Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto

by Matt Kibbe

  Other commonsense reforms include health savings accounts for younger workers, stripping all of the “mandated benefits” from gold-plated insurance plans that drive up both costs and overconsumption of health services. We should also let families shop for better health insurance policies in all fifty states, just like any other product we might shop around for.

  No mandates, no coercion. Just choice, and providers who work for your health and your return business. Politicians like to make empty promises about “universal coverage,” even though they can’t possibly provide for it. Besides, the goal should be better health care at lower costs, and Washington is particularly ill-suited to provide that.

  Health care is a fundamentally personal issue. The relationship between a patient and doctor needs to be based on trust and mutual understanding. Let’s stop robbing patients of their privacy, their dignity, and their freedom to choose.

  It’s really not that complicated, unless health-care reform is more about their control over you than it is about your control over your health care.

  5. CHOICE, NOT CONSCRIPTION

  One-size-fits-all entitlements take security and control away from you, and that’s exactly upside down. You should have a say and a choice in your own future plans.

  Of course, it’s hard to talk about health-care reform without talking about Medicare and Medicaid. Both programs are in dire financial condition. It makes no sense to take $500 billion out of Medicare, as ObamaCare does, to spend on the creation of a new program. It also makes no sense to expand Medicaid, as ObamaCare does, to grow Medicaid populations and financial obligations that are already bankrupting state budgets.

  The biggest challenge with the federal budget is the so-called entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and now ObamaCare. Already, these programs consume a big part of the total federal budget. And this ominous trend does not even take into account what the Trustees Report for Social Security and Medicare estimates are unfunded promises in excess of $100 trillion.13 The total fiscal gap of all our government liabilities is $222 trillion, according to economist Laurence Kotlikoff.14 I know, it’s almost impossible to wrap your mind around that one.

  Such programs will literally consume the entire budget if we don’t rethink this forced, one-size-fits-all approach to questions like providing seniors’ health care and retirement benefits.

  Giving people choices is the key. Today, so much is forced, mandated, and controlled by someone else. If these programs are good and desirable, we should let people choose. After all, choice and competition are the fundamental building blocks of customer satisfaction.

  I don’t think we should change the rules of the game on retirees and near retirees already locked into the current system. That would be wrong. But so is forcing young people into one-size-fits-all programs that experts do not believe will be around when future retirees arrive. So young people should be free to choose. It would be wrong to force them into a system they can’t count on in retirement.

  Besides, we no longer work for the same company our entire lives, like our grandparents did. New systems need to be mobile and stick with us, under our control.

  Senator Rand Paul’s budget proposal for fiscal 2014, “A Clear Vision to Revitalize America,” recognized that entitlement programs are insolvent and on track to bankrupt the nation. He proposed, among other things, replacing involuntary enrollment with individual choice, allowing young people to opt out of Social Security if they think they can get a better deal elsewhere.15

  Opting out costs the Social Security system money today, but it also takes unfunded future liabilities off the books. Honest accounting would demonstrate the value of young people taking more personal responsibility. People work hard for their money. It is only reasonable to let them choose how to use it to invest in their own futures, especially when the fiscal health of the entire nation hangs in the balance.

  And we know what Congress has done to the Social Security Trust Fund. They have already spent all of the retirement funds on other stuff. Really.

  Medicare is also a major source of conscription into the federal benefits programs. If seniors want to receive the Social Security that they have paid for their whole life, they must also enroll in a bloated government health insurance program that suffers from a lack of competition on the open market. Shouldn’t seniors be allowed to choose their own health care, rather than being forced into a system they may not like, want, or need?

  We should make participation in Medicare voluntary. Why not let seniors choose for themselves? If you don’t want to participate in Medicare, you shouldn’t have to. The system could use the money. We should also let participants in Medicare purchase additional health-care services outside the government system, and let doctors provide those services without being penalized.

  In 2012, Senator Paul introduced the “Congressional Health Care for Seniors Act,” a bill that would have allowed seniors to sign up for the same health insurance program enjoyed by members of Congress, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.16 Unlike Medicare, this would open up competition and allow seniors more choices over their health care. There are currently 2,250 participating plans in the FEHBP, so there would certainly be no shortage of options. Furthermore, it’s estimated that this plan would save more than $1 trillion in the next decade.

  As John Kerry once said in his endorsement of a similar program back in 2004, “If it’s good enough for us, it’s good enough for every American.”17

  6. END INSIDER BAILOUTS

  The bridesmaid of big government is always some well-heeled interest that wants a special deal. If the government weren’t so involved, insiders would have to go back to serving consumers and taking responsibility for their own actions.

  Some call it crony capitalism, but I think that gives honest entrepreneurs a bad name, smeared by the corrupt behavior of beggar CEOs seeking new handouts. One of the biggest problems in Washington, D.C., is the unholy collusion between favor-seeking “businessmen,” committee chairmen, and White House operatives. Can’t meet consumer demand? Can’t compete with smaller, more prudently run banks? Don’t know how to turn a profit on “green” technology? Get on your G5 and jet to Washington. There, someone will make you an offer you can’t refuse.

  Why is it that powerful Wall Street banks and multinational car manufacturers get bailouts paid for by the rest of us?

  Well, who’s your man in D.C.? What’s the name of the well-heeled lobbyist in charge of getting you special favors and goodies from government? Don’t have one, do you? And there’s the problem. The trend in D.C. is toward more consolidation, more “insider trading,” where favored interests—think General Electric or Solyndra or the government employees’ union or the city of Detroit—rearrange the rules and federal budget allocations to their advantage.

  As long as the favors are being handed out, someone other than you, someone with insider pull, is going to get in line first.

  The best weapon against this insider cronyism is transparency, public shaming, and market accountability. But there are some innovative ideas to deal with too-big-to-fail investment banks and the other trough-feeding interests that grow fat on your tab.

  The market dominance of unaccountable investment banks has been fed by a de facto understanding that bad behavior will be bailed out. You will never find that statute, but when the crisis comes, the irresponsible risk takers will hold us hostage, and the political class will fall in line. Recall Nancy Pelosi’s final plea for votes to pass the TARP bailout:

  It just comes down to one simple thing. They have described a precipice. We are on the brink of doing something that might pull us back from that precipice. I think we have a responsibility. We have worked in a bipartisan way.18

  Don’t doubt that the insiders in D.C. will find common ground with Wall Street’s bad actors when it matters. Huge special interests are protected at the taxpayers’ expense, even when they display gross incompetence and an inability to act responsib
ly. We saw it with TARP, and again with the General Motors bailout.

  If you believe in freedom, you understand that future rewards entail risk, a willingness to put your money where your mouth is. This, to me, is the cool part of capitalism; it allows everyone to play in the rough-and-tumble scrum of serving consumers better. Maybe you have a better idea, or see efficiencies no one else does.

  But if you get it wrong, freedom holds you to account. No looking to someone else to bail you out. The same should be true if the “you” is named Citibank or AIG or Countrywide Financial. If bad behavior isn’t allowed to be corrected by the relentless accountability markets, bad actors will double down on risky behavior, creating a politically generated boom-and-bust cycle with no end.

  As chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) seems like the odd man out in his lonely fight to unwind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The committee has traditionally protected the cozy—and highly profitable—relationship between big banks and these so-called “government sponsored enterprises.” That’s Washington-speak for the socialized risk that taxpayers bear, and the personalized profits for certain insiders with the right political pull.

  “The two largest, most influence-exerting, regulation-avoiding, bailed-out institutions weren’t banks and weren’t located on Wall Street. They were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage market financial Frankensteins that were created not in a competitive marketplace, but in a government lab in Washington,” Hensarling said.

  In 2011, he introduced the “GSE Bailout Elimination and Taxpayer Protection Act,” a bill designed to stop the ridiculous taxpayer-funded payouts to the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which contributed in no small measure to the housing crisis of 2007. “The GSEs are on track to be the nation’s biggest bailout, more than AIG and GM and all the big banks combined. It’s time to enact fundamental reform of Fannie and Freddie before these companies go from ‘too big to fail’ to ‘too late to fix.’ ”19

  Americans should get a fair shake, with equal treatment under the law, rather than being forced to prop up failing enterprises with their tax dollars. Free markets are all about accountability, and that means both profit and loss. That’s the American way.

  7. LET PARENTS DECIDE

  Parents know the educational needs of their children best.

  Every day we are told that America is falling behind in educational standards, that we are in danger of being unable to compete on a global scale, that our children aren’t learning well enough, fast enough. The proposed solutions invariably include putting more good money into a bad system, tightening the grip of the federal bureaucracy on education standards, lengthening school hours, imposing more rigorous testing, and separating children ever further from their parents’ control, putting them into the hands of Big Brother.

  These two trends are the inverse of each other: The more top-down control from Washington, the worse our kids perform in monopoly schools. This seems like another one of those “teachable moments,” doesn’t it?

  From “No Child Left Behind” to “Common Core,” all of these top-down, one-size-fits-all federal programs seek to deprive parents of options in the way their children are schooled. Common Core standards eliminate choice at every level, hobbling states, localities, teachers, students, and parents in their ability to choose education standards that work for children, over those that are arbitrarily mandated from on high.

  All of this is in direct conflict with the empirical evidence that children learn best when parents are free to choose from a variety of educational options to suit the individual needs of their children.

  Education belongs at the local level. Only parents in local communities are well equipped to decide the policies that work for their kids. The fight against Common Core standards is largely being waged at the state level, but in order to reform education in the long run, we need to get gray-suited bureaucrats from faraway Washington out of the business of managing your child’s education. Do they know what your son needs? Could they possibly care more than you do? Do they even know your daughter’s name?

  The U.S. Department of Education does nothing but stand in the way of preserving choice and keeping education local, where it should be. I think we should shut it down and put tax dollars back in the hands of parents and allow them to choose the right school for their children, be it public, private, charter, or home.

  A freedom-based education policy puts parents first, recognizing that they are the ones best placed to choose what is right for their own families. This is common sense, knowing that personal knowledge guides the individual talents of your kids.

  8. RESPECT MY PRIVACY

  In our constitutional system, one of the sacred laws of justice is “innocent until proven guilty.” We are supposed to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure, and law-abiding citizens should have a reasonable expectation of privacy from the all-seeing eyes of government surveillance.

  The exploits of the NSA reveal that such constitutional protections are under attack, and that the Obama administration has little regard for the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. The “guilty until proven innocent” philosophy of government-by-surveillance is a fundamental perversion of the American principles of justice.

  Americans should be free to live their lives without the fear of government constantly snooping into their every activity. We do not want a police state in which we are watched at all times, with the powers that be waiting eagerly for any opportunity to inflict punishment to keep us in line.

  Freedom is compromised when surveillance is pervasive. Treat people like criminals and you will make criminals out of them. The activities of the NSA should be reserved for actual lawbreakers, always conducted under the rule of law with properly issued warrants.

  Gradually, we have allowed our privacy rights to slip away, starting with the warrantless wiretaps of the Patriot Act and extending to the outrageous domestic spying program of the NSA. A freedom-based policy would restore privacy to the American people and reassert the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”

  Justin Amash has taken the lead in attempting to end NSA spying on Americans once and for all. Winning the bipartisan support of an impressive array of congressmen, his “USA FREEDOM Act” offers bold new ideas to respect the privacy of ordinary citizens and check the power of government spying.

  “The days of unfettered spying on the American people are numbered,” said Amash. “This is the bill the public has been waiting for. We now have legislation that ceases the government’s unconstitutional surveillance. I am confident that Americans and their representatives will rally behind it.”20

  The bill is a multi-pronged attack on the surveillance state. It ends the collection of Americans’ data by the NSA except in cases of suspected criminal activity; it requires FISA court decisions to be made available to Congress, and summaries of those opinions to be released to the public; it gives telecommunications companies more freedom to disclose information on government surveillance to the public; and it installs a special advocate to argue in favor of preserving Americans’ civil liberties before the FISA court.

  9. END THE FED MONOPOLY

  Monopolies don’t work very well when it comes to maintaining high quality and a low price. It’s the lack of accountability and competition that leads to expensive, inferior outputs. This seems like a good analogy to explain why the Federal Reserve has trashed the dollar. A lack of accountability and competition has degraded your purchasing power. A dollar’s just not “as good as gold” anymore.

  This is one of the major problems with the Fed. It’s both “independent,” yet systematically manipulated by political insiders. Congress made things worse in 1977 when it amended the Federal Reserve Act to create a so-called dual mandate, which amounted to a blank check for the Fed to do just about whatever it wants. “The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open M
arket Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production,” the mandate states, “so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.”

  If you wonder what exactly this means, you’re not alone. The only thing that is certain is that the ambiguity of “maximum employment” gives incredible discretion to Fed micromanagers operating in an incredibly secretive fashion. With a lack of supervision or oversight, there is no way of knowing what really goes on within its deified walls. The first step in eliminating the Fed’s monopoly is a comprehensive audit to find out exactly in which ways it has been mismanaging our currency, and how it is managing the $3.7 trillion in toxic assets from mortgage-backed securities it has acquired in recent years.

  To the extent there is a central bank, its only job should be to protect the integrity of the currency, not to manipulate the dollar based on pressures from politicians and big investment banks. The Fed would be more accountable and predictable if it operated using rule-based monetary policy rather than the blank check discretionary power it has today. We should eliminate “maximum employment” from the Fed’s current dual mandate. Economists can’t even agree on what full employment actually is, let alone understand the infinitely complex price signals that drive market decisions. Giving the Fed a mandate to do whatever it wants leads to irresponsible abuses of the currency and drives the political business cycle of boom and bust.

  Should we end the Fed outright? Should we adopt a gold standard that prevents the easy manipulation and expansion of a “paper” currency? I think we start by “denationalizing” money, an idea first proposed by F. A. Hayek. Let’s legalize gold and other electronic payment systems as a means of exchange. Let’s allow competition in currency. Choice, transparency, and competition would end the Fed monopoly, and stop the destructive boom and bust of monetary manipulation.