I am currently debating a friend of mine about the theory of natural monopolies. He has an economics degree from NYU. I have a degree in marketing but, I also study the works of the Austrian School of Economics. Clearly, his credentials are greater than mine on this topic but, in this case, natural monopolies is a myth taught at schools across the country.

In this video, Thomas DiLorenzo debunks the myth of the natural monopoly. You can find his written research paper here provided by the Mises Institute. The theory of natural monopoly does not logically fit with fundamental laws of economics.

The most popular topic in the political world lately has been health care. I have tried to refrain from writing about it because of its charged nature.  However, I haven’t been completely quiet about the issue. I have my opinions and Facebook has seen quite a bit of it!

First off, I am competely against the bill and the idea of universal health care. There is no such thing as a good bill that is thousand pages long and there is no such thing as a well run government system. Those are both fairytales.

It is entirely ineffective that those on the side of the bill resort to name calling in the form of the Bush Administration’s tactic of calling critics unpatriotic and the Obama Administration’s tactic of calling critics racists. Both are unproductive and not what a debate is about.

As expected, those who want the bill passed don’t want a debate; they just pay lip service to the idea. The real debate is not whether we should have reform or not. No one disagrees that the current system is imperfect and needs to be reformed. However, reform is a vague term.

There is no guarantee that any old reform will make things better. Things aren’t so bad that there is no way the government can make it worse. We aren’t at rock bottom.

The real debate should be what kind of reform we should have. The only way we can have an intelligent debate on is if we understand what the problems are and not how to solve the symtoms.

The problem is not that we have an estimated 45 million uninsured people in the United States. Having health insurance and having health care is not the same thing. For whatever reasons, we have become conditioned to believing that the two terms are interchangeable. It is how the media talks about it and it is how the politicians talk about it.

The underlying problem with health insurance is that we are insuring every medical procedure under the sun. It doesn’t matter if its a check up, a cold, cancer, or broken bones. The system insures it all. This is not the case in any other insurance industry. No one buys car insurance to cover oil changes and tune-ups. We don’t buy house insurance for carpet stains.

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Unbeknownst to me, women were marching topless in Central Park on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009. I support their cause because this is an issue of Liberty. I like breasts as much as the next guy and I hardly believe any man would be too opposed to women walking around topless. Now, not all women are equal and there are breasts that we want to look at that those that we’d rather not. Different people like different things. But, the point isn’t whether men like breasts or not.

This is an issue of Liberty.

Because of that, it doesn’t matter if your breasts or young and perky or old and saggy. There should be no reason why women or men should not be allowed to walk around topless or even bare naked. As long one is out in a public place, there is no legitimate reason to disallow anyone from presenting themselves in any way they wish.

If one is on private property and the owner of the property doesn’t want it, they can ask that you be clothed and in the same light, if they allow you to be naked, you can be naked within their property.

There are some who believe this is wrong as the Daily News article quoted:

“This is extreme liberalism and why America’s in decline,” shouted one woman, who said she was a doctor but declined to give her name. “It’s degrading to women to tell them to expose their breasts publicly.”

America is in decline for many reasons–none of which is due to excess Liberty. The women’s opinion is as valid as anyone else’s opinion. Other women might say its degrading to tell them to hide their breasts in public! Is there something wrong with breasts? Why should women be forced to hide them? All such opinions are valid. The beauty of Liberty is that nothing is judged on opinions. It is a matter of property rights. We own our bodies and if we want to put clothes on it, we can; if not, we should also be allowed to do so.

The opinions of the majority change with the times. Natural rights do not.

France has a law that specifically states women are allowed to be topless. While I agree with the idea of the law, I do not support having a law that tells us what we can do. A system of governance that starts writing laws for what we are allowed to do is a bad precedence. We should be allowed to do whatever we want as long as no one else’s Liberty is violated.

While I have no intention of telling my mother, sister, cousins, girlfriend, or friends to go walk around topless–nor do I want to see all of that, it doesn’t give me the right to tell them they can’t do it. Whether I like it or not is irrelevant. We have no right to control another person’s Liberty.

That’s what this issue should be about. It isn’t about whether women should bare their breasts in public or not. It is about whether we live in a nation founded on Liberty or not.

Almost everything the government has done to rescue our faltering economy has been kicking it while it is down. From the bailouts to the stimulus packages to cap and trade and universal health care bills, it is a miracle the economy is functioning at all. It is crazy to criticize saving the economy, the environment, and improving the standard of living for Americans so that is not what I’m doing. I want the economy to come back, the environment to be clean, and the standard of living to be high.

The disconnect is that while the government says they want to do all those good things, they will end up accomplishing the opposite.

I’ve talked plenty about how the government’s attempts at rescuing the economy is the equivalent of giving a drug addict more drugs, how man-made climate change is a load of crap, and how the problem with healthcare is the excessive amount of government involvement. So, I won’t beat a dead horse. I will instead tackle another unpopular topic: the minimum wage.

If it was up to me, the minimum wage would be $0. The minimum wage is promoted as a means to create wealth equality and provide all Americans with a livable income but, the reality is nothing that is promoted. A minimum wage keeps more workers out of work.

The government is essentially saying that if you do not have the skills to warrant whatever the minimum wage is, you should not work. Sound backwards? It’s not. There is no reason for a company to hire you for $7.25 to do a job that is worth much less. So where there was a chance for people without skills to take a lower wage to learn the skills so that they can get ahead in life, the government takes it away.

If you made some wrong decisions or life just threw you a bad hand, you no longer have the means to work your way up. The government eliminated the steps at the bottom of the ladder and if you can’t jump high enough to reach the new bottom, you are screwed. To fix this unemployment problem, the government puts a band-aid over it by offering welfare for the people the government put out of work! How grand.

To compound the problem, the government via the Federal Reserve inflates the money supply to fund all their welfare/warfare projects and our cost of living goes up. To solve this problem, the government raises the minimum wage because it is now more expensive to live. The increased minimum wage puts more workers out of work and the government needs to offer more welfare by printing, borrowing, or taxing and the cost of living goes up more! This is the vicious cycle created by government and further made worse by more government intervention.

No one in Congress is going to vote no to the increase in the minimum wage because it is politically unpopular–except Ron Paul and a few others who understand economics and unintended consequences.

No one wants to see the actual picture of what the minimum wage does. When people criticize the minimum wage and call for its abolition–like myself–we are labeled as monsters who do not care about the poor. I am not multi-millionaire and I don’t make that much money. I just understand economics. I don’t care about the poor as much as I care about myself–I won’t lie about it.

I find little wrong with putting yourself, family, and friends first before random strangers. It is terrible that people are living in poverty but I am not so far away that the policies I support will benefit me at the expense of the poor. It will benefit everyone.

It is an economic lie that the minimum wage is good for the economy. If the minimum wage can solve our poverty problems, why not just make it $100/hr and everyone would be rich! Obviously, we can see that it would be disastrous and practically everyone will be out of a job or prices will be sky high for everything.

So as usual, the government is kicking the economy while it is down with this minimum wage increase.

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Honestly, I don’t know much about Chuck Norris outside of the Chuck Norrisisms and the movies that I’ve seen. It was a very pleasant surprise when I found this. Chuck Norris writes an intelligent piece advocating the abolition of the Federal Reserve or at least the passing of HR 1207–Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Bill.

Last week, the Senate blocked the bill even before it was introduced on the floor under “procedural grounds”. What the hell is that?

The truth of the matter is that the leaders in the Senate do not want the Federal Reserve audited. It is their “cash cow” so to speak. The Federal Reserve doesn’t make money the way the rest of us do, they make money by literally “making” it with paper and printing presses. This is good for the politicians who want their programs funded, bad for the rest of us.

Norris quotes Henry Ford on the banking and monetary system–controlled by the Fed–of the United States:

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

I believe that the nation would be in revolution if we all knew the reality of the Federal Reserve and how they manipulate our monetary system. So let’s inform the people!