James Altucher on Getting Rid of the FDA and Other Unitended Consequences of Public Policy

Though James Altucher is one of my favorite new blogger/writers, he has really outdone himself on this new post on why the Food and Drug Administration needs to be abolished.  It's easily the best thing I have read all day (well, besides Rothbard's wonderful ode to Ludwig von Mises) and perhaps all week.  An excerpt:

Time to end the FDA, traditional medical education and the insurance companies. Just get rid of them.
Let’s start with the worst and most corrupt semi-government institution known to mankind: the Food  and Drug Administration. The administration that lets you smoke as many cigarettes as you need to get lung cancer, drink a ton of alcohol to get liver cancer, but then won’t let you take any of the drugs or treatments for lung cancer or liver cancer.

Get rid of the FDA. Simple.  Let the Internet be a virtual FDA. A drug will have a web page, a scientist with verified credentials will document his research, and comments from users will  describe their experiene with a drug. Many people die and get sick from FDA-APPROVED(!) drugs. The same thing will happen here. But will save the billion dollars and will allow drugs to be quickly tested by the audience that needs it most – people dying of terminal diseases. These people will quickly report back if there is success and we’ll know what works and what doesn’t. If there are bad stories then it’s a guarantee we will hear about them. And it won’t require a billion dollars and ten years to hear about them.

Probably the best line in the whole article:

Almost everything I can learn in an expensive medical school I can learn with a combination of Passion + Internet + Apprenticeship.

Altucher's post demonstrates just how much of a wonderful thing the internet has become.  The decentralization of information will only lead to further innovation as more and more people realize that they can learn anything at the click of a mouse instead of an overpriced text book and a tenured university professor.  See this example:

If you came to me with a headache, for instance, I would ask you a bunch of questions. Did you fall? Did someone hit you? Are you vomiting? Then I would take an ophthalmoscope (that little miner’s light where the doctor says, “now open wide” and a bright light shines directly into your eyes”) and I would  look at the back of the eye  (“the fundus”) to see if I can detect any swelling in the brain or any brain tumors. A simple check on the Internet will show many examples of pictures of a swelled brain compared with an unswelled brain. I might do an EEG also to see if there’s anything abnormal. If I see anything abnormal that requires immediate surgery or a neurologist then I would send you off to a specialized hospital. Else, take two aspirin and call me in the morning. That wasn’t so hard, right? But to do that I need about 12 years of education and go about $300,000 in debt and then pay massive malpractice insurance. And not only that, what if your headache was the result of an ear infection or an eye infection (easy to tell by various methods that are easily found via Google)? I would have to prescribe you an antibiotic.

But of course the powers that be will never let this sort of thing occur on a massive scale.  There is too much money involved though occupational licensing, patent granting, and lawsuits to actually allow people to be responsible for their actions.  Of course I can't choose my own doctor, he has to be certified by the AMA (a government granted monopoly) and must be $300,000 in debt to take a quick look down my throat and stare at my genitals (a privilege in itself I might add).  And if there is a darker than normal freckle somewhere, that may require an extra visit followed by a prescription recommendation he is paid (bribed) to make.  Don't get me wrong, I hardly blame doctors for such behavior.  They are in it to make money, why else does anyone work?  For fun? Even if I got paid to write, I would still treat it like work much like I do already.  It's just that sipping hot,bitter coffee and bitching about the government would be a lot more fun than other jobs, but it's still work.  Back to the doctors though, of course they make you jump through hoops and try to deplete your savings, they know how to fill their wallets.  The only protection against this is more competition, not getting bureaucrats involved that will just get paid off by Big Pharm and the AMA to write laws making competition more unobtainable.

Anywway, Altucher's post is highly recommended.

I was emailed an editorial article by an ex-girlfriend of mine (her pic is somewhere on the blog) today in which she reflected back on her experience working in Harrisburg around the state capital.  She laments that politicians don't care about their constituents and hence her desire to enter politics to "change" things.  I guess that's a sign of my complete failure to show her that politicians are sociopaths that use guns and badges to force everyone to act in a way that they deem appropriate.  And here I thought I was changing hearts and minds with my simple and self evident logic.  Silly me.  What she doesn't realize is that when politicians are generally decent minded, their policies end up having unintended consequences, see Elizabeth soak-the-rich Warren for instance:

Bank of America plans to introduce a $5 monthly debit card usage fee for many of its account holders beginning early next year, the company said.

"The economics of offering a debit card have changed," said Bank of America spokeswoman Anne Pace.

The Dodd-Frank Act's Durbin amendment, which takes effect October 1, and inspired by America's great interventionist, Elizabeth Warren, caps fees banks can charge merchants for processing debit cards to 21 cents per transaction, potentially costing banks billions of dollars in fee income. The banks are going to try and get it from cardholders.

Well shit Ms. Warren, you really think BoA would take such measures lying down?  Look for other banks to replicate such policies as Dodd-Frank eliminates many avenues for banks to be profitable (because creating imaginary money through fractional reserve banking is never enough).

In more government intervention news, rumors are flying around as Pippa Malmgren is speculating that Germany is printing the mark in expectations of leaving the Euro:

News to expect in the coming days and weeks...

•The Germans announce they are re-introducing the Deutschmark. They have already ordered the new currency and asked that the printers hurry up.

Well we can only hope such a policy occurs, though the mark will probably be printed like crazy to maintain Germany as a prime exporter.  Still, this may prove to be the catalyst needed to put the nail in the coffin of the euro but you wouldn't know it judging by the "we must save the euro" crap coming out of Merkel's mouth.  You can bet she has a pink slip coming her way soon enough.  See this hilarious and utterly candid video on why the current measures to preserve the Eurozone are complete crap:

While Germany, Greece, Portugal and the rest of the PIIGS may eventually leave the Euro zone, it will likely result in massive printing of their respective currencies to stimulate their economies by subsidizing exports.  It's the same race to the bottom most countries are engaging in right now (or will be again very soon) but it looks like Russia might finally be having the right idea:

MOSCOW, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Russia's central bank will offer gold-backed loans for up to 90 days at an interest rate of 7 percent, it said in a statement on Friday, expanding its lending facilities for dealing with any future liquidity crunch in the banking system.

It's not perfect (the loans could easily be issued while Putin yells "gotcha! we aren't redeeming them for gold!") but it's a start.  While hard, commodity based money provides a necessary check on government's ability to dole out welfare checks, George F. Smith brings up an important point in his Mises Daily article today:

The Mises Institute offers an extensive library of literature explaining the economics behind an autonomous commodity-coin system. But you don't need to be an Austrian to appreciate the value of gold. In 1914 Europe went to war. Three years later it was officially a world war. For this to happen the belligerents (with the exception of the late-entry United States) had to go off the gold standard. It wasn't the men doing the fighting who made the decision. It was the politicians who sent them to fight — and die in the millions. And what did they die for? The rest of the bloody century, and now the new century with the world still at war and teetering on financial collapse. The killing had to be funded, and that meant gold had to be abandoned.

An incredibly important point to make, one which needs to be brought up a lot more.  Especially since its seems like Pakistan may be the next place we see boots on the ground.

Update- I thought this was a very apt image for the future of fiat currency:

Update- The impeccable Doug Casey strikes again:

Speculator Series with Doug Casey from Cambridge House International on Vimeo.