The Baltimore Sun’s October 16, 2008 headline read “20-YEAR LIFE GAP SEPARATE CITY'S POOREST, WEALTHY" and disclosed the life span difference between residents of Hollins Market and Roland Park in Baltimore. The article went on to say that “at the extreme, the difference in mortality rates between some neighborhoods is as wide as the disparity in life expectancy between the United States and a Third World nation such as Burma.”
The disparity is shameful, but of much greater concern are the solutions discussed: public health initiatives, homicide prevention, increasing public housing, lifestyle changes and social sensitivity, among others. These solutions are more like bandages on symptoms than cures to a fundamental illness. What is done to remedy a problem must be based on causes, not symptoms.
Tucked in the article itself is an insight into the cause of the life expectancy disparity: “life expectancy tends to rise with median income..For every increase of $10,000 in a neighborhood's median household income, residents lived 3.4 years longer.” Income disparities are the cause of life expectancy disparities. Since the cause of the disparity is economic, the elimination of life expectancy disparities is economic.
Real solutions therefore require increased capital, small business development, banking and financial infrastructure, recirculation of capital, and jobs. This approach would work in Burma, and Hollins Market as well.
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In a Porter Stansberry Investment Newsletter, Porter must have gone on one of his juvenile libertarian tantrums about “big government”. An anonymous subscriber responded with the following:
"What a steaming pile of pretentious, libertarian bullsh*t! Are you ready to pick up your own garbage, maintain your own streets, parks and infrastructure? Are you ready to provide your own police and fire protection? Are you ready for EVERYONE to educate their own children (you think most Americans are morons now, just wait)? What about caring for all the elderly in your community? You think our government is composed of gangsters? Ever been to Mexico? That's just the beginning of the list – with a guy like Ron Paul, even though he cannot be elected right now, we can start to move towards the limited government our ancestors fought for – but he doesn't waste his followers' time with these 'everyone sucks but me' rants like you do. Yes, we've gotten far away from where we should be. It took a long time to get there. It will take a long time to reverse all of this. Your scorched-earth rants accomplish nothing. As for Obama, fifty years ago, the thought that a person with any significant African ancestry could become President of the United States was totally and utterly unrealistic. Two days ago, it happened. So, there is hope, whether you believe it or not." – Anonymous
In the indicated newsletter issue, Goldsmith responds to the subscriber as follows:
“This is one of the great idiocies of "statism"... the belief that government entities should oversee most aspects of our lives. Almost every service a government provides (like delivering mail or disposing waste) can be done cheaper and more efficiently by a private enterprise – one that must economically serve its customers or cease to exist. America's founders would be aghast to see government involved in most of the activities it is in today.”
Such a weak, chauvinistic, and fanatical response Only a true believer and a person that placed his thinking cap on the shelf would respond in such a manner. First of all, neither the local, state, or federal government “oversees most aspects of our lives”. This is a position that a libertarian fanatic assumes when he is being criticized. A fanatic posits an extreme position for his opponent in order to simply “win the argument”. No one who believes in prudent organization of a society would believe that government should oversee “most aspects of our lives”. This is ridiculous!! Like any of the big issues in the evolution of the American experience, the truth lies somewhere in the center. There is a role for government as there is a role for private enterprise.
Let’s take the “maintain your own streets” example that the subscriber offered. In general, one can make a reasonable argument that anything that is within the “common square” requires a government role. No one in their right mind would argue that Streets are not in the “common square”. Streets are used by all citizens in a society. Thus, a government role in their upkeep is reasonable. In general, anything that is in the “common square” requires a government management role. Note the term management. Otherwise, if a private enterprise would assume that role, it would have to be as a monopoly since citizens generally cannot pick and choose roads upon which to travel to get from point A to point B. If one thinks like a libertarian and takes the position that private enterprise can build maintain the streets, then why is a monopoly such a good idea. Of course, when the government manages street maintenance, it still leaves room for competition among private enterprise contractors to accomplish the street maintenance tasks.
Many states are converting their roads to toll roads. Now citizens are faced with a private enterprise monopoly with a profit incentive that manages their access to a basic vital need. This has never worked in the past and it never will work long term. It is an experiment at best. However, it is an experiment that never had good results in the past. There used to be private toll roads in states in the past that were subsequently converted to state control. Why?
Another example of resources that are in the common square is telephone and cable. Prior to the advent of cable technology, telephone lines were unique and like roads but carried vocal communication. Telephone was in the common square like roads and so a compromise was made. AT&T was given a monopoly but it was placed under firm government control.
With the advent of cable technology, again a compromise was made but it was a bad one. The government allowed the cable private enterprise monopoly but relinquished most government control except for minor price control. Private enterprise was given ownership of the cable lines. Well, this has been a disaster! The cost of cable has risen dramatically as was expected. The choices of programming is a disaster. The programming offered appeals to the lowest common denominator in terms of IQ. No thinking person would say that the cable service that they receive is good in terms of price and product! In the case of cable lines just as in the case of roads, the government should have been the owner and manager of them. Then, private enterprise contractors competing with each other could be contracted to install, maintain, and/or use the cable lines to provide the indicated services at a bid price. Then the citizens would have been in control of this vital resource. Indeed, in many municipalities in the United States, the government did just this very thing, assumed ownership of the cable lines and the benefits are well documented. With the advent of digital technology, ownership of the cable lines is even more necessary.
It really makes you wonder about the fanaticism of the tiny but vocal segment of our population that really thinks that a dog-eat-dog, winner take all approach to a society is workable. And they never give up. Already, in numerous states, the leaders are investigating selling the management of their road systems to private enterprise. These experiments in libertarianism will end up just like the Ronal Reagan’s experiment in “getting the government off the backs of the private sector” and “trickle down”. Witness disaster that has been wrought since then:
• Real income of the middle class falling (due in part to increasingly regressive taxation but also due to globalization and the export of manufacturing jobs and the suppression of unions)
• The deficit and debt rising to unsustainable levels (due to the “borrow and spend” habits of the politicians in control)
• An American democracy that has an increasing level of wealth and income allocated to an increasingly smaller portion of the population. Where 2% or 3% of the people own more that 50% of the wealth. Whatever one thinks about the fairness of a meritocracy, a democracy cannot be sustained if the middle class is emasculated
• Anemic response to Natural Disasters (when politicians in control have a libertarian view of the government, outrages like the anemic response to natural disasters will result e.g. hurricane Katrina)
• Pathogins and poisens getting into the food and drug supply (when politicians in control have a libertarian view of the government, outrages like lead in toys and pathogins in lettuce result)
And then there is the hypocrisy of the libertarians. When it comes to the powerless in a society, they decry government intervention. But when it comes to the powerful, government intervention and help appears to be OK. Witness the $700B package to rescue the rich and powerful financial private enterprises that caused the problem in the first place. I have not heard libertarians screaming about this outrage. The powerful financial private enterprises have already pocketed the commissions and charges derived from their Ponzi scheme so it will be difficult to get that money back. There may be a small part that can be recovered through successful indictments on corruption. They pocketed extreme income derived from cheating powerless investors but no libertarians are asking them to give it back. The government is only asking for a more progressive tax code in order to clean up the mess that was partially due to their stupidity and greed.
Since they seem to have such intense feelings about a libertarian society, they should all acquire a piece of land somewhere in the world and occupy it. If they are libertarians, why do they have a need to live within close proximity of other families. The true answer is that they are parasites that do not want to contribute anything but want only to suck the riches of the host.
The article was very interesting and informative to me
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