and dictating everything from the insurance we receive to the drugs available to us.

With the vast amount of already existing regulation showing its true colors-of failure--More government controls, we are told, are necessary to solve problems such as skyrocketing health-insurance prices, lack of competition among insurance companies, the inability of workers to keep their insurance policy when switching jobs, etc.

Really?

If more controls are necessary to stimulate good business, Then why do giants of the computer industry like Google, Microsoft and Apple compete vigorously without a “public option”? Why do we have such plentiful, affordable food without a government “food insurance mandate”? Why does laser eye-surgery, which is not covered by Medicare or government insurance laws, get better and cheaper all the time, while the price of health services the government is most involved in, skyrockets?

The answer is that these other markets are (comparatively) left free--while health care has been manipulated by government “solutions” for decades. Thus, our healthcare discussion should focus, not on how government controls can solve our problems, but on how government controls have caused our problems:

First consider the general phenomenon of skyrocketing prices for health insurance. The ways in which the government drives up prices are essentially endless, but here are a few. [By Alex Epstein, ARI]

• State insurance-mandates force companies and individuals to buy policies covering all sorts of expensive treatments they wouldn’t otherwise buy coverage for: chiropractic care, psychiatric care, prenatal care. Every such “benefit” means higher costs. Those who would prefer just to purchase insurance against medical catastrophe and pay for everything else out of pocket are prohibited from doing so.

• More broadly, since the 1940s, on the idea that health care is a “right” (I’ll focus more in this issue in Part III of this series) that others must provide, the government has made Americans collectively responsible for each other’s health care, whether through collectivized employer plans or through Medicare; thus, on average, “every time an American spends a dollar on physicians' services,” explains health economist John Goodman, “only 10 cents is paid out of pocket; the remainder is paid by a third party.”

People consuming medical services on other people’s dime consume a lot more. Prices are further driven up by numerous restrictions on the supply of medical professionals, such as protectionist licensing laws that prevent doctor’s assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, and paramedics from competing with doctors on services they are well qualified to perform (fixing minor bone breaks, diagnosing the flu, etc.).

When supply is artificially limited, and demand artificially increases, prices explode. (Any system promising “universal care” experiences this--the much-vaunted “affordable” European system just deals with it by severe rationing.)

In addition Here are four major governmental healthcare problems, brought up by Jeff Scialabba, a writer for the “Voices for Reason”, an affiliate with the Ayn Rand Institute, and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual rights. [Note: these next four points are not my own]

1. To begin, let’s take a look at one of the prominent features of our health care system: employer-sponsored health insurance. Businesses large and small struggle with the cost of providing health insurance for their employees. Employees begrudge a lack of options and volatility in coverage caused by employers looking for cheaper plans. People everywhere fear losing their job—or alternatively, feel trapped in jobs they dislike—for fear of losing coverage. So why do we have employer-sponsored health insurance? Employers don’t pay for our car or homeowner’s insurance, so why does over 60 percent of the population—including over 90 percent of the privately-insured under age 65—rely on their employer for health insurance? Essentially, it is because the U.S. government has incentivized and forced that outcome for more than sixty years.

Employer sponsored healthcare is a phenomenon that was institutionalized beginning with the Stabilization Act of 1942. This bill, which remained in effect throughout World War II, gave the government enormous control over the economy and imposed sweeping wage and price freezes across the U.S. Although it forbade wage increases, the law did not prohibit the expansion of employee benefits, and businesses began to offer health benefits as a means of attracting and retaining employees. In a country with a workforce depleted from the war, offering health benefits was a way of circumventing the wage freeze to gain a competitive advantage in the battle for scarce labor.

A further incentive for employers to provide health benefits came in the form of a 1943 tax court ruling, later codified in the Internal Revenue Code in 1954. This ruling stated that insurance premiums made by employers on behalf of employees were not taxable, meaning it was now economically advantageous for businesses to offer tax-exempt health benefits in place of taxable wages. Such an exemption, however, was not—and never has been—extended to individuals purchasing health insurance on their own. Thus through tax policy, the U.S. government created not only a strong incentive for employers to offer health insurance as a benefit, but also a strong incentive for individuals to seek insurance through their employer.

These tax incentives, perhaps more than any other government intervention, have ensured that employer-sponsored insurance has become the fixture of the U.S. health care system that it is today. But they alone are not the whole story. Where these incentives are not enough to induce a business to offer health benefits, legislation often forces businesses to provide them. Such legislation includes federal laws such as the Taft-Hartley Labor Relations Act of 1947, which requires businesses to negotiate with unions for health benefits, and state laws such as those in Massachusetts, where businesses are fined unless they provide coverage for their employees.

2. Another important feature of health insurance in the United States that has been fueled by government intervention is the fact that it is almost always comprehensive.

Contrary to other kinds of insurance, which typically cover only catastrophic expenses, our health plans cover routine care such as annual check-ups. Homeowners insurance covers fire damage but not your monthly electricity bill, car insurance protects us against the cost of an accident, not an oil change. Yet health insurance pays for our physicals and basic tests. How come?

In the 1930s, the United States was mired in the Great Depression and the health insurance market was still in its infancy. Out of fear of bills going unpaid, hospitals and doctors formed their own insurance companies. These companies, which would later become Blue Cross and Blue Shield, offered pre-paid plans that provided comprehensive coverage of services provided by any hospital or doctor within the network. The U.S. government laid the groundwork for this comprehensive model to become the U.S. standard by granting non-profit status to the Blues, which exempted them from taxes and insurance regulations. In the emerging health insurance industry, this made the Blues’ model of comprehensive insurance profitable and gave them a huge advantage over other insurers, who were compelled to offer, at great expense, the same kind of comprehensive insurance package to remain competitive. Unsurprisingly, the Blues experienced explosive growth, covering 59 percent of the insured by 1945. The government further served to entrench the comprehensive model as the U.S. standard when it established Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, and adopted it as their basic mechanism.

Thus, thanks primarily to government interference, about 95 percent of the insured population in America—roughly 240 million people—is covered by comprehensive health insurance provided by a third party. While there is nothing inherently wrong with comprehensive or third party-provided insurance (provided the third-party isn’t the government and provided these features are voluntarily offered and voluntarily chosen), the fact that this form of insurance has come to dominate the insurance market through government intervention is a major cause of our current health care crisis.

3. A big source of the problems currently plaguing our health care system is the fact that most of us—as consumers of medical services—are completely cut off from any concern with (and often from knowledge of) their prices. All we ask, typically, is: “Is it covered?” As I discussed in points 1 and 2, government intervention has led to a system where 95 percent of the insured population in America—some 240 million people—have comprehensive health insurance provided by a third party (either their employer or the government).

With insurance covering all kinds of medical services and the premiums paid by someone else, Americans have little financial incentive to curtail doctors’ visits for minor ailments, to question whether a test is worth its cost, or to seek out cost-effective care. Before we buy virtually anything else, we ask ourselves whether it is worth its price and whether there might be a better deal elsewhere. When we go to the doctor, we don’t even see the price until it shows up on the invoice—with all but a small co-pay or deductible (relative to the total bill) paid by the insurer. History has shown that this system increases demand for health care, encourages wasteful consumption and ultimately increases costs for third-party insurers.

The results of this model are plainly evident today. Medicare and Medicaid cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year and are projected to consume ever-greater swaths of the federal budget in the decades to come. In the private sector, where businesses provide health insurance to 158 million Americans, premium increases force employers to cut staff, reduce wages or drop health benefits altogether. Businesses locked into labor contracts risk bankruptcy. Laid-off workers struggle to purchase health insurance on their own, as they must now replace the untaxed health benefits they received through their job by purchasing individual insurance on their own that is not tax-deductible and—thanks to 70 years of the government’s favoring third-party insurance at the expense of individual insurance—more expensive and more limited in coverage than employer plans.

Supporters of the proposed reforms believe these problems can only be solved by expanding government’s role in health care. But this argument ignores the role that government already plays in ensuring the dominance of third-party, comprehensive insurance in United States. Moreover, as we’ll see in part 4, it ignores that government expansion has been tried time and again as a solution to perceived problems in the health care system—and time and again those efforts have only made things worse.

4. We see that many of the problems in our health care system are the result of the dominance of third-party comprehensive insurance—a dominance which has arisen from decades of government interventions favoring this kind of insurance. But as these interventions are not new, neither are the problems we are presently facing. On the contrary, our government has been attempting to solve our health care problems for as long as it has been creating them—and time and again these “solutions” have left our health care system worse off.

In recent decades, for instance, state governments have increasingly looked at insurance mandates as a means of expanding coverage to groups that have difficulty obtaining it. Broadly, mandates are requirements—backed by government force—that insurers cover specific medical expenses (e.g., chiropractors, treatment for lyme disease) or patient populations (e.g., continuing coverage for laid-off employees). Mandates are an extremely myopic political tool: they force insurers into a money-losing endeavor, who respond by increasing insurance premiums or decreasing coverage in another area—creating another problem for politicians to solve by passing more mandates.

Unfortunately, mandates have proven irresistible to politicians, who disingenuously portray themselves as righteous crusaders for the cause of a suffering group (who just happens to have a strong lobby), while blaming the lack of coverage on “greedy” insurance companies, one of their favorite political whipping-boys. With the detrimental effects of mandates hidden from view, a veritable mandate armada has descended upon the health insurance industry. The number of state mandates has steadily increased from 7 in 1965 to more than 2,100 today. Some states have imposed such an onerous slew of mandates that hordes of insurers have packed up and left the state, as for example, in Kentucky, Maine and Washington.

Among the hardest hit by mandates are the young and healthy who are either unemployed or in a job that does not provide health benefits. This is a low-income group that would benefit most from insurance that provided coverage only for catastrophic events and carried a high deductible and a low premium. In large part because of mandates, however, this type of insurance is virtually nonexistent. These individuals must purchase high-priced insurance that covers medical services which will likely never be used, or go uninsured, as many do.

We now face the perverted end result of mandates and other interventions having priced so many out of the market for health insurance: the idea that an “individual mandate” must be imposed to force the uninsured to buy government-chosen insurance regardless of what they judge to be in their best interest. And one of the biggest supporters of the individual mandate is the insurance companies. While this may seem ironic, this sort of thing is, as Ayn Rand observed, the routine order of business when government intervenes in the economy:

When government controls are introduced into a free economy, they create economic dislocations, hardships, and problems which, if the controls are not repealed, necessitate still further controls, which necessitate still further controls, etc. Thus a chain reaction is set up: the victimized groups seek redress by imposing controls on the profiteering groups, who retaliate in the same manner, on an ever widening scale.” (“The Cold Civil War, in The Ayn Rand Column)

This is just a fraction of the story of how government has mangled the market for health care--a story any honest discussion of health care needs to study and learn from.

Intellect, is it possible?

A group of Internet acquaintances and I were discussing the problem of education in our society. The discussion progressed, through much debate, to a point in which one individual admitted that, there were some out there who did not want to learn, and that intelligence was disappearing in our society; others agreed, as do I.
They all demanded a logical solution to this problem One man admitted that he would write an essay on the subject.

This is my response:

P.s. Much of the logic I use was founded by the Philosopher, Ayn Rand. If I'm not mistaken, all of the points are hers, the conclusions are my own.
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The problem is that you want to education people, in a society that does not allow for that process to be completed…. Try and follow this logical syllogism:

I will begin with to axiomatic definitions:

• Knowledge” is . . . a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation.

• Reason is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Therefore, Man’s essential characteristic is his rational faculty. Ergo, Man’s mind is his basic means of survival—his only means of gaining knowledge . . . .

1. The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life—by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past—and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.

Conclusion: Education is aimed at arming a student with the essentials he needs in order to grasp knowledge. Knowledge is impossible to grasp without the application of Reason. And Reason is impossible to have without volitional cognitive thought i.e. reason is impossible without people choosing to think……

This is where your problem occurs: “How do we get people to think?” “To want to know things?”.. . . . This is the question you are asking now…. The answer is to free man’s mind: By restoring intelligence and intellect to our society:

2. In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.

Humans survive by means of man-made products, and . . . the source of man-made products is man’s intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to grasp the facts of reality and to deal with them long-range (i.e., conceptually).

Conclusion: In order to survive, to produce, and to educate people, intellect must be present, but today it isn’t! Right now your saying, “Jason, we already knew this, what’s your point? My point is Intelligence is impossible to spread in today’s society:

3. Intelligence is the ability to deal with a broad range of abstractions. Whatever a child’s natural endowment, the use of intelligence is an acquired skill. It has to be acquired by a child’s own effort and automatized by his own mind, but adults can help or hinder him in this crucial process.

However, Intelligence is not an exclusive monopoly of genius; it is an attribute of all men, and the differences are only a matter of degree. If conditions of existence are destructive to genius, they are destructive to every man, each in proportion to his intelligence. If genius is penalized, so is the faculty of intelligence in every other man. There is only this difference: the average man does not possess the genius’s power of self-confident resistance, and will break much faster; he will give up his mind, in hopeless bewilderment, under the first touch of pressure.

On the axiom of the primacy of existence, intelligence is man’s most precious attribute. But it has no place in a society ruled by the primacy of consciousness: it (intelligence) is such a society’s deadliest enemy, and is therefore sought out and destroyed.

Conclusion: We life in such a society ruled by the primacy of consciousness; this initiates a criterion of morality that is destructive to mans mind: and therefore intellect is destroyed. How is mans mind being destroyed? Through force:

4. Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others.
To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.
Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no “right” to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument—is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment; you threaten him with death if he does. You place him in a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life—and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.
Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: “Your money or your life,” or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: “Your children’s education or your life,” the meaning of that ultimatum is: “Your mind or your life”—and neither is possible to man without the other.

Conclusion: Force is immoral, and it destroys mans mind.

5. As men continue to learn, and produce, in order to sustain their own lives… an all out war is being waged in hopes of destroying that process:

Today, our society deems it moral, or appropriate to punish success by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, to damn intellect by taxing overwhelmingly the successful, to destroy the men of the mind, by deeming it acceptable to initiate force upon the minds of men…. Thereby destroying the mind.

Conclusion: The mind is being destroyed by the initiation of Physical force upon individuals….
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Final Conclusion to the syllogism:

Mans mind is the key to reason, which gives way to knowledge, which grants intellect. Through the initiation of force upon individuals, mans mind is being destroyed; Thereby slowly destroying everything that follows.

Today, intelligence is neither recognized nor rewarded, but is being systematically extinguished in a growing flood of brazenly flaunted irrationality, of malicious force, and of irrational brutes. The freedom of mans mind has been compromised, and we are now feeling its disastrous consequences.
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*Solution to the original question: “How do we get people to think?” “To want to know things?”:

In this type of society i.e. the one we live in today, there is no solution to the problem: “How does one restore intelligence?” It is impossible to do so… The Question we should be asking is “How do we free mans mind?” Because only then can intelligence be saved.

In order to fix this, an entire philosophical renaissance is required... A return to Reason! To Freedom! To Life!

How can this be accomplished?......... Who is John Galt? [That was a Hint]

Read Atlas Shrugged! Begin to live a Rational life, and urge others to do so… Protect freedom and Capitalism… Protect mans mind! Only then will you be able to restore sanctity to the intellect that men deserve!

Affirmative Action

Martin Luther said that humanity is like a man mounting a horse who always tends to fall off on the other side of the horse. This seems to be the case with Affirmative Action. Attempting to redress the discriminatory iniquities of our history, our well-intentioned social engineers now engage in new forms of discriminatory iniquity and thereby think that they have successfully mounted the horse of racial harmony. They have only fallen off on the other side of the issue.

I stand in the utter most opposition of the Affirmative Action Premise. Although the possible attacking points on the gross principle are endless, I will focus on just three.

1. Any Human can succeed!
2. Affirmative Action is illogical, and unethical!
3. Affirmative Action destroys equal opportunity!

I will first begin with an axiom*, ‘Your race, gender, and income does not hinder any mans ability and opportunity to peruse their own happiness.’ If this statement is false, then it implies that there is an inborn difference between minorities and other human beings. But, if this statement is true then affirmative action is not needed. I hold this to be true, for it is verified by science that race and genetics bear no scientific limitations to achieving success . . . Cicero of Rome once said, “We are all born for Justice, and our human rights are based, not upon men’s opinions, but upon Nature . . . In fact, there is no human being of any race, who cannot attain virtue”. . Affirmative action says otherwise, reasoning that members of minority’s are not unique individuals, but interchangeable members of a collective minority class; a minority class, that somehow hinders their capacity to achieve for themselves. Affirmative Action stipulates that only through a government program can minorities succeed. This notion is outrageous! This principle, taken on by Affirmative Action is not equality, its racism; this leads us to our next point.


Affirmative Action is illogical, and unethical. Affirmative Action supposedly destroys racism, but please note that, Affirmative action adopts a composition fallacy**, because it generalizes by status; promoting the idea that individuals should be categorized by arbitrary genetic traits, rather than their merit or ability—yet this only propagates racism. This is verified by two studies from New York University, and Stanford, which confirm that affirmative action harms minority students’ self‐image, and the image that society has for minorities. My first point proves that genetics are irrelevant to success, and the public knows this. In a report by the university of Maryland, they stated, Affirmative Action inevitably prolongs racism, because society recognizes there are only three things an employer needs to know about any “individual” applicant: (l) Does the person have ability and knowledge? (2) Is the person willing to try? And (3) Does the person have good character? All 3 of these criteria bear no credence to race or gender. And because this is true, Affirmative action goes against American tradition, Capitalism, and Natural Law.

Attempts to refute this point will most likely occur in the form of, the “Diversity premise”. Claiming that only through affirmative action, will business achieve the desirable diversity that is needed for racial harmony to exist. . . This is a pragmatic claim that has no Philosophical foundation. If diversity is the cure, however, why, instead of promoting racial harmony, has it brought racial division and conflict? The answer is not hard to discover. The unshakable fact is that you cannot cure racism with racism. To accept the diversity premise means to think in racial terms rather than in terms of individual character or merit. Taking jobs away from one group in order to compensate a second group to correct injustices caused by a third group who mistreated a fourth group at an earlier point in history is absurd on the face of it and does not promote justice; rather, it does the opposite. Singling out one group for special favors (e.g., through affirmative action) breeds justified resentment and fuels the prejudices of real racists. People are individuals; they are not interchangeable ciphers in an amorphous collective. Diversity is achieved simply by hiring varying individuals, regardless of their arbitrary genetic quality’s. This brings me to my last point.

Affirmative Action destroys equal opportunity! The Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy states that “equal opportunity” is the process in which man can fail or succeed based on his own merit. So, let us be clear, no man is entitled to success, only in his opportunity to work for success. Affirmative action is not justified in the promoting of supposed “equal opportunity” because it does not promote it, it destroys it. Our founding fathers, and countless philosophers (Ayn Rand, John Locke, Voltaire) spoke about the right that every individual has: the right to the pursuit of happiness—not of the right to happiness. It means that an individual has the right to take actions they deem necessary to achieve their own happiness; it does not mean that others must make them happy. But Affirmative action disregards this Natural Law. For, it promotes equal outcome, and destroys equal opportunity . . . There is another ideology that supports equal outcome as well . . . its called communism. Affirmative action, like communism, concentrates on extrinsic status to award success, instead of intrinsic merit- even though it is evident that merit should be the primary factor in determining an individual’s value in a job or school.

Affirmative Action represents an enormous betrayal of America's founding principles. We are a nation founded on the concept of individualism, the doctrine that each person is a sovereign entity, an end in himself, possessing the same rights as every other citizen.
The affirmative action ruling undermines the principle of individualism. It asserts that people have special rights because they are members of a racial minority, thus elevating primitive tribalism over individualism. The claim that racial "diversity" is a proper goal of an institution is wrong.
The principle should be that the most qualified individuals--without regard to race, ethnicity or any other non-essential characteristic--are selected, whether the institution involved is in the field of education, business or the military. Selecting for diversity means endorsing racism--an ugly doctrine no matter what its purpose. Racism in any form should be abhorred by every American.

My axiom stands! ‘Your race, gender, and income do not hinder your equal opportunity to peruse your own happiness.’ Affirmative action is unethical and promotes more discrimination; it is illogical for Affirmative Action implements equal outcome and destroys equal opportunity. Affirmative action is by no means justified! Remember, our nation was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’ not that minority groups need an extra chance to be equal. They already are equal, and they can succeed just as I can, base on our merit and work.




*What is an Axiom?
An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.



** The fallacy of Composition is committed when a conclusion is drawn about a whole based on the features of its constituents when, in fact, no justification provided for the inference.
1. Individual F things have characteristics A, B, C, etc.
2. Therefore, the (whole) class of F things has characteristics A, B, C, etc.

"Francisco's Money Speech"

This is just AMAZING!!!!


About two weeks ago (in church) a group of people got into an argument about the morality of money, the general consensus was that money is evil, the love of money was wrong, and that the love for the material is wrong. One girl, and myself appeared to be the only voices of reason in the class, for we were the only ones who stood for the morality of money- as a virtue-and not a vice. [My full rebuttal is soon coming]

But in the mean time I have found this speech that best elucidates my point:

The following is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."

The above is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand. It is reprinted with permission from the Estate of Ayn Rand.




Russian born American novelist Ayn Rand is author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and is originator of the philosophy of Objectivism. You can learn more about her life and philosophy at the website of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Altruism=Collectivism?

Recently this statement from Ayn Rand sparked some debate with me and my friends. "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

To this I said, "Objectiveism! Actually, this is the only part of objectiveism that I don't believe in-its anti altruistic." One of the friends then said, "Jason, a disdain for altruism is the primary component of Objectivism." Needless to say I disagree.

Ayn Rand believes there is a certain glory and necessity to selfishness, and that altruism leads to collectivism, and an infringement on individualism. - if this is true than altruism may in fact be bad, I do not believe that this is true though.

It is argued by Cicero of Rome, and Marcus Aurelius that one can be an individual- but ones primary goal in life is somewhat altruistic. And that Altruism makes one happy, To this I agree with.

Consider this:

If your motivation for altruism is to do good, and receive the joy that comes with doing good to others, isn’t that motivated my self-interest? Therefore, are some types of Altruism motivated, to some extent, by personal gain? For example, lets say I see a homeless man on the street, if I don’t give him a dollar then I am being selfish, (A trait Ayn Rand argues is essential to life) and equates some level of individualism and personal gain= more money. But if I do give him a dollar, in hopes to get that “warm fuzzy feeling inside” (Joy) that comes with helping others isn’t that also motivated by personal gain= Joy and happiness, that you get from serving others, and therefore individualistic?

Ayn Rand’s argument is that Altruism leads to less individual rights, and that leads to socialism.- This is not true!!!

Take the United States for example, we just sent $100,000,000, an aircraft carrier, troops, supplies, and so on and so on over to Haiti, this made me happy, and joyful, I am proud of our government for doing that, our reaction time was swift, and our donations supreme--that was altruistic; and yet our county still maintains a high degree of individual rights and liberties. But you see other counties that are already denying individual rights are actually less altruistic that the USA (a free nation) take for example Communist china, they sent $1,000,000, 0 troops, and 0 supplies to Haiti, less altruistic than the United states, yet some how we still have more freedom. Hillary Clinton said recently “that Denmark was the Happiest country in the world, because they have socialized health care (an obvious infringement on individualism) Yet, how many dollars, and troops, and supplies, and Aircraft Carriers did they send to help Haiti= None, nothing 0!

Look at the 3 examples I have shown you, The USA, China, and Denmark . . . Who do you think has more freedom, and individual liberties? The USA!!!!! Yet who is more Altruistic, The USA!!! And finally who do you think is happier? The USA!

Altruism, is not a bad thing- if it is something you choose to do, Notice- people have to be forced to live under communism, nobody, NOBODY would by choice choose to live under communism; remeber communism is a seemingly altruistic form of government. You see forced Altruism does in fact infringe on indavidualism, and freedom. But if every individual chooses, for themselves, to be altruistic, still living under a capitalist system- then you still maintain a degree of good selfishness, and yet, you still help others, and act altruistically, and still maintain freedoms and indavidual rights- and that my friend, is how it should work- and how it is working now.

What Ayn should have said was, "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never be forced to live for the sake of another man, nor force another man to live for mine."

The Glory of Capitalism

This is a rushed attempt to elucidate my thoughts on Capitalism; I would love to write a lot more. And will, (possible book coming?)

“Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.”-Ayn Rand

Capitalism: “an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free competitive market and motivation by profit”

In recent years there has been a rising movement to scrutinize and rebuke one of our nations founding concepts-Capitalism. For me personally, this movement reached its pinnacle in an oratory speech- given by a young man at the Claremont high school debate tournament in California. This young man, who claimed to be a Marxist (In lemans-terms: a step higher than pure communism, but not quite Nazism), presented the idea that capitalism is flawed, and that Americas love affaire with capitalism is illogical. He claimed that we need to wake up and realize capitalism for what it is-a farce. With greed and power as it’s only motivator. . . . I wanted to give a rebuttal, and show this mistaken man the truth. It may sound arrogant, but everyone knows that communism is a laughing stock. His mantra . . . is false. Still, I feel the need to crystallize my feelings in this rebuttal:

The argument made by this person, lets call him bob (I really don’t know his name) Bob, argued that capitalism creates a society made up of classes (It does) But in this class system only 3% of the population had any liberty. This 3% were the fat and rich, the powerful, and snobby that ruled the majority of the people: the lower, and middle class. And this system created balkanization between the classes; and was evil. Bob argued that pure communism was the only system that, in the end lifted every individual as a whole. It protects the rights and liberties of the collective by creating and promoting equality. He argued that the elites had created such an illusion of liberty, that they were only able to maintain power through the stupidity of the masses, and the wide acceptance, and love of the flawed system Capitalism.

Bob is wrong, Capitalism is not evil. Communism is evil. I love capitalism, and here is why:

Why capitalism is increasingly scrutinized, and attacked? The answer is simple, in order for capitalism to succeed, one must WORK and do his best. That is, everyone must work, and do their best.

The evil elites that bob described are not selfish, or fat and lazy. The elites got where they are now, through hard work, and economic success. They also got there, not by taking advantage of the lower class majority, but with the support and approval of the lower-class majority. Does this sound familiar? How about the way our American government works? A republic-- Politicians compete and work hard for the approval of “The people” so that one day they can work to serve and better “the people”. --- Entrepreneurs work hard and develop a product, and compete against other products, for the approval of the people. If the entrepreneurs have worked hard enough, their product will be adopted and bought by the people. They will “make bank” and make money.-through their own hard work!

Now once someone is successful, it’s not just a sit back and relax elitist attitude. If you don’t believe me, just take one look at the state of GM, AIG, and other companies that slacked off. They failed! Capitalism requires work, constant work-Real individualism, and initiative (not the false individualism promised by communism, and the support of the collective). The money and fortune earned by people is rightfully theirs, not the governments, not the poor, it’s their money that they earned.

The youth of today have been taught to accept only what is given to them and not what they work for. As human beings, we are driven to strive for more out of life than what is given easily. Work hard, and reap the rewards of our labor, is the philosophy taken on by capitalism. Every person individually has their own desire to do their best, and as a consequence better human society (If every individual try’s, then you don’t have to worry about the collective). This creates competition, to be the best, and to make the most money. This competition produces our doctors, engineers, teachers, armed services, and many other challenging careers. And the more competitive a people are- the better products they produce, thus, making the quality of life perpetually rise competitively.

Why do people want to become doctors, lawyers, or any other prestigious career? The easy answer is money. Under capitalism, the harder you work the more money you get. But what if we implemented communism, or socialism? Wealth would be distributed equally to the people, attempting to create economic equalization.

Suppose you were a doctor living under a capitalistic government. You would pay a lot of money to go to years of schooling, and when you were finally a doctor, you could make the money you wanted, worked for, and deserved. But if communism or socialism were implemented, suddenly, there would be no motivation to work so hard to become a doctor-when you know that the government is only going to take your hard earned cash and give it to the poor, The poor who by the way did no where near the amount of work that you have done. Suddenly, there is a motivation, not to work hard, but to slack off. Because you know, either way your going to be just as wealthy as the guy next to you-no matter how hard either of you work.

Soon there would be no reason to become doctors or lawyers, or any other notable profession (or to work at all for that matter) because you know the government would have your back. While your necessities and life would be covered by the government, the quality of life would invariably and drastically decrease. Whereas with capitalism, there may be some people living in poverty, and there will be a lower class- the quality of life would always be rising- because of competition!

I have created this argument because I believe government intervention only hinders the inherent ability to achieve human greatness. The liberals of this nation have won over our youth with promises of “free” stuff and a great economic equalization. Spreading the wealth is more than a campaign slip-up. It is the core belief of most liberals that people do not earn what they work for, it belongs to the government (Spend a day at a debate tournament in California and you’ll understand what I mean.) What each of us works, sweats, and dreams about is ours and is not for the government to distribute as it sees fit. The battle will be hard, but I am up for the challenge, and indeed- I am up for the challenge, I will work hard to prove my point. Because I am a capitalist! And that is what I do.

P.F Debate, Teacher Merit-based-pay (NEG)

This is the Negation case that I wrote for the December Public Forum topic. Concerning teacher merit based pay: My partner Devin Stone and I remain the undefeated champions of PF.

My partner and I stand in Absolute Negation of this resolution: Resolved: That merit pay based on student achievement should be a significant component of K-12 teacher compensation in United States public schools. We the negation will argue the Theoretical Correctness and legitimacy of the resolution; the very theory and concept of teacher merit based pay is a terrible idea. My partner and I find 3 basic flaws in the concept of the merit based pay-transcended by the resolution. The three main points we will primarily focus on to elucidate our stance of ablolute negation are:

1. Student achievement is not reflective of Teachers ability.

2. It Encourages Cheating

3. It creates an unfair competition between teachers and schools


1. Student achievement is not reflective of Teachers ability.
There are several problems with basing how much a teacher should make based on student performance. The most important: there are too many other variables besides teacher effort that determine an individual's and a class' performance, like attitude, personality, health considerations, learning abilities, family stability, .Etc. Teachers only have so much control over how much and how fast a child can learn. Socrates once said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” Even if the teachers are willing to go the extra mile to fill the vessel, and kindle this flame, in the end it is the students who must put forth the effort to learn the concept, and thus igniting the flame inside them.


2. It Encourages Cheating
In a recent study, economist Steven D. Levitt proved that dozens of teachers in the Chicago School District who were involved in a merit pay program altered test scores to influence their salaries. Did the teachers cheat because they were bad people? Not likely, we the Negation believe that it was because the teachers were motivated by the monetary gain granted by the resolution and a merit based pay-based on said student achievement- and as it is seen here- student achievement is easy to manipulate and cheat- to the teachers advantage. You must realize, As long as there’s the temptation to alter student’s performance for an increase in pay, there will be teachers who will be willing to cheat and take advantage of the system, for money.


3. It creates an unfair competition between teachers and schools
Merit based pay-will create competition amongst teachers. Teachers will quarrel over who gets the “smart kids” and who teaches A.P. and Honors Classes, because it will mean an increased result of test scores, and thus granting the teacher of said A.P classes and Honors classes an instant pay raise. A school is a place where teachers work together to better the student, how will teachers work together if they are to preoccupied with earning more money? It will also create competition amongst schools where teachers would rather teach at school “X” than school “Y” because school “X” has better test scores, and thus more pay for the teacher. No teacher would want to teach at a low-income or high transient school. You see if a merit based pay is implemented it will not only cause teacher separation, but educational balkanization.


The very idea of teacher merit based pay is so fundamentally flawed, containing so many fallacies in logic and theory that it can’t possibly be considered as a legitimate alternative to our current education-pay system.

In conclusion, seeing the superfluous majority of fundamental flaws to Teacher merit-based pay all adding to its vast illegitimacy, n, Merit based pay for teachers Is an indubitably fallible concept; relying solely on the faith that it will someday work out for the better. Will it though? Will merit based pay-for teachers ever work for the betterment of education, and the students? We the negation according to the case presented submit that it will not. Please vote NEG!