[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

I just finished watching the Badnarik/Cobb debate. I thought Badnarik did an adequate job, but economics is not his strong point, and he did not seem able to give the kinds of convincing economic responses to Cobb’s economic dirigisme that a Harry Browne, for example, might have.

The remark of Cobb's that most called for response, and didn't get much of one, was this:"It seems self-evident to me that if health care is privatised, only the rich will be able to afford health care." The fact that Cobb finds this"self-evident" is the most important failing on his part, as it demonstrates his complete lack of understanding of the market. The less affluent outnumber the more affluent. Why on earth would anyone market services just to a minority of their customer base? Why would anyone provide health care just to the wealthy few when they could make far more money by catering to the poorer many? Health care costs are driven upward by government-granted monopolies and subsidies; they would be driven down by genuine market competition.

Badnarik should have talked about the history of cheap health care for the poor before government got into the health care business, and should have explained more clearly how government favours the wealthy while markets favour the poor.

Badnarik did say that markets can achieve Green goals better than governments can. But he didn't explain how. I look forward to the day when Libertarian candidates present their positions in the Green-friendly manner of Mary Ruwart's Healing Our World.

On a different point: I would also like to have seen Badnarik call Cobb on Cobb's claim to stand for nonviolence. What I wrote about Kucinich a year ago on this point applies equally to Cobb today: Cobb's economic policies amount to an expansion of violence, not a diminution of it.

Bill Woolsey - 9/6/2004

Badnarik called on Americans to help abolish
the Fed by using Liberty Dollars and pointed
them to the Liberty Dollar website. That
site includes misleading claims about the
Fed being private. The links on that site
are a mixture of libertarianianism and variants
of nutcase patriot paranoia.

Larry White as a good discussion of the workability
of the scheme as a means of introducing a new
currency.

Liberty dollars are denominated in dollars but redeemable in a fixed weight of silver, an amount
currently worth about 1/2 of its face value.

Under current conditions, the seignorage is about
50%. Quite profitable for the issuer. Associates
buy them at a discount from face value and are
supposed to try to spend them into circulation. It costs $250 to be an associate,
and $100 of that goes to the associate that recruited
you. Badnarik is an associate. Presumably, he is
getting a cut from each new associate he recruits.