Open Mic

On Twitter @GregWHoward said: "@yintercept You've got an open mic. Tell us all about it."

Per your request, here goes:

PPACA (ObamaCare) was premised on the assumption that insurance (group funding of individual consumption) is the only viable way to fund health care.

If someone created a viable alternative to insurance, the program would strike at the foundations of ObamaCare.

Conversely, if insurance is the only viable way to pay for health care, then we need something like PPACA to protect the consumer.

A health savings account plus high deductible insurance is still an insurance product. So, I created a theoretical product called the "Medical Savings and Loan." This program supplements a health savings account with loans and grants. The MS&L replaces insurance agents and claims adjusters with a new position called the Health Care Advocate.

The program uses a different mathematical model than insurance. (I worked as a programmer for an insurance company.) Insurance analyzes the experience of a group over a year.

The MS&L analyzes the experience of an individual over a lifetime.

The program looks at an individual as a whole being. So, let's say someone has a job for $40,000 and their employer pays $10,000 a year in insurance (I am ignoring the amount taken out for medicare for the moment).

This person is really earning $50k a year. Ignoring inflation, the employee will make $2,000,000 in a lifetime.

CMS.gov says we spent 17.3% of GDP on healthcare and this number will grow to 19% in upcoming years. Let's say it is reasonable to assume that a person should self-fund their health care up to 15% of their income.

This person with a modest income can self-fund $300,000.00 in care. If we put the cap at 20% of income, this person could self-fund up to $400,000.00 in care.

The Medical Savings and Loan puts forward the ideal that those who can self-fund their care should self fund. The MS&L creates a structured savings program supplemented by guaranteed loans to help the person self fund care up to a reasonable limit.

Most people can self fund their care.

If a person has an unusually high ratio of expenses to income, the health care advocate will seek grants on behalf of the client.

The Medical Savings and Loan is still information driven. The program hires actuaries to analyze medical expenses and incomes to determine how much money needs to be set aside for grants.

Using a different mathematical model, I was able to create a new structure that funds the same amount of health care as insurance (or socialized medicine for that matter).

With this structure in hand I can now begin to argue that our problems in health care result from the use of group funding for individual consumption and that the solution to our economic problems is to revive the concept of self funded care.

For example, I can argue that portability is a problem unique to insurance. In the Medical Savings and Loan, you have money in the bank and it follows you.

The issue of pre-existing conditions is different as well. There are some people who have medical problems that exceed their ability to pay. No matter how you approach the argument, people who do not have the funds to pay for care need to get assistance from others. So, the best way to help this people is with overt grants.

For the most part, the question of pre-existing conditions is a direct result of poor financial planning in the current insurance regime. People who expect their employer to pay for their care lack the financial skills to self fund their care.

I can argue many other issues as well. For example, I can argue that insurance artificially concentrates wealth.

Insurance companies tell us that, if we pooled together our health resources, we could buy more care. My model shows that people actually will receive less care and that putting our money in pool concentrates wealth in the hands of the people who control the pool.

With my model I can argue that group-funding of individual consumption broke the pricing mechanism in health care. Restoring the concept of individual funding of individual consumption will restore the pricing mechanism.

The Medical Savings and Loan uses a different payment structure than insurance: The MS&L uses the fee for service payment structure. Patients pay cash for services rendered by a doctor.

With insurance people put their health care resources in a group pool, then file a lawsuit against that pool when they need care.

With insurance, every transaction is a legal claim. When you see a doctor, you enter a legal claim against the pool. The filing of this claim must be made to the specifications of the court that oversees the claim.

Insurance billing is so complex because every transaction is a legal claim and must be filed to the specifications of the courts that oversee the claims.

The reason that you cannot buy insurance over state lines is that doing so confuses the jurisdiction.

Since the Medical Savings and Loan uses a fee for service model and cash payments, there is little problem using the money at any hospital that accepts money.

Conservatives love to yammer about tort reform. I can show that the insurance model leads directly to legal abuse. This argument requires a full post.

Comparing the Medical Savings and Loan to Insurance leads to a large number of interesting philosophical discussions as well. For example, conservatives love to complain about regulation.

Insurance was designed as a tool for regulating health care. Health care involves a number of irregular expenses. With insurance, people fund their care through regular premium payments into a pool.

When people demand insurance regulation, they are actually demanding to regulate a regulator.

Insurance played a major role in the financial collapse. Government re-insurance of mortgages, mortgage-backed-securities, credit-default-swaps, CDOs, hedge funds, etc., are all insurance products. Our financial system is an unstable mix of insurance product piled on insurance product which insure other insurance products. This unstable mix of products was bound to implode.

From a theoretical standpoint, the idea behind health insurance is that people can fund health care through a mathematically stable Ponzi scheme.

But there is no such thing as a mathematically stable Ponzi scheme. When you pay current investors with proceeds from new investors, the system will collapse as soon as people lose confidence in the confidence game.

Anyway, the Medical Savings and Loan is a fascinating topic.

A small group of people could make a huge impact in the health care debate if they just sat down and had a conference on alternatives to insurance.

In three years, I have not been able to get any local Republicans to talk to me. The second they hear me say I want to discuss self-funded care as an alternative to insurance, they slam the door in my face.

I discuss this issue on HCA.me, MedicalSavingsAndLoan.com, medicalsavingsandloan.blogspot.com and this blog.



If anyone wants to take part in a conference on alternative financing of health care, please contact me. I live in Utah, but am willing to travel.

NOTE: I have an invitation to visit San Diego. I am trying to save up enough money to pay for that trip. If I can find people between Salt Lake and San Diego (eg Arizona, Las Vegas, LA), then I will hit the road in April.

Sutherland Institute is as Bad as the Left

Projection is a favorite tool of the left. Marx (and Freud) taught their minions to project their methods onto their opponents. This increases the division in society.

Paul Mero provides a great example of projection. He begins with a self-righteous claim that he is "mocked and ridiculed." He then uses his pulpit at the Sutherland Institute to mock and ridicule opponents to Utah's sex ed bill.

There is growing support for abstinence based sex-ed curriculum. Sutherland Institute shows that school districts representing 24% of the state's schools have adopted the program he wants and that many other school districts in Utah have sex-ed programs that are very close to the one he promotes.

Up until the legislation, the Sutherland Institute was winning the war of ideas.

Rather than winning the war of ideas for abstinence based education, Sutherland pushes a totalitarian plan called "Abstinence Only," and imposes this totalitarian solution through the State.

"Only" is an absolute. By supporting the "Abstinence Only" law, the supposedly free market oriented Sutherland Institute is being a totalitarian statist.

What is really absurd is that Sutherland Institute's decision to force an absolute system undermined support for abstinence based sex-education.

Stand Up for Freedom Rally - SLC

I was really disappointed with the poor showing at the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally in Salt Lake. This rally marked the second anniversary of PPACA. The meetings highlighted the fact that government control of health care necessarily stomps on people's deep held religious beliefs.

The event was well advertised and I was anticipating a really big crowd. The Salt Rally was the only event in the state, and the event had speakers traveling from Ogden and Provo.

Sadly, there was only about 200 people at the Salt Lake Event on the steps of the Matheson Courthouse on State Street in Salt Lake. I suspect that more than 200 people walk by the courthouse on any given Friday afternoon.

Since Salt Lake is the headquarters of the LDS Church, Utahans have a tendency to frame issues in a religious light. For example, Paul Mero of the Sutherland Institute dismisses free speech concerns at the City Creek Shopping Center by calling the ACLU "naysayers and Mormon haters." (there are real free speech issues involved when a large group owns most of downtown.)

If defending regilion (not just the mongering of power) really was the driving force of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, one would expect thousands of Utahans rallying for religious freedom.

For three solid years, I've been trying to find conservative Utahans to talk about health freedom. In three years, I have not found a single Utah Conservative willing to talk about my ideas about defeating ObamaCare. My idea is to promote self-funded health care as an alternative to insurance. It is a very good plan.

Sadly, every single conservative I contact in Utah immediately dismisses me. Pigheaded conservatives who shut their minds to all ideas outside their narrow experience are as much a threat to liberty as are the progressive who seek to take our freedom.

Anyway, the speakers at the event did a great job discussing how the left is using its control of health regulation to lock out people with religious convictions. For example, nurses are given abortion as a litmus test for lucrative health care jobs. (Do you really want the university to filter out prolife nurses? When its my turn to shuffle off to the nursing home, I hope the nurses are pro-life.

IN CONCLUSION: The lack of support at the Rally for Religious Freedom shows that neither Utah nor the LDS Church are reliable allies in the fight for repealing ObamaCare.

Which Virtue?

In the spirit of Hegel and Marx, Paul Mero of the Sutherland Institute claims that he is personally privy to a higher definition of freedom. Mero's redefined freedom is "freedom plus virtue."

Mero's modified definition of freedom leads immediately to the question of which virtue?

On reading western history one finds radically different concepts of virtue with people doing horrible things to each other in the name of virtue. In ancient writings, you will find people slaughtering enemies, taking slaves, raping people and committing atrocious in the name of virtue.

Philosophers, such as Aristotle, realized that any virtue pushed to an extreme becomes a vice.

In the book "Machiavelli's Virtue" the conservative writer Harvey Mansfield praises the disgusting things done by the Prince as virtue. I emphasized conservative because Mansfield  is a highly respected professor at Harvard who has strong influence in the conservative establishment. You will find many conservative thinkers praise Machiavelli and the Art of War ... considering evil done to preserve social order a virtue.

I see Machiavellian virtues as vices.

In other parts of the world, we find that some people think that strapping a bomb to one's self and detonating it in a crowd is an act is a great virtue. Suicide bombimg is a virtuous act of self-sacrifice.

Likewise, honor killings are committed in the name of virtue. Killing your daughter for dating a gentile preserves the honor (virtue) of the family.

From antiquity to the modern day, the discussion of what is virtuous is filled with both absurd and disgusting interpretations of virtue.

Anyone accepting Mero's modified definition freedom (freedom=freedom + virtue) must immediately jump into discussing which virtue?

Mero boldly proclaims that the virtue behind the American experiment is none other than "Utah Values." (Apparently, Mero hasn't read enough history to know that Utah was not a state in 1776).

By Utah Values, I suspect that Mero means the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

I am not LDS. I do not have Utah Values; So, Paul Mero (in his tiny closed mind) would say I don't deserve freedom.

Speaking of Utah Values ... two Utahans of great virtue (Terrill Dalton and Geody Harman) are in the news. These virtuous men are the prophets and founders of The Church of the Firstborn and The General Assembly of Heaven. Reports say that Dalton considers himself to be the Holy Ghost and father of Jesus Christ.

You can't get much more virtuous than that.

These men, infused with Utah Values, do what the Heavenly Father says. When the Heavenly Father told them to diddle the babysitter, they did.

Evil gentiles are now persecuting these virtuous men claiming that they raped a minor when they were performing the virtuous act of sealing a blessing in the celestial kingdom by giving seed. This wondrous blessing was performed multiple times by the seer-revelator and prophet Joseph Smith.

Not being a member of The Church of the Firstborn and The General Assembly of Heaven, I just see two deluded rapists. We have different concepts of virtue.

I actually disagree with many Utah Values. For example: young men in the LDS Church are asked to spend two years on a mission to spread the teachings of Joseph Smith. To most Utahans, doing a mission is considered an act of great virtue.

I believe Joseph Smith was a charlatan. I see LDS missionaries as people who are spreading a lie. I consider spreading lies to be a vice.

Unlike Paul Mero, I wouldn't use my definition of virtue or vice to deny a person to pursue their dreams. Going on a mission looks like great fun. I've helped people raise money for their mission even though I disagree with them.

As there are so many confused theories built around freedom, I think the US Founders would reject Mero's modified definition of freedom (freedom = freedom + virtue). Yes, the founders noted that a population that lacks virtue would soon lose its freedom, yet they knew enough of history to know there were competing definitions of virtue.

For example, in colonial days, people occasionally had duels to defend their honor (a virtue).

The practice of duels continued after the nation's founding. As the body count of duels mounted, people came to realize that taking the life of another over some stupid spat is a waste.

I mentioned in my previous post that a free society must avoid the reflexive paradox. A person cannot be free to deny freedom to others.

In the act of dueling, one person denies freedom to another by taking the other's life.

The concept of freedom modifies, for the better, our concept of virtue.

A society that holds freedom as a foundational premise is more likely to develop a positive set of virtues than one that starts from the top-down trying to impose virtues.

Anyway, I was extremely upset at reading Paul Mero's modified definition of freedom. This is especially true since The Sutherland Institute takes money under the guise of defending free market policies.

The reason we are losing our freedom is because rogues on the left and right (like Paul Mero) have taken it upon themselves to redefine freedom.

Stomp Down on Education Freedom

Stand Up for Religious Freedom is hosting protests against contraceptive mandates on March 23 at locations across the nation.

PPACA (ObamaCare) includes mandates that religious groups pay for contraceptives that they find morally objectionable. I support these protests because they highlight the fact that government controlled health care leads directly to government involve in personal choices.

Contraception is widely available in the US. The issue of the protest is a mandate that forces religious groups to pay for contraceptive medications that they find morally objectionable. For example, the Morning After Pill causes the death of a fertilized egg. Many Christian groups consider fertilization to be conception. Aborting a developing life after conception is not really contraception, now, is it?

The left seeks to frame the protests as an attempt to undermine women's health, but have had only limited success in wining this argument, so far.

Sadly, to undermine this national effort, the idiotic Utah Legislature passed a culture-war law mandating that Utah Schools teach abstinence-only sex education (HB363). In a post that is bizarre beyond belief, Paul Mero of the Sutherland Instituted supports HB363 because four School Districts already use the abstinence only sex-education program. (There are 41 school districts in Utah)

HB363 is now the complete reverse of the PPACA mandate.

The Abstinence-Only Sex Ed is already available in Utah and is the choice of local school districts. In other posts Mero admits that HB363 is purely a culture war law.

If the stupid curriculum is already in use, then we do we need another stupid law on the books? Why not just expand the program through the process in place? The Eagle Forum and Sutherland Institute are immensely powerful groups that have the knack at getting their ideas pushed through the school districts.

All this effort does is show that Conservatives are the mirror image of the Progressives and are quick to use the power of the state to impose their ideas on others.

So, as conservatives march on to the streets to support religious freedom, progressives are now able to point to the Sutherland Institution and their precious little sex-ed mandate HB363 and claim that conservatives are hypocrites. This stupid law just might be enough for progressives to convince the public that Stand Up for Religious Freedom is an effort to cramp women's health.

Dialectics of Freedom

Sublation (Aufheben) is a technique described by dialecticians (eg, Hegel 1770-1831) that turns the meaning of a word into its opposite.

The American founders applied their classical education to the question of Liberty. They came up with the ideas we see in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. I call this philosophy "classical liberalism."

In the generations after the founding, partisan groups sought to interpret the US Founding to their favor. In the early 1800s, intellectuals in the US adopted the dialectical style as the political system devolved into the Left/Right framework of The French Revolution.

In this split, the progressive left seeks radical change and conservative right seeks to preserve the social order.

In this game, both the left and right play a game in which they twist the definition of freedom in ways that demand action from the state. For example, progressives like to give people freedom from things. To provide freedom from hunger, the state must take resources from group A to give it to group B (with politically connected businesses skimming just a little off the top for good measure).

In the current culture wars, the Obama Administration sought to give people free contraception by compelling employers to pay for the contraception, including contraceptive methods the some regligious groups find morally objectionable.

The dialectician Joseph Smith (1805-1844) created a very interesting twist on freedom. Unlike Adam Smith, who argued that freedom itself was a good thing, Joseph Smith claims that the Heavenly Father gave mankind "free agency" as a sort of test. You have free agency as a test to see if you willingly follow the teachings of the Church.

In the article "My case for HB 363 (sex ed bill)," Paul Mero of the Sutherland Institute provides an example of Joseph Smith's teaching on free agency in action. Since free agency is a test given by the Heavenly Father, then political authorities must give people an outline of the test to help people know the righteous path. Therefore, the Legislature needs to write the curriculum for Utah schools. Mero says:

"It represents another front in the culture war over Utah values, how we see ourselves as human beings, how we view the proper role of government and, ultimately, how we view freedom."

Mero claims the freedom perceived by the US Founders was incomplete. He says:

"Freedom is not simply 'individual liberty' or 'economic freedom.' Those qualities are important components of freedom, but incomplete. A complete definition is that freedom is the sum of liberty and virtue."

This idea might sound compelling until one realizes that 'virtue' is an undefined term. One need only look at the Roman and Machiavellian concepts of 'virtue' to realize the horrible things people do to eachother in the name of 'virtue.'

The US Founders clearly saw virtue and freedom as different subjects because they included freedom of speech and religion in the Bill of Rights. With a classical education, the Founders would have realized that there are radically different definitions of virtue.

With Mero's definition of freedom, one is drawn immediately into a never ending culture war with his his partisan group claiming righteousness while labeling others evil and naive gentiles.

I like classical liberal ideas of our nation's founders. I've blogged on the contraception mandates of PPACA to show how government controlled health care leads directly to deep moral conflicts. Notably PPACA forced religious groups to pay for contraceptive methods they find morally objectionable.

Unfortunately, it is now harder to argue this point because conservative in Utah are using their own dialectical tricks to demand that the State Legislature write the curriculum for the schools based on their own twisted definition of freedom.

Conservatives Need to Talk Ideas

Newt Gingrich made a great point.

If the opposition kept Romney from getting a majority of delegates, there might be a brief moment in which Republicans actually discussed ideas.

Wouldn't that be wonderful? To actually hear conservatives discuss ideas!

Republicans usually just react.

The primary concern of conservatism is the preservation of the social order (not freedom). When conservatives talk ideas, it is usually about how to use big government to impose social views. For example, the Conservatives in Utah used their political klout to remove science based sex-education from the public schools. (yippie)

Unfortunately, Newt's latest idea is the lame notion that he could bring $2.50 gas. I stated in a different post that this unlikely because Obama's loose monetary policy has devalued the dollar. Because of the credit contraction, we have not experienced the full brunt of loose monetary policy.  Newt's promise cannot be fulfilled because of inflation.

Republicans need real ideas.

Repealing ObamaCare is not a real idea. It is a reaction. Enough of ObamaCare is in place that it can't simply be repealed.

The only way to undo this monstrousity is to come up with an idea to replace ObamaCare.

I push the idea of Health Freedom.

This is a real idea that is much stronger than fantasies like $2.50 gas.

Health Freedom is the radical idea that people own their own bodies and they should own the resources used to care for their body. If people paid for care from resources they owned, then we could restore the doctor/patient relation.

This is a fully formed idea that is not simply a reaction.

I have even gone as far at to create a mathematically viable device to restore health freedom called the Medical Savings and Loan. It is administered by people called Health Care Advocates.

I've tried for a solid three years to get conservatives to talk about health freedom. I have not gotten anywhere with the effort.

I find that when I try to discuss the idea of restoring freedom with a Conservative, the conservative immediately shoves me aside.

Restoring health freedom, after all, might upset the social order. It is easy to impose a social order with insurance. Insurance concentrates wealth and creates a culture of dependence.

Anyway, I am enchanted with Newts strategy to get Republicans to talk about ideas.

All of the Republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul, support big government control of health care. Unfortunately, Ron Paul supports deregulation ... which can't work because insurance is a regulator and you can't deregulate regulators.

Now, I have never personally witnessed a Conservative talking about ideas. When conservatives talk about ideas, the conversation usually takes the forms of ways to use big government and big business to impose a top-down social order.

Still, living in an intellectual wilderness, the mere thought that someone in the not too distant future might discuss an idea has me thrilled.

Sadly, Newt's $2.50 plan is lame. Ron Paul is the candidate with a history of supporting free market idea; So, I will now put on my Ron Paul shirt and actively support the good doctor.

The Mormon Voting Block

The LDS Church has colonies in Hawaii and American Somoa. It appears that Mormons are voting as a block; So, I predict that both Hawaii and American Somoa will go for Romney. Interestingly, I became attentive to voting blocks because the Book of Mormon is about an evil voting block that destroyed a Democracy. (projection)

In No Man Knows My History, the apostate Fawn Brodie puts forward a history in which the Smiths were a family of Tories exiled to Western New York after the Revolutionary War. The disgruntle Smith patriarch probably spent a great deal of time talking to his children about the evils of Democracy. The son, Joseph Smith (1805-1844), was a child with great imagination who loved to engage in treasure hunts and dreamed of finding lost indian treasure.

Joseph Smith claimed to have found golden tablets that contained mysterious script written in "Reformed Egyptian" that he could read with the help of peep stones.

The golden tablets told a history in which the Native Americans were the lost tribes of Israel. They had a great and prosperous kingdom. One day, King Benjamin (no relation to Benjamin Franklin) decided to grant the people a democracy.

A group of evil-doers called Lamanites formed an evil-voting block. Because the evil gentiles won the election, there was a great war. God was so displeased with the turn of events that he smited the people and turned them into red savages (currently called Native Americans).

Mormonism is based on a dialectical conflict between the righteous and gentiles. At the time that Joseph Smith was writing the BoM, the historian Hegel (1770-1831) was immensely popular. Hegel presented the theory that history evolves through conflict. The Hegelians would present fantastical histories in which thesis/anti-thesis conflicts resolved in great wars.

The newspapers of the early 1800s were filled with fantastical histories with history advanced through such conflicts. There were several histories published in which the Native Americans were the lost tribes of Israel.


The LDS Church itself came to be as some of the failed Utopian societies (communes) of the early 1800s sought to use Mormonism to revive the commune.

Joseph Smith was politically ambitious. He sent missionaries abroad to recruit members. The missionaries would give people passage to the US and land in return for fealty.

This an interesting case of projection. Joseph Smith wrote a book about a voting block. He then engaged in an aggressive missionary program that used immigration to create just such a block.

The fact that the LDS Church built its voting block through immigration will have ramifications for the immigration policy under Mitt Romney.

I am surprised I have not heard more people talking about the Mormon emigration experience in context of the modern immigration debate. Since the LDS Church votes as a block, the Mormon emigration experience is very much about groups using immigration to gain political control.

Immigration is not my big issue. I am concerned with health care.

For the last three years. I've been wanting to find people to talk about self-funded health care as an alternative to insurance.

I am a Non-Mormon in Utah and I have been completely unable to get people in this state to talk about free-market health care reform.

Health care is the most important issue of the day, and I have a unique perspective on the issue that might be of value. In three years, I have not be able to get anyone to talk about the most important issue of the day.

Mitt Romney and Harry Reid (both LDS) favor socializing medicine via health exchanges. The fact that I cannot get people in Salt Lake, the headquarters of the LDS Church, to talk about the most important issue of the day has me extremely worried.

Spirit Babies of the Heavenly Kingdom, Rejoice!

Spirit babies of the heavenly kingdom rejoice! Many of you will now be released into the wombs of uneducated single Utah teens.

A week ago, the culture war was about the Obama Administration using PPACA to impose mandates that religious groups pay for contraceptive methods they find morally objectionable.

This week, the Conservative Utah legislature passed an over-reaching abstinence-only sex education curriculum for Utah public schools.

Both Progressives and Conservatives are about using the power of the state to impose their views.

I find this really sad. The conservative Utah legislature used freedom rhetoric to rise to power in response to the abuse of power of the Obama Administration.

But they are not working against that abuse of power. Last year the Utah Legislature was among the first to adopt the Health Exchanges of PPACA. For those who are unclear on health care reform. PPACA (ObamaCare) is a centralized health exchange. A centralized health exchange gives the state control over defining health care while big insurance companies speculate on the costs of delivering the care.

The Utah Legislature was so eager to pass the exchanges that Utah Republicans actively suppressed all arguments against exchanges.

In a presidential debate, Jon Huntsman actually had the temerity to claim that the top-down state controlled exchanges were the free market, when there are only cosmetic differences between the Utah Law and PPACA (ObamaCare).

By voting conservative, Utah is now stuck with a corrupt centralized exchange, and conservatives who want to use the top-heavy government to force their views on social issues.

Conservatives do not support freedom. They use freedom rhetoric to rise to power then launch into culture war.

Yes, I know. Conservatives have a long proud tradition in American politics that reaches back to the Revolutionary War (when they fought for the British). I wish America would wake up and realize that neither progressives nor conservatives are champions of the free society. They are both rogues who use freedom rhetoric and culture war to rise to power and dominate.

Conservatives are not going to repeal the centralized exchanges of ObamaCare. They seek merely to capture the devices. While I was looking forward to 2012 as a time of restoration, I am now staring at the rise of Conservatism as a negative for the nation.

Life will not be good for the spirit babies released into the tummies of uneducated Utah teens for the conservative overlords that seek to use the power of state to dominate are every bit as bad as the progressive overlords they seek to replace.

Religion As a Voting Block

I lived in Idaho for several summers. It is a beautiful mountain state. There is a large wilderness area in the center of the state dividing it up into distinct regions; so, there is usually big differences in the vote by region.

The one unifying topic of conversation throughout the state is a distaste of East Coast Ruling Elite. In both Idaho Falls and Twin Falls, the locals will spew forth a gusher on the subject of East Coast Ruling Elite.

Most Idaho Republicans profess a strong distaste for government controlled health care.

Does anyone think it odd that Mormons in the state are walking in and voting 97% for the most liberal of the four presidential candidate ... a candidate who just happens to have been the governor of Massachusetts and who was a principle architect of the government take over of health care?

I contend that, when a religion is organized as a voting block with the express intent of gaining power, that religion must be a topic in the election.

The Super Tuesday vote has me really sad. I want to see people talking about restoring health freedom, and the Republican Party is not shaping up as a vehicle for discussing this issue. Instead it is aimed at capturing PPACA and not replacing it.

Sense of Entitlement and Ownership

Employers love it when employees develop a sense of owership. When employees have a sense of ownership they treat a thing like they own it. They take of the thing and make sure it is working to maximum efficiency for the company.

Employers complain like the dickens when employees have a sense of entitlement.

I thought I would point out the bizarre relation between ownership and entitlement.

If you actually owned something, then you are entitled to whatever proceeds that something brings.

This is how our Founding Fathers saw the world. People owned things and were entitled to whatever improvements they made to the things. By creating a culture that promoted ownership, the Founders laid the foundation for the emergence of a great middle class.

Progressives despise the Middle Class.

They sought to destroy it..

Our progressive overlords created a truly disfunctional legal and financial system that attempted to abstract off risk and reward to be traded on centralized exchanges.

In attempting to abstract off and sell risk and reward, the bozo's created a dysfunctional system that separated the sense of entitlement and ownership from real ownership.

Needless to say, the solution to our economic malaise is to find ways to restore real, actual ownership.

Employees Are An Expense

Employees are expenses. Expenses are something to be reduced.

The greatest problem with American economics is that we've created an absolutely absurd system in which the overwhelming majority of people are expenses, and not owners.

When the vast majority is reduced to being nothing but an expense, the people must seek a political force to defend them else they will be quickly reduced to destitution.

The prosperity that our parents experienced happened because a greater percentage of them were owners. Now that our centralized banks, big insurance and centralized exchanges have locked out all but few insiders, the future of the average Americans has greatly diminished.

The first step to turning this economy around is to restore the concept of ownership.

The easiest path to this goal is with health care.

In the self-funded paradigm, people pay for their health care by building equity. People would build equity in times of health, then sell that equity in times of need.

Sadly, insurance companies came on the scene with the false promise that they could provide health security by having people move their equity into big group pools.

Pooled insurance moves health care resources from the top of the ledger into the expense column. With employer based insurance, a company will put all of the health resources of the workers in a big pool that they replenish on a quarterly basis. Your receiving health care is now on the expense side of your employer's ledger.

I repeat: In self-funded care, you pay for health care by owning things. With insurance, your health care is an expense for your employer.

Health insurance turns owners into mere expenses. Health insurance has done more to concentrate ownership than any other device.

If Americans rejected the false promise of insurance and revived the concept of self-funded health care, they could start turning around the economic and political centralization that is ruining our country.

Unfortunately, since the captured establishment controls health care, the only way to accomplish a revival of self-funded care is with a structured savings program. So, I've proposed creating a structured savings program called The Medical Savings and Loan to serve as an alternative to insurance. The program is run by a new position called Health Care Advocate. The advocate helps people set up and maintain their structured savings plan and helps negotiate price.

A plan that replaces centralized pools with individual equity can help restore the American experiment of self-government by empowering people as owners. The change will move Americans back from the expense column and put them at the top of the ledger as owners.

Government is a Negative Space

The toughest job for the Libertarian is figuring out how to sell the concept of limited government to people who've been trained in public schools to see the state as the primary actor in their lives.
The greatest tool that Libertarians have in their arsenal is the US Constitution which limits government. I love talking about the Constitution and defending it. But, I notice that this conversation falls on deaf ears.

The question is: why?

Our public schools teach people to look to the state for the answers. Talk about liberty is counter to their training.

The Libertarian argument is subtle.

Government is a limit placed on a people. Therefore, limiting the limit creates an unlimited people.

The argument uses a double negative. The Constitution argues for a limit placed on a limit.

To restore interest in freedom, liberty minded people must find ways to rework the conversation to remove the double negative.

One could start with the conversation: "Government places limit on the people. Limiting government creates an unlimited people."

This statement doesn't work because the term "people" is plural. Any group of people can be divided. You should talk about an item that cannot be divided: The Individual.

Each individual lives a continuous life from birth to death. I cannot jump out of my body and be someone else.

To win the health care debate, libertarians should concentrate on the individual. An individual lives a continuous life from birth to death (with new children created in the process).

To start this conversation, I created a program with the gimmicky name: "The Medical Savings and Loan."

In this program I start with the challenge that everyone who can self-fund their care should self-fund their care.

I replace group insurance pools with a plan in which each person has a savings account and access to loans to help them self fund care. To administer the program, I created a new position called the Health Care Advocate. (the advocate replaces insurance agents and claims adjusters).

The advocate has a computer program that simulates expected health expenses and helps people set up a structured savings program to cover those expenses.

For the small number of people who have an abnormally high ratio of expenses to income, the program has a generously funded system of grants.

The MS&L completely removes the concept of group funding of care.

The sneaky part of this program is that it engages the participants in the program in a conversation in which they see their individual live as the positive space.

People who see themselves and the positive space and the government as a limiting force are open to the Constitution and the need to place limits on government.

In contrast, people weened on the concept of group funding of individual consumption dislike limits place on the state because they see the group, not themselves, as the primary actor.

Centralized Exchanges

The price of oil is determined by speculators trading future contracts, on margin, at a detached centralized exchange.

When the price of gas goes up, there is always a great deal of anger directed at the speculators.

Perhaps, however, the problem isn't with the speculators, but with the centralized exchanges.

Prior to the centralized exchanges, people negotiated prices directly with providers and there was wild irregularities in prices and people engaged in face to face negotiation.

The centralized exchanges were designed to regulate prices.

This idea of trading future markets on margin gave the controllers of the centralized exchange multiple tools for regulating prices. With a centralized exchange, central bankers can affect prices by changing margin requirements, interest rates, etc..

The central exchanges have piled on a large number of derivatives, re-insurance and short selling. All of these derivatives and regulations were created by progressives with the claim that they would lead to price stability.

The centralized exchanges have not led to price nirvana. Instead, the centralized exchanges have created a  dystopia in which rogue groups are able to capture and manipulate entire markets by capturing the central exchange.


It is human nature to blame the people at a business, when the real problem is the structure of the business.

We blame speculators who trade on the exchange, when the real rogues are the unseen progressive regulators who created the dysfunctional centralized exchange in the first place.

Centralized exchanges necessarily lead to a highly centralized market in which the insiders of the exchange are able to manipulate and control those on the outside of the exchange.

Instead of blaming the speculators who are just trying to make a buck, why don't we blame the high prices on the progressives who created the centralized exchanges with aim of regulating prices.

Speaking of centralized exchanges. The ruling progressive elite are trying to force the entire health care market into the exact same dysfunctional mold as the energy sector. Why are we letting them do this to our once free nation?