Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, February 24, 2008 10:20:50 PM
Apologies to my handful of regular readers, but events have kept me from writing as much as I intended. So, I am afraid I will have to push back my schedule slightly from the one I announced on Thursday. Also, as I have raised a whole new issue with a recent post, I need to add one more essay to my "to do" list.
Given the extra essay and the demands of work and home, I can only promise that the following essays will be completed sometime during the coming week:
1. An explanation of why I think there is no need for government licensing of doctors and other medical professionals, nor a need for prescription drugs laws. I hope to show that our current system does not provide the safety benefits promised, that it can actually result in harmful outcomes, and that a free market solution, akin to the systems used in many other fields, will work better and save money. Since it provides a neat analogy, being an area that has long been regulated and one most people think "needs" regulation, I may also examine the multitude of food safety laws and show how they also could be better handled by competing private inspection groups and consumer choice, rather than by monolithic government decree. (I expect to hear a lot of disagreement in the responses to this essay, but I still have to set forth my case.)
2. As mentioned below, I plan to write an essay explaining where government goes wrong. Obviously, the first essay is just a single specific case, so this essay can be viewed as a more general take on the theme. As I stated earlier, I will also explain where government does a good job, so we can figure out what is and is not a proper function of the state, and maybe develop a few general rules to help figure out when the state should get involved and when it should stand by and let things sort themselves out.
3. Finally, I will, at long last, put together my essay on federalism I have been promising. I have described this often enough in the past that I won't bother to describe it again.
I know I just wrote a very similar brief note a few days ago, and I haven't broken much new ground in this one, but I did want to let everyone know that I am aware I am falling behind schedule, and give some idea of when they can expect the essays since my earlier schedule obviously no longer applies.
I promise this is the last post of this nature for a while. I don't have many other works in progress about which I would need to update anyone, so no need to worry that every fourth post will just be a list of anticipated projects. Once the three mentioned above are finished, I still have a few other idea that may eventually become essays, but they are not yet that far along, so I shall be back to writing on current events.
UPDATED 02/25/2008
After I wrote this last night, I realized that the same theme pervades all of these.
My recent explanation of the primary benefit of federalism is that it allows for more decisions, which increases the chances that any given decision will be right. The same applies to my view of regulation. With a single, monolithic federal regulatory body, we get a single decision, and everyone suffers from any mistakes it makes. On the other hand, with competing private certifying bodies we get more decisions and the chance that at least one will avoid any given mistake increases.
Of course there are other benefits as well, once quasi-governmental power is removed from the process. Once it becomes certification rather than regulation a lot of the worst effects simply vanish, as it is the power to exclude from the field that makes regulatory agencies so burdensome and prone to abuse. But I will have to wait to write about those specific details later.
I do enjoy it when I manage to apply a single theme to so many topics. Perhaps my writing won't be so difficult if I can tie them all together. In any case, I will do my best to get them finished this week.