Thoughts on Freedom

Medicare should be reformed so it is more like HECS. When you front up to the doctor or hospital for medical services then in order to pay the medical bill you should have the option of whipping out some cash, whipping out the MASTERCARD or whipping out the Medicare card. Medicare should be a credit fascility much like MASTERCARD or VISA. The only difference should be that the Medicare debt should be repaid via the tax system in the same way that HECS debts are repaid. In fact the debt could be administered by the same bureaucracy.

Such a reform would ensure that medical consumers seek value for money. However it would still provide access for those with financial difficulties. Medicare should be regarded as a payment system not an insurance system. Insurance should be entirely optional.

Socialism and its near cousin Communism were the scourge of the 20th century and whilst its influence as an ideology is no longer as disastrous as it once was, it is perhaps more insidious today. Wikipedia in its article on Socialism introduces it as follows:-

Socialism refers to group of ideologies and political movements with the goal of a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community. This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers’ councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state. As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state, worker, or community ownership of the means of production, goals which have been attributed to, and claimed by, a number of political parties and governments throughout history.

This definition fits with my understanding of the term. The key characteristic being that property is controlled communally not privately. In the worst case the community seeks to exert control over the very body and being of individuals. Generally it just involves pushing people around.

Lindsay Tanner writing in The Australian recently, seeks to divorce what he calls producerism from socialism. Here is part of what he says:-

Some would call this approach mercantilism. Others wrongly regard it as a core component of socialism. I see it as a distinct phenomenon in its own right that can best be described as producerism.

Producerism exists wherever the state implements regulatory and ownership arrangements that favour or protect particular producer groups at the expense of society as a whole. Tariffs, monopolies and other distorting regulatory regimes are the most obvious examples of the producerist philosophy at work.

So for Lindsay Tanner community control of property and wealth distribution is only socialism if it is done for the good of society as a whole. In other words Tanner believes socialism is not socialism unless it is utilitarianism. If community control of property and wealth distribution is done for narrow sectional interests then Tanner calls it producerism and regards it as a different animal to socialism. Socialism according to Tanner is something done for the greater good and if it is not for the greater good then it’s not socialism. A cynical libertarian might suggest that this is like saying that socialism is not socialism.

I don’t agree with the idea that socialism, or community control of property, is routinely good for society as a whole. However if clarifying socialism in this way allows Tanner and the ALP to conclude that we need lower taxes, lower tariffs, less corporate welfare and deregulation of markets and prices then I hope they spend quite a bit of time clarifying socialism to the mass of socialists out there.

During the forced collectivisation of China’s “Great Leap Forward”, food production dropped sharply. But Communist Party officials inflated food statistics so they could argue there was no food shortage. The authorities exported grain while ordinary Chinese starved. ”See, communism does work,” Mao Zedong would proclaim to the world.  

Unfortunately, communist rationing of food had some side-effects:

Deaths were kept secret as long as possible. What food there was was distributed by the collective kitchen and generally one family member would be sent to collect the rations on behalf of the whole household. As long as the death of a family member was kept secret, the rest of the household could benefit from an extra ration. So the corpse would be kept in the hut. In Guangshan county, one woman with three children was caught after she had hidden the corpse of one of them behind the door and then finally, in desperation, had begun to eat it.

From this, we can derive a basic test that we should apply to all ideologies. It goes like this. Is the ideology likely to lead to mothers eating their own children? If so, the ideology is flawed. Pretty simple, really.

In the case of libertarianism, to the best of my knowledge, I believe the answer is “no”.