Slavery Is Bad, Right?

My kids just love Dilbert comics, which I can’t quite fathom, since they haven’t graduated to Cubicle Dweller status yet. Then again, they do go to public school...

Browsing for “bad boss stories,” I came across some doozies at WorkingAmerica.com. Here’s my personal favorite.

If you ever have a dinner party and run out of things to talk about, just ask your guests about the worse bosses they ever had. You’ll be up all night howling with laughter.

Bad Service stories are another good topic of conversation. And Bad Movies. And Bad Days in general.

But ask yourself: Why are these recountings of woe so entertaining?

They’re funny because you can get your comeuppance by walking away.

Freedom is about having choices. Did the restaurant leave you hanging for an hour and a half for your order? Get up and leave; you can laugh about it over your meal down the street. Does the Boss make a habit of ordering you to work on weekends? Just imagine the look on his face when you hand in your resignation.

Now imagine that you’re stuck with your circumstances, and there is just no way out. Decisions about your job, your meals, even your very body are made by someone else, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

There’s a word for that: Slavery.

But, on the bright side: Slaves usually have at least their basic needs provided for them.


Right now, our government is creating ever-larger projects to take care of us. On the one hand, it seems like a decent, moral gesture when you consider the numbers of people who can’t or won’t provide for themselves. On the other hand, choices disappear, market demand and supply give way to rationing, and everyone equally gets the lowest common denominator of service. And there’s no escape.


Consider how an unfettered marketplace responds to demand. Grandma wants a new hip. She scans the choices, picks a subset that fits with her budget, and buys something that meets her needs. In the meantime, hips are getting ever cheaper, faster and more feature-rich with each passing month because competing vendors want Grandma’s business. Artificial joints take on the pricing behavior of televisions, cell phones and modular furniture because the demand is there and the market flourishes. As the prices fall, demand rises as more and more people can afford the goods. Still, there’s always going to be a subset of folks so broke that hips aren’t affordable unless they’re free.

Now consider the market with the government’s involvement. Grandma wants a new hip. Bureaucrats decide she’s too old, so she just plain can’t have one. Can Grannie take her business elsewhere? Nope. The government controls the supply, and shuts down demand with rationing. Artificial joint manufacturers, all competing for the one federal customer, will by and large be put out of business, killing innovation. On the plus side, the poorest of the poor might have a better chance of getting that hip that would be out of reach for them in a free market.

Think I’m making this up? Socialized medicine in other countries make good object lessons for us all. The average child in the U.S. can get his tonsils out in a small matter of weeks. In Great Britain, I’ve read the wait is eighteen months. Cancer survival rates in the U.S. are much higher than in Canada and many Western European countries. Guess which country is developing most of the new drugs and medical devices?

Isn’t it interesting when programs meant to give the needy an equal footing in services instead just make everyone else needy right alongside them?


But what about the 45-50 million people who don’t have medical insurance? Well, first off, insurance is artificially high because government regulation requires them to cover a lot of services many people would opt out of if they could lower their premiums. Perhaps a lesbian isn’t interested in viagra and pregnancy care. Too bad; she has to pay for it anyway. Young bucks may not be all that fussed about having a policy that covers illnesses that usually show up later in life, like prostate cancer. Specialized policies that can more specifically address the needs of customers would cut costs significantly, but they aren’t allowed.

A couple of medical cost-sharing cooperatives I know about are based around Christian practices. Their monthly contributions are much lower than insurance premiums simply because sex-change operations, abortions, substance abuse programs and other like expenses aren’t covered.


There’s still the intractable issue of chronic illness, but there is some good news there - we know that good nutrition and exercise decrease the risk of many of those diseases. Would you stay within a healthy weight if it meant shaving something off of your premium?


Critics will point out that the free market solution is always going to be the 95% answer, and they’re right. All those incentives for good behavior, inexpensive goods and innovation will still leave 5% miserable. But plain, old-fashioned private charity can take care of 5% of the population better than it can the other 95% who must suffer along with them if the government institutes total control.

Is absolute equality morally superior to less overall suffering? Is a nation of slaves better than a nation of mostly haves, but a few have-nots?


Simpleton Solutions continues to be about living within one’s means, and about self-sufficiency. It’s not terribly political - one way or another, we have to find a way to cope with whatever life throws at us - even if it’s government’s lowest common denominator health care solution. But know this: The bigger a government gets, the more it demands from its citizens. The more it confiscates from hard workers, the more it discourages them. Before long, the whole mess has dug away at its own foundation, and it collapses.