The Morality of Profit

Trading value for value voluntarily is moral---even if you make a million bucks while doing it. Its gains made through the violation of property rights, like theft and government wealth transfers which are not moral--and it's critical to understand the difference.

Thoughts on Discussing Health Care Policy with Those Who Favor ObamaCare

An interesting, brief conversation today with a relative who supports the PPACA (a.k.a. ObamaCare.) This individual also happens to be a physician, and someone I admire for his great compassion for others.

One of his concerns was that prior to the law, people with pre-existing conditions were unable to get insurance.

I don't do very well in short, on-the-spot conversations (how can I briefly explain that our current system of pre-payment for medical care by third party payers is not actually insurance?) but I do think about them later so if the issue ever rises again, I will be better prepared to respond. Here's a bit of retrospective my thinking.

If someone supports ObamaCare because of a sense of concern about the disadvantaged, a key point for me to make is that being compassionate is also a value for me-- BUT, I do not view coercion as compassionate. One of my primary goals is that we as a nation or a community find solutions to life's challenges that preserve a standard of voluntary interaction and that never condone any initiation of force.

In regards to pre-existing conditions and insurance, I wish I had said: you can not and will not help people who are sick by destroying the insurance industry, which is what the legal requirement to cover pre-existing conditions will do.

Coercion is not compassionate

and

The good is destroyed when you abandon voluntary interactions in favor of force.

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When the Means destroys the Ends

In studying the history of how we have paid for health care in the United States, I am struck by two significant aspects of the growth of government involvement:

1) the laudable goal of providing quality medical care for everyone

2) the growing acceptance of the use of government force to achieve that goal

In our compassionate desire to help the less fortunate, we have progressively abandoned private, voluntary charitable action in exchange for the expansion of the welfare state through coercive wealth redistribution.

But employing an immoral means (the initiation of force) to achieve an end completely nullifies any potential benefits, no matter what the intention.

Attempting to provide medical care for others through force instead of through voluntary means destroys the very beneficence which is claimed as its justification.

The presence of consent or coercion defines the moral status of all human intercourse.

Without consent, "making love" becomes rape, and "caring for others" entails enslavement.

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Our Neighbor's Money is not Ours to Vote On

My hometown has a measure on the primary ballot to raise money for the local government schools. Cut backs in state funding have left them in a desperate state--forced to shrink or eliminate vital programs and services, which means the education of our local youth will suffer. This is tragic. Education is important and is worthy of receiving adequate funding. After years of homeschooling my children, both are now attending the local high school--so my children's education will suffer unless the schools receive more money.

In spite of these facts, I can not bring myself to support a law which uses the force of government to deprive others of their property. If people cannot be convinced to voluntarily provide financial support to the schools, I know of no moral principle which allows me force others to act against their best judgment. Our Constitution was written to protect the individual from precisely this abuse of power by government and the majority---even though this original meaning has been severely diluted and even lost in recent years.

It is simply immoral to even attempt to achieve a goal through the use of force, no matter how deeply ensconced in compassion, generosity, or good will. You may try to persuade your friends and neighbors, and tirelessly work to obtain their voluntary assistance (financial or otherwise) but if you can not convince them, there is no moral basis for employing the coercive power of the state to aid you in achieving through force what you can not achieve through persuasion.

For this reason, my local Measure E is immoral and should be soundly defeated.

For this same reason, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is immoral and should be repealed.

Use of government force to control how much and what kind of energy private citizens choose to purchase, is similarly wrong and should not be allowed.

What is at stake is greater than the plight of our schools, or the uninsured, or man's purported effect on climate. The peaceful coexistence of human beings is grounded upon the recognition of each individual's right to his own life, liberty and property--and only his own. We are neither masters nor slaves, neither our brother's keepers nor the kept.

This does not negate voluntary cooperation or pooling of resources and efforts to achieve community goals. (Many worthwhile projects can not be achieved without joint support and action.) It simply removes the use of force as a legitimate means of achieving one's goals at the expense of others.

The civilized world has come to recognize the immorality of enslaving another human being in order to employ his labor against his will. The next step in our moral progress is to recognize that a man's property is an extension of his life and liberty, and that to seize a man's property against his will is merely another form of slavery.

Until we are able to remove the intrusive hammer of government force from our private lives, our peace, good will, prosperity--and the moral character of our communities-- are in mortal danger.

To be moral in your interactions with fellow human beings, you must either convince him, or you must leave him alone.

The Silver Lining

by Doug Reich

(Republished from The Rational Capitalist with author's permission.)

The Wall Street Journal ran a timeline of the many efforts to socialize medicine in America starting with Roosevelt's introduction of the first compulsory health-insurance bill in 1935. The 1954 Revenue Act excluded employer contributions to health plans from taxable income, thus further creating incentives to employer based insurance. The efforts have continued in modern times with the 1993 effort by the Clinton's for universal coverage culminating in last night's passage of another major effort towards socialized medicine.

Each time, broad sweeping efforts were rejected, yet incremental steps were taken. This is because the moral premises justifying the legislation remained unchallenged. In fact, as each broad effort failed, it actually strengthened the cynical notion that this legislation was "the right thing to do" but that the "fat cats" or some other scape goat stood in the way of "social justice." In other words, the Democrats were losing the battles but winning the broader ideological war. And, as long as they held the moral high ground on socialized medicine, they were able to inch their way towards their ultimate goal.

Of course, each incremental step towards socialized medicine wreaked havoc in the health care marketplace. The exclusion of benefits from taxation along with state mandates on coverage encouraged employer provided insurance stimulating artificial demand, increasing costs, and all but destroying the market for individual policies. The 1965 Johnson medicare and medicaid entitlements, while not full socialized medicine, artificially increased demand for services and costs skyrocketed. All of these policies and many more led to disastrous consequences which in light of the moral premises of altruism, only strengthened the left's resolve that "something needs to be done", i.e., the government needs to redistribute more tax payer earnings, enforce more crippling regulations, cut back on reimbursements to doctors, etc.

Of course, every socialist plan must end in a cost explosion/rationing death spiral as both economic logic and history demonstrate. When the profit motive is removed or reduced, supply decreases, entitlement demand increases, prices increase, leading to government price controls, leading to even less profit, more shortages, repeat until dead. This does not matter to them. As Obama has stated, they believe "it is the right thing to do." Historically, the right has basically agreed with them, arguing only that "it costs too much" or must be done in some limited form. This is why we have crept slowly towards socialized medicine. Both sides share the same moral premises.

Once again, the left has fallen short of their ultimate goal of government run health care, but is there any doubt that this bill will effect the same outcome? Naturally, it will lead to higher prices, shortages, and misery thus urging the introduction of even more government control until finally, we will have full government run health care.

What is different this time?

This time, the left won the battle, but those who advocate individual rights and capitalism, may have begun to win the war. Instead of a nominal political defeat amid cynical, "idealistic" resignation, the left has won the political battle but has lost the American people's ideological imprimatur. America is pissed. All the polls show that a majority of Americans oppose this bill. People are taking to the streets, lambasting their congressmen at town hall meetings, crashing their email servers and organizing grass roots protests. Polls show overwhelmingly that the Democrats are poised to lose seats in the mid term elections and perhaps, control of the House itself. This effort by the Dem's has resulted in the formation of a grass roots movement of pro-freedom advocates for the first since, perhaps, the American Revolution. There is a palpable sense that the American welfare state is corrupt, its treasury broke, and its policies a political dead end. More importantly, there is the sense that something is morally wrong with this bill and this regime. People are openly rejecting the idea that they should pay for their neighbor's doctors bill. They are asserting their right to make their own decision with their money and their health. They are beginning to challenge the heretofore unchallengeable: the moral premises of socialized medicine and the welfare state in general.

I don't want to oversell this. Many on the right only rejected this bill because it funded abortions and many only seem to oppose it on the pragmatic grounds that it costs too much rather than on the basis of more fundamental principles. However, this kind of outpouring of anger and hostility at the political process could not be motivated only by fleeting pragmatic concerns. Only morality can ignite this scale of angst - the sense that this bill and this regime is evil.

Fundamental ideas are what motivated our Founding Fathers. They did not simply argue that the stamp tax be reduced by 2.8%. They rejected the idea of monarchy as such - they rejected the notion that they were to be treated as subjects and instead, asserted their unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

If I am right, this event could be the beginning of the end for the left, not only politically, but welfare statism as a moral ideal, and that would mean for good. What the Tea Party movement lacks right now is a clear and consistent ideological foundation to positively and articulately assert the principle of individual rights and rational self-interest. If the Republicans win in November without the proper ideology, they will repeat the same mistakes that got us here in the first place.

The Tea Party desperately needs leadership. Everyone concerned with their life and their freedom should be directly involved with this movement. Write, speak, donate money, whatever you can do. Now is the time. The mid-term elections will be the first major battleground. In the immortal words of a man who gave his life fighting for justice: "Let's Roll."

[update: states are organizing to sue the federal government to challenge health care on constitutional grounds. Urge your state representatives to pursue this path.]

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A Dangerous Contradiction

Liberty can and must defend itself only through liberty;

to try to restrict it on the specious pretext of defending it

is a dangerous contradiction.

--Mikhail Bakunin,1814-1876

The right to life can and must be defended only through the recognition of each individual's right to his own life, and only to his own. To restrict the right to life on the specious pretext of defending it, is a dangerous contradiction.

And yet that is precisely what ObamaCare or any other iteration of universal health care attempts to do.

In constructing solutions to health care, or any other social or political challenge, all solutions must first pass this fundamental test of morality:

Does any part of the proposal involve violating anyone's right to life, liberty or property? Does any portion entail the initiation of force against another human being?

Only those solutions which without question consistently pass this test of are worthy of our consideration. Any solution which includes the initiation of force is constructed on an immoral foundation and must be rejected in its entirety.

We don't want just any solution to our social problems. We want a moral solution. Morality restricts the options available to us, placing immutable limits on what methods should even be considered.

Moral solutions to rising health care costs and the increasing number of uninsured Americans can only be constructed within the bounds of respecting every individual's right to life--fully, completely, and across social spectrum.

The right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Equality before the law.

This is where we have to start.

Everything else is immoral.

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Force or Reason?

"Force and reason --
which last is the essence of the moral act --
are at the two opposite poles.
The one who compels his neighbor...
treats him, not as a being with reason,
but as an animal in whom reason is not."

-- Auberon Herbert (1838-1906) English author (HT Liberty Quotes)

An elaboration on the meaning of Selfishness

(The following is my response to a comment¹ on my recent post The Virtue of Selfishness.)


Many proponents of the morality of rational egoism strive to reclaim the term "selfishness" as a virtue. From the perspective of most other moral theories, including today's most prevalent--altruism--selfishness is condemned as the heartless consideration only of oneself, and usually characterized as attending only to the immediate and obvious effects of one's actions.

It is crucial to note, however, that proponents of rational egoism also condemn myopic attention to only oneself, especially when divorced from the wider implications of one's actions. This myopic self-centeredness is not what is meant by their use of the term selfishness.

How can we move beyond these semantic disagreements? We obviously need two separate terms: one to designate myopic self-centeredness, and another to designate the selfishness of rational egoism. One step toward clarification might be to explain why proponents of selfishness view it as a reasonable term to signify rational self-interest (see below). An even better place to start, however, is to ask and then answer the more fundamental questions: What is the purpose of morality? Why are moral principles even necessary?

The entire question of morality arises from two facts of human nature:
1) Our existence is conditional.
2) Possessing freewill, we must choose between alternatives.

Life in general, and human life in particular, requires that we achieve certain conditions--or die. The details of those conditions are not automatically (instinctively) known but must be discovered. Moral principles are the fundamental abstractions we must discover (and then choose to use) which serve as guides for our thinking and our actions. The ultimate purpose behind these principles is the preservation and promotion of our lives. This is what is meant by stating that "life is the standard of value." Life is the goal of our actions and thus becomes the standard by which we measure good and bad, right and wrong. "Good" actions promote our lives; "bad" actions are harmful to our lives.

Since life is an attribute of an individual organism (it is the individual that lives and dies), it is the life of the individual which is the relevant moral unit. Each man's standard of value must be his own life--his own Self. This is what is meant by selfishness as a virtue: the recognition that one's own life (self) is the ultimate goal and proper purpose of one's actions. These moral principles are required even when living alone on a desert island. They are not simply rules of social engagement, but the identification of the proper stance we must take toward reality. However, we neither live in isolation, nor simply for the moment. For actions and policies to truly promote our lives, we must take into account their long-term and full-context consequences.

Political rights extend the moral principle of valuing the self and individual life into rules for social engagement. Rights outline the freedoms of action open to individuals in a social context, delineating boundaries which can not be crossed without violating the prime right--the right of each individual to his own life, and only to his own. When this is understood and consistently applied, it is possible to also see why interactions between human beings must be voluntary--and why to initiate force is to violate a man's right to his own life.²

None of this alters the fact that people can benefit greatly from one another--emotionally, materially, spiritually. It does not preclude or prevent positive, voluntary collaboration between human beings: as communities, nations, businesses, families or lovers --provided the interactions are truly life promoting for each individual involved. Selfishness simply points to the fact that each individual rightfully lives for the sake of his own life (self) and happiness. Extension of this understanding of selfishness into social interactions requires prohibiting the initiation of force against others from the realm of morally justifiable actions. (Defining just what is force and elaborating on how to distinguish between its initiation and self-defense are crucial areas requiring clarification, but that task takes us beyond the purpose of this particular essay.)

What is the tool we use to identify and analyze "the good" and attempt to understand and apply it in the widest context possible? Our faculty of reason: the process of observing reality, and then drawing inductive and deductive conclusions based on those observations, checking for consistency (eliminating contradictions) and assuring that we have sufficient knowledge to justify our conclusions.

Are mistakes possible? Of course! The fact of our fallibility, however, does not invalidate reason. The ability to error only magnifies the importance of reason and the need for careful deliberation, to always be vigilant, to constantly check and expand the context of our knowledge.

The fact of our fallibility also does not make selfishness, properly understood, dangerous. That we are creatures of free will gives rise both to the need for moral principles and to the fact of our fallibility. We have choice, and we are not automatized to choose correctly. Choice brings with it the ability to choose wrongly. Those truths do not change that the standard of value (good/bad, right/wrong) must be each individual's own life (the moral principle of selfishness) any more than the fact that errors in calculations can and do occur invalidates a mathematical principle. "Complete rationality of all decisions" is the goal. That there is no automatic guarantee this goal will always be achieved does not invalidate it as a goal.

Selfishness is a virtue because it identifies the individual self as the origin and the beneficiary of moral action. The only kind of "selfishness" which achieves this goal, consistently through time and across all areas of action, is one that is rational. Thus, the concept selfishness as a moral virtue subsumes rationality, and to state "rational selfishness" is to state a redundancy. The essence of rationality is non-contradiction. Applied to the field of ethics, reason leads us to the recognition that all human beings have the same right to life as ourselves.

In conclusion, I think there are good reasons for trying to reclaim the term "selfishness" as a virtue--but I also do not want the discussion distracted away from addressing the underlying meaning and turned into bickering over terminology. I am open for suggestions for a different terminology, one that that adequately captures the difference between selfishness consistent with reason, and the irrational, truncated "selfishness" which fails to include the full context.

Make some suggestions, or better yet, address the concept which underlies the term. Until convinced otherwise, I will continue to advocate for selfishness.


Notes
1. from Anonymous1 (10/29/09): Your treatment of the 'full concept of selfishness' implies the complete rationality of all decisions. This is inconsistent with human experience as much research in economics, safety, and psychology is beginning to understand. More often than not selfishness is just that. Selfishness. Fixation on the immediate benefit to one's self without consideration of the long term, even to the detriment of one's self.
2 Ayn Rand goes further and demonstrates the epistemological basis for the evil of initiating force--why man's unique rational faculty is his means of self-preservation and life promotion--and why for proper functioning it requires protecting the freedom to use one's own judgment--why persuasion is the only moral path to changing another man's actions--0r as I have distilled it: Convince me, or let me be.

HR 3962: Expanding Immoral Medicine

No citizen would consider it moral to put a gun to his neighbor’s head and demand that he pay for his mother’s medical care -- no matter how much she may need it. It is no more moral when people use the government as intermediary. For the physician, it is impossible to practice moral medicine in a government system, because ultimately at some level a physician will have to choose between doing the best for his patient or acquiescing to the requirements of the state...[T]he moral tightrope has already started here with Medicare. Federal practice guidelines have slowly become mandates. If you do not do what the government has deemed the optimum pathway for care, the hospital will not get paid... [Doctors] are in the position of doing what is best for their patient, or what is prescribed by the state wielding a financial mallet.

from "Immoral Medicine" by Dr. Lee Hieb. Read the whole article for a sampling of specific examples in support of the above claims..

5 votes further away from freedom

Last night, our leaders and representatives in the House of Representatives voted us further away from the rights and liberties which give this country its moral standing.

220 to 215.

If this bill passes the Senate, it will be illegal for me to choose to spend my honestly earned money on my child's education instead of government-controlled, government-mandated health insurance. With less money at my own discretion, it will be more difficult to opt out of government schooling and pay for private school tuition. How can this be considered consistent with freedom?

As a business owner, it will be illegal for me to offer a higher wage to my employee instead of a health insurance plan.

It will become illegal for me to contract with an insurance company to design a plan which best meets my unique circumstances-- if it does not align with the mandates from Washington.

As a physician, it will be even more difficult to care for the elderly as cuts in Medicare reimbursements fall even further below the cost of providing that care.

As a philanthropist, I can not choose how much I can spare or even the causes I wish to support, but will be forced by law into paying for the health insurance of those the state determines require my charity.

But most distressing of all is the number of people in this country who support this and similar bills. What I can not understand is how my good and honest neighbors, who would never think of breaking down the door to my house and demanding I submit to their idea of appropriate medical care or health insurance--not only do not even blink at the use of the ballot to accomplish that very act -- but self-righteously claim it to be a legitimate form of social interaction.

To those who think such laws are not only legitimate, but good, I ask, on what grounds do you justify this blatant intrusion into my peaceful and private life? On what basis can you deprive me of the property I have peacefully and honestly obtained? What crime have I committed to be stopped from directing my own life and the use of my own resources in a manner furthers my life, and the lives of those I value, and perpetrates no harm to others?

The cost of this legislation is said to exceed $1.2 trillion. It certainly does.

The full cost is includes our freedom.


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Healthcare Morality and Practicality

The moral and the practical are two sides of a single coin: the coin of human action. A breach in one is a breach in the other. This is because the whole purpose of morality is to guide a man's actions toward life-promoting success.

A pair of recent articles evaluating the current proposals for healthcare reform each looks at one side of that coin.

The Wall Street Journal editorial, "The Worst Bill Ever" analyzes the impracticality of HR 3962. If implemented, the bill will cause massive increases in both health care spending and national debt, because in spite of significant increases in taxes, all the incentives (political and personal spending) lead to greater consumption of healthcare goods and services, accompanied by political pressure for the government to meet the demands. With or without an immediate "public option," there is still plenty in the bill which will shackle, undercut and eventually destroy private health insurance for all except the very wealthy--giving most of us fewer, more expensive choices.

An article published on-line at The American Thinker,"Charity and Sacrifice in a Free Society," addresses the other side of the healthcare reform coin: the moral limits of government action. Referencing the works of Ayn Rand, F.A. Hayek and Alexander Hamilton, the authors argue for a government action constitutionally limited by individual rights--rights which "impose no obligation on an individual except to abstain from violating the rights of another individual." Charity is properly the voluntary act of individuals, not an action in which some coerce others in the name of a "public good."

Economic analysis and arguments can enlighten us on the practical consequences of our actions. The study of ethics and politics are necessary to clarify our moral reasoning. But these are just two different ways of looking at human action. When moral principles are breached, when individual rights are violated, the results will not and cannot be practical.

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The Virtue of Selfishness

A recent commenter made an observation which deserves attention:

"[T]he dominant argument on the right these days is simply 'I, me, me, mine.' It comes off as mere selfishness, which is not a virtue, but a base instinct."

Proponents of individual rights are often accused of considering ONLY themselves. This may be true in some cases, in which case the term "mere selfishness"* may apply. In the vast majority of cases, however, those who promote individual rights as the moral guide to social interaction, are referring to the consistent and equal application of those rights to all individuals.

In fighting for and insisting on the respect of MY individual rights, I am also limiting myself and all others to respecting YOUR individual rights.

Individual rights, properly understood, means equality before the law. It means the equal application of rights to all people, myself included.

Insisting on individual rights means insisting there not be separate laws or standards of behavior based on race or income level or gender or sexual orientation or occupation, or any other limited identification.

I can see that this aspect of individual rights can become lost as people speak out in self-defense. In attempt to offset centuries of philosophy and religious teachings which call for the sacrifice of oneself to others, an understandable and natural response is to speak loudest and most often about the right to live one's life for one's own sake. But an inseparable aspect of denying the morality of self-sacrifice is denying any claim on my part to sacrificial acts of others.

Individual rights apply to individuals, and that includes me. Rational consistency requires that I apply moral standards equally. A moral code which can not be consistently applied is irrational and arbitrary. A moral code that demands or accepts sacrifice is one that defines a single act as both moral and immoral at the same time. (If the act of sacrifice makes the giver moral, what is the moral status of the receiver?)

Ayn Rand named the moral virtue of rationally and consistently respecting the right to life of all individuals: "selfishness." Even if you don't like the term she chose, can you disagree with the moral concept it stands for? Can you deny that everyone, including you yourself (and me myself), has a right to live his own life as a end in itself?

The right of an individual to live his life for his own sake, for his own values and happiness, has so long been besmirched that it is important to make the defense of this right clear and explicit. But it is also important to keep in the forefront that this same right is granted to each and everyone, equally and consistently. The moral standard of individual rights is not "mere selfishness" but Selfishness in its grandest most universal form. The fullest respect of human individual life possible is the respect for the lives of others AND for one's self.

The true virtue of selfishness is its rational, consistent application to every Self --and that includes you as well as "I, me, me, mine."



* I interpret "mere selfishness" to refer to the narrow consideration of how something effects only oneself and only the direct and obvious effects. A full concept of selfishness takes into consideration the entire relevant context: long and short term effects, logical consistency, as well direct and indirect consequences.
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