Rand Paul on Slavery. Wrong Analogy. Right Problem.

Forbes ^ | 05/19/2011 | Bill Flax

[billflax]

“The real destroyer of the Liberties of any people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and largesses.” – Plutarch

Rand Paul, the freshman senator from Kentucky, can’t seem to avoid controversy. Last year, then-candidate Paul questioned certain clauses of the Civil Rights Act on principled libertarian grounds. He quickly came under fire from across the political spectrum.

The son of libertarian standard bearer Ron Paul recently generated headlines again for comparing free health care to slavery. As several commentators observed, no one can “conscript” doctors to practice medicine. He freely quit the profession. However, this isn’t the primary concern, heinous as doctors fleeing regulatory impositions portends for the future quality of medicine.

The weightier issue isn’t confined to health care workers. It affects everyone: a serf-like dependence on the state, where greater portions of our labor and property are appropriated by the collective at the price of diminished personal freedom.

[Vaduz]

Wrong Analogy not true a slave could buy his freedom from debt,however under Obamacare the debt can never be paid off.

[pnh102]

I would have preferred the use of the term freeloader to describe a person who wants to force someone else to provide any form of services for less than the market price of those services.

[wita]

Neither serf nor slave do I wish to be, and furthermore when I can’t decipher in the first paragraph what the heck you are getting at, you have lost me.

[trebb]

Most folks don’t realize we aren’t much more than glorified slaves already. The next stage will be to assume pet status to the government. After that the ones in control will relegate us to livestock status - living at the convenience and pleasure of the State.

[ngat]

What you said. The blogger lost me too. Besides, the statement “As several commentators observed, no one can “conscript” doctors to practice medicine.” is factually untrue. Doctors have been conscripted to practice medicine regularly in our nation’s history, and probably will again.

[theBuckwheat]

To claim a wrong analogy shows a superficial understanding of the situation that we have allowed government to place us in.

For example, the 14th Amendment prohibits government from treating any profession differently with respect to the freedom to work than any other profession. Physicians and other medical professionals are just as free to negotiate their wages as any other citizen. Yet, under ObamaCare (tm), government forms a monopsony, which is a “market” with only one buyer. That buyer is then free to dictate the terms of the relationship.

The way to test this is to ask how would the Justice Department’s Anti Trust Division approach a situation where, for example, Nestle, through its Purina operation had moved to buy up every single small animal veterinary practice in the US and when they had achieved sufficient control of that market, dictated what fees those practices would charge. The Justice Department would be licking its chops to get a good enforcement action and consent decree.

On a different front, the Federal Government, through legal tender laws, forces merchants to accept Federal Reserve Notes as “money” even though it is hell-bent on inflating its value. Under these laws, a merchant cannot put up a sign that says he only accepts real money (ie: gold and silver) for payment.

We can only pay our taxes in dollars, and government gives itself the power to levy a tax on the inflated number of dollars realized by the sale of an asset. It even gives itself the power levy a 28% tax the “income” a citizen makes when he sells physical gold.

And now, thanks to the various laws recently passed by Congress, US Persons (those subject to US income tax), find it very difficult to open or retain an account with non-US securities trading firms. I have personal experience in this matter.

Now government spending depends upon its ability to continue to inflate the currency, this stealing wealth by dilution from anyone who holds any US dollars. And government is unrestrained in borrowing money that it will force me and those who come after me to pay the interest as it comes due. It never intends on paying the debt off, so what it has done is to consign me and those who follow me INTO DEBT SERVITUDE, and it will perpetually inflate the currency so it can service the debt sufficiently so it can keep borrowing yet more money.

So, Rand Paul was right. Our slavery is not with chains and whips in order to force us to all plow a field and pick cotton. It is much more sophisticated. It is pervasive financial servitude, not only to service the debt run up by the previous supporters of big and Bigger government, but it is servitude so those supporter can KEEP SPENDING with no intention of ever allowing those from whom they extract the wealth to escape.

And if a person thinks they can escape by giving up their citizenship, the government has given itself the power to levy taxes on their income for 10 YEARS following such election. Now the OECD has started to take up policies designed to help them pursue people who have fled high tax jurisdictions and to keep extracting taxes from them no matter where they move to.

So, if we see hints of Prison Planet in all this, we are just connecting the dots. It will be far worse if and when we have a single world currency.