More
Deaths by Government
DIGG THIS
During the
heyday of the Mises Seminar in New York City in the middle of the
last century, Ludwig von Mises would each session toss off numerous
suggestions for research, for Ph.D. dissertation topics. Murray
N. Rothbard was known to engage in this sort of thing as well. Many
is the time he would wistfully say something like, "Someone
ought to do research on…. Someone ought to write about…"
Unhappily,
we no longer have these two giants of liberty and Austrian economics
around to guide us. So, we chickens will just have to do these sorts
of things for ourselves. It is in this vein that we urge that research
improving on that of Rummel, Courtois, and others, be undertaken.
R.J.
Rummel
and Stephane Courtois,
et. al have done yeoman libertarian work in terms of exposing governments
as the murderous thuggish entities that they are. Each of them has
documented the numbers (in the many millions) of citizens of their
own countries killed by the state. This is crucially important in
the case against the government. For all the philosophical treatises
in the world attesting to the evil of this institution can go only
so far. An important supplement to this type of analysis is the
actual facts and figures regarding statist depredations. And this
Rummel and Courtois have dramatically publicized. We libertarians
owe them a great debt of gratitude.
But they
have not gone far enough. They have only covered explicit murders,
and, not even all of those. This is the third in a series of articles
that are critical of Rummel and Courtois for touching, only, the
tip of the iceberg in this regard. It is the hope of the present
authors that Rummel and Courtois and others like them, perhaps,
even, some of the scholars who are regular readers of LRC, will
extend this type of research.
The first
in the series was written by DiLorenzo.
It showed that the U.S. War of Northern Aggression (1861-1865, in
case anyone was wondering as to, precisely, which war we are referring)
was a case in point, not contemplated in the statistics supplied
by Rummel and Courtois. These were uncounted but direct murders,
brought to us courtesy of St. Abraham.
The second
in this series was Block’s
demonstration that highway fatalities, too, are properly to be laid
at the door of unbridled statism. As there are some 40,000 people
who die every year in the U.S. on its socialist traffic arteries,
and many, many more around the world who suffer in this way, this
too is a significant example of deaths due to government. (This
present op-ed is fashioned from letters in response to that one.
There are multiple co authors of it since there were many such readers
of LRC who added their entries to the list of government killings
in replies to Block. Hey, the system works.)
The present
article is dedicated to further expanding this critique of Rummel
and Courtois. Here, we go beyond the War to Prevent Southern Secession
(1861-1865), and roadway fatalities, to consider a whole host of
other governmental causes of death of innocent people. They are
as follows:
1. Health
Government
intervention in the health care market has been particularly pernicious.
For example, Dr. Mary Ruwart
believes the Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments of 1962 "may very well
be the deadliest law that Congress ever passed."
The FDA
touts these amendments as ensuring "drug efficacy and greater drug
safety" since they required drug manufacturers to "prove to FDA
the effectiveness of their products before marketing them," but
they have caused the approval process to more than double since
1964 from 6.5 years to 14.8 years [see
this]. Thus, Dr. Ruwart estimates 4.7 million people have died
in the last 40 years, while waiting for FDA approval. Chapter 6
of her book Healing
Our World, entitled "Protecting Ourselves to Death" provides
further examples of how regulation causes needless deaths while
saving only a few. Then, minor detail, if addictive drugs, all
of them, were legalized, this would save tens of thousands of
lives in one fell swoop. Alcohol, nowadays, is still a social problem.
But no one gets shot in the street in fights over turf, nor killed
from the products of back wood stills, or from bathtub gin.
The FDA
is active both in terms of preventing
access as well as on the approval
side. Then, too, there are other such miscellaneous
causes of death by government. For example, asbestos, vaccines,
etc. Also, natural health solutions are available for many diseases
today but are not accepted by the FDA and in many cases prohibited
by them. And this is not to mention the fact that under FDA supervision,
an estimated one million Americans were never told they were given
Hepatitis C-infected blood.
A recent
report,
"Death by Medicine" by Gary Null, et al. estimates that between
800,000 and 1 million people die annually as a result of conventional
medical treatment or diagnostic procedures. Not all of these iatrogenic
deaths can be ascribed directly or indirectly to state intervention.
However, the study authors, being themselves part of the medical
profession, fail to see that physicians and other individuals and
companies in the health care market have actively sought state "protection"
in the form of licensing laws, regulatory agencies and other state-imposed
controls. Consequently, the authors' implied solution (reviving
the Office of Technology Assessment) is yet one more intervention.
See also Milton Friedman’s splendid chapter 9 of his book Capitalism
and Freedom, dealing with restricted entry into medical
practice. Ron Hamowy covers this deleterious governmental regulation
(a redundancy) from a Canadian
perspective.
But this
by no means exhausts the depredations. There is also subsidized
tobacco, responsible for an estimated 435,000
deaths per year. There is state-funded (Medicaid) abortion;
libertarians need take no position on this contentious issue to
oppose government subsidization of this practice. According to one
report
about state influence on doctors/health-care, physicians are the
3rd leading
cause of death in US, responsible for 225,000 deaths per year. Then
there are the infamous illegal and or covert medical experiments,
such as those perpetrated on black
people. Nor should we ignore fumigation,
USDA/DHSS dietary guidelines (the "food
pyramid") and accidents, i.e. Chernobyl
(ok, it is not our government here, but it is a government).
Nor would it do to leave out the statist banning of DDT, which greatly
increased malaria deaths.
Of course,
there is a silver lining in this cloud, as there is in every such
case: this is one way to save Socialist Security (no one
lives long enough to collect)! Ahhh! It hurts when we laugh.
For more
information on how government negatively impacts health, see here,
here,
here,
here,
here
and here.
2. Housing
Government
housing policies can kill you too. In Toronto, Canada, for example,
but everywhere else this pernicious legislation has ever been tried,
rent control means that the rent is out of control. Modest apartments
are typically in disrepair because the landlord can not charge what
he needs to maintain it.
In one
case, an apartment almost exploded when the natural gas lines leaked
and the furnace exuded enough carbon monoxide to kill an entire
building’s worth of people, even according to the government’s own
Fire Department. Why, then, don't people move elsewhere? Where would
they go? Thanks to the government, there is hardly any place to
stay if you are not a homeowner, since this regulation has taken
much of the incentive away from landlords to provide housing.
In several
cases, landlords have purposefully attacked tenants because provisions
of these enactments typically provide for rent increases when tenants
vacate their premises. The "worst get on top" applies
not only in government bureaus, but also in the field of rental
housing, when control legislation pays a premium to landlords not
for satisfying customers, as in the free market, but for evicting
them.
Then, there
is public housing. True, an awful lot of killings in these death
traps are drug related, see above, but socialist housing makes an
independent contribution to this end as well. Public housing is
for the poor. So, there have to be income cut off points, lest the
rich find their way into these vertical slums. If you are middle
class you don’t qualify. If you are poverty stricken, but work hard,
get a raise, prosper, they kick you out because you are now above
the income cut off level.
This is
like continually skimming the cream off the top. What is left as
this process continues? Well, the non cream. Families that are intact,
with fathers present, are likely the first to go. This leaves a
disproportionate number of female headed households. These women
are simply unable to cope with the hordes of teenaged boys, with
no adult males around to help enforce civilized behavior. Just as
the Lord of the Flies
depicted a society run by 12 year old boys, public housing indicates
a 16 year old boy’s idea of nirvana: rape, drugs, defecating in
the hallways, etc. Then, there is the almost palpable hatred of
commerce on the part of the architects of public housing. Never
a store shall be suffered on its premises. Jane
Jacobs has demonstrated that this too contributes to crime,
as there are fewer "eyes on the street." Without people
coming and going into groceries, to get a bottle of milk or a newspaper,
there is less incentive for people to look at of their windows at
the doings of their society, such as it is. Not much is doing out
there, at least publicly.
Ah socialism!
It does so much for the national character, doesn't it?
3. Arbitrary
abuse of power
Under this
rubric we include BATF, FBI (Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc., etc.,) the
alphabet regulatory agencies such as the EPA, FTC, INS, IRS, OSHA,
and the SEC. Each of them has contributed their mite to our cause,
and sometimes has gone over and above the call of duty in this regard.
There are
also the CIA death squads, engaged in regime change, countering
drug smuggling and creating general mayhem. According to some reports,
they are responsible for some "6-million deaths." Interesting number,
that.
Nor can
any account that wishes to be exhaustive and inclusive ignore the
people murdered while waiting for a gun permit to clear. First,
the government taxes people so as to finance police. Then, the latter
do not protect them, but rather shoot them down like rabid dogs
in the street. When the people attempt to defend themselves, as
the second amendment to the constitution provides,
they are balked in this manner as well.
This constitutes
a terrible public policy in effect in most states of providing violent
criminals with a governmental guarantee that law-abiding, honest
people are unarmed when away from their home or business.
We need more studies comparing victims of violent crimes (homicides)
in states with strict "gun control" vs. those with no restrictions
(i.e., Vermont) that issue concealed carry permits. The scholar
who has done important work in this field is John
Lott.
4. Money
and finance
Then, too,
there are financial policies. The Great Depression led to many undocumented
starvation deaths. The World Bank and the IMF have slowed down the
rate of economic development of poor backward countries. Tariffs,
quotas and other interferences with trade can actually kill people,
too.
Foreign
aid undercuts those farmers in the recipient country who are trying
to sell their goods. Foreign aid to poorer countries often maintains
a dictator who in turn kills his people. Both the donors who make
these massacres possible, and the recipients who do the "blue
collar" work in these cases are, wait for it, governments.
Similarly, the U.S. gave Stalin aid, and we all know the result
of that sorry episode.
5. Motor
Vehicle Bureau
First,
who teaches people how to drive? Government, via public schools,
that’s who. They pick a crony and give him a "contract"
to provide Driver's Training courses in their schools. These
are nothing but hours wasted "driving" while doing little more
than riding in a car. As an example, North Carolina requires
"X" number of hours of behind the wheel experience for
a student to pass this course. However, in essence, what happens
is that a carload of students take turns driving each other
home after school. For kids to have actually driven the prescribed
number of hours they would have had to do all the
driving in every "class" every day for them to achieve this goal.
Second,
who certifies that these kids can drive? Government, once
again, via its Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). You pull
out of the DMV office with a "tester" next to you and pretty much
if you manage to get back in one piece, you pass. Many people have
been at the DMV for renewal
of their "driving privilege" (that is another peeve; if driving
is a privilege then you are effectively under house arrest since
the state has designed cities to be virtually un-navigable
without a car) and seen the "tester" actually give answers to octogenarians so
they could "pass" their vision test. Here is some must see television:
the South Park episode dedicated to older
drivers.
6. Infrastructure
High up
on the list in this regard are the levees in New Orleans which collapsed
in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina in August 2005. These were planned, built and managed
by the Army Corp of Engineers, a government entity. Almost
2,000 people lost their lives due to this bit of statist negligence.
Then there is FEMA (a local bumper sticker: FEMA Happens!) which
aided and abetted in this needless loss of life by refusing to rescue
the denizens of New Orleans, and placing barriers against the efforts
of private individuals and groups who were valiantly struggled to
come to the aid of waterlogged citizens of the Big Uneasy.
Conclusion
 This
article would have more credibility if all the data were further
divided into objective, verifiable deaths and then the more subjective/conjecture
oriented. In that way the reader could be presented with hard,
undeniable statistics as well as the less definite, which the more
pessimistic (or dare we say statists, if there are any who will
read it) could dismiss as fantasy. Unhappily, this will have to
be left for future researchers. The present essay is but an op-ed
piece, meant not to give definitive answers, but, mainly, to spur
on further efforts in the direction of gathering and analyzing them.
 This
article, even all three essays of which this is the third part,
should not be taken as a definitive list, or final word, of the
way in which government is bad for our health. Rather, it should
be seen as barely a first step in the direction of a very worthwhile
research program.
December
13, 2006
Joe
Abbate [send him mail]
is a computer programmer in Florida and webmaster of FreedomCircle.com;
Rick Banks [send him
mail] is a graduate of the University of Virginia (1996); Walter
Block [send him mail] is Harold
E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics
at the College of Business Administration, Loyola University New
Orleans, and a member of the Senior Faculty at the Mises Institute;
Bernie Robinett [send
him mail] is associated with the Atlantis Project;
CM Ross [send her mail] is
an avid reader of, and now contributor to, LewRockwell.com; Mark
Thomas Seiler [send him mail]
is a radio producer and amateur road racer.
Copyright
© 2006 LewRockwell.com
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