Undoctrination.org

The title to this essay seems inherently contradictory and oxymoronic and in most cases it is. However, there are exceptions where the title of this essay actually translates to a logical and consistent line of thought. When a purported course of action actually achieves the antithesis of its stated intention, reducing the degree to which the course of action is taken actually increases the degree to which the end is served. If one proposes to cure oneself of dehydration by entering a sauna for a predetermined amount of time, decreasing the amount of time one intends to stay in the shower actually decreases the degree by which one dehydrates oneself. Given the aforementioned example, it begs the question, “Why enter the sauna at all when any sauna time is only going to advance dehydration?” Mind you, not entering the sauna does not, in and of itself, cure the dehydration, but rejecting such a course of action provides the groundwork to find a course of action that actually does cure the dehydration.

This gets us to the subject matter at hand, governmental activity. Federal, state and local governments cumulatively spent almost 43% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product in 2009. To be sure, when 43% of the country’s wealth is spent, some gains are seen towards the purported end. Simple and incomplete analysis would imply that decreasing governmental spending necessarily decreases the gains seen from governmental activity, but this analysis lacks two critical components. One is that it fails to consider what economic activity would have occured in the absence of not only the spending, but the taxation channels (direct or indirect) which were used to acquire the money in the first place. Make no mistake, governments do not produce, they merely acquire that which has been produced by others. Defenders of governments inevitably rationalize that the government is justified to do so, contending that government spending facilitated the environment in which such prosperity was possible, but make no mistake, this is a rationalization.

The second neglected facet in the initial claim is that government spending only works towards its purported end and never against it. Take the “Food and Drug Administration” for example. No one can argue that safe medicines aren’t preferable to toxic ones, but one can definitely make the claim that minimizing risk is not always the prudent medical decision. The problem is, the latter statement requires significant analysis. Government agencies such as the FDA and similar regulatory agencies which exist for the alleged purpose of insuring safety and security from private vendors often work against their purported ends and here is why. In the event there is a safe and effective treatment, bodies like the FDA legally prohibit the sale of such medicines until the FDA has had time to analyze the product, the studies submitted and make a decision as to its approval. If the proposed treatment waits on a list for 8 years and is approved within 2 years, that is 10 years of unnecessary victims which the FDA typically escapes blame for. Even in the event that the list time were reduced or eliminated, there would still be 2 years or more of unnecessary deaths.

Additionally, what constitutes “safer” does not always constitute “better” in regards to medicine. If you were diagnosed with a cancer sleighted to take your lifewithin 7 years and two options were available, there is no objective standard which of the following treatments are preferable. Treatment A has no record of accelerating the cancer and is sleighted to slow the cancer to not be lethal for 12-16 years as opposed to the current 7. Treatment B will, half the time, accelerate the cancer and reduce your life expectancy to 4-6 years. The other half the time, it abolishes the cancer entirely and give you a full life expectancy. The first treatment is undeniably safer, but not necessariy better. In this circumstance, the second treatment is not necessarily better, but suppose the odds of acceleration were decreased to 5% and the odds of the cure were increased to 95%, does this change things? These decisions do NOT belong in the hands of bureaucrats, but this is what the FDA does every day. It banishes riskier, but potentially more prodigious, treatments and medicines on a daily basis on the premise that safer is, by default, better. As we can see, safety is not the only consideration by a reasonable standard, but it is the one standard by which the FDA analyzes.

Furthermore, a medicine is either safe or dangerous based on the nature of science and physical reality, not by the certifications it may or may not possess by professed “experts.” Undeniably, there are many cases where the stamp of approval does correlate with a generally safe medicine and the rejection of approval does correlate with a generally dangerous medicine. However, there are also COUNTLESS cases where safe medicines have been criminalized and dangerous medicines have been approved. When Ambien was shown to be correlated with an abundance of dangerous sleepwalking cases, the FDA got to ride in as if they were some white knight punishing the evil drug manufacturer and completely escape any attention being paid to the fact that they gave it their seal of approval in the first place. Since we see now that the FDA keeps good medicines from the market AND approves dangerous medicines for the market, we have to realize that the FDA stamp of approval is not the criteria by which medicines should be assessed for their relative safety.

I do not blame this on malice or incompetence, as I truly believe that many of their employees are sincere and intelligent as individuals. However, the belief that a central body can serve as the sole authority in deciding which medical treatments are “acceptable” is inherently flawed and self-defeating. No matter how sincere the efforts of the FDA, errors will continue to occur and people are going to die from being denied access to legitimate medicine, as well as those who have a false sense of security behind the FDA seal of approval. Nevertheless, actions are as severe as the consequences they bring about and years of logistical data showing the harmful effects the EPA has had on the innovation and practice of medicine demand that honest parties admit the flaw in the belief that the existence of the FDA is a boon for humanity. Speaking for myself, I can forgive those who think believe the FDA generates a net positive, up until the point they see the statistical data and continue to stand by it after KNOWING that it is a harmful body.

Now in the case of the FDA, reductions on the FDA are gains for the progress of medicine. Cutting out costs of development and decreasing the bureaucracy which inhibits legitimate scientists practicing their craft, increases the ability of those SCIENTISTS and DOCTORS to work towards their purported ends. Reduction in the FDA is a gain in medicine. This begs the question, why have the FDA at all? What business do bureaucrats have in private medical decisions between a patient and their health care professional? We already have a robust civil system by which aggrieved parties can sue their health care professional in the event that they commit malpractice (which would require another essay to flesh out the delicate considerations of what constitutes malpractice, but for now we will let this term stand in a generic sense) so abolishment of the FDA does NOT leave medical professionals free to market harmful products under the guise they are safe. All risks have to be adequately explained and agreed upon and the health care professional has no ethical or legal perogative to misrepresent their position. Abolishment of the FDA is not synonymous with health care professionals lacking consequences for poor medical practice.

Decisions made by bureaucrats removed from the front lines do not have the same bredth or depth of perspective of the man in the front line. Additionally, they are wholly divorced from the consequences of their decrees and lack the incentive to change decisions in the event they are proven uneconomical. Their self-serving motive is one of political gain through being able to maximize the amount of support they can muster from other citizens. Ultimately, democratic mechanisms reward decisions based on their popularity, regardless of whether the popular position has a basis in fact, reason or practicality. As such, bureaucrats mandate counterproductive activities all the time. The examples fleshed out regarding the FDA are not exclusive to the FDA. Similar analysis could be made of our Social Security System inhibiting our ability to retire by forcing a portion of our earnings into abysmal rates of returns (in reality it is not an investment, but a Ponzi Scheme, but for these purposes I refer to it as an investment), OSHA mandating activities inhibitive of workplace safety, consumer product boards using regulation to force unsafe practices, civil rights protection agencies mandating that racism be exercised in the interests of “fairness” and so forth. This domain is seen along the entire strata of activities engaged in by government.

Towards this end, reduction of government agencies transitions the expectation of results into the private sector, where more effective, efficient and ethical means are used towards the same purported end. Market forces dry up if they fail to sustain a baseline level of appeal from a segment of the population desiring their service. Government bodies, on the other hand, are often incentivized TO fail, as failing to bring about their purported end is rationalized as being an excuse to magnify the degree to which such practices are exercised. Market forces can only trade to acquire wealth and must provide some product or service found to be of value to someone, whereas governmental bodies have no such restriction. They alone have the power to tax. The power to tax allows them to survive no matter how little value they bring and no matter how much damage they do. Markets require the participants to engage in the act of creation, whereas governments do not create themselves. Towards this end, reduction of governmental bodies are gains for humanity and, in most cases, their outright elimination leaves the truly creative and productive forces to flourish and prosper.

As such, it is almost always the case that a reduction in governmental size translates for a gain to humanity. In addition, it is almost always the case that their elimination will result in creation from the private sector, as they no longer have so many hurdles towards the process of innovation. As such, reduction translates to gain and elimination translates to creation when government agencies are involved.