Capitalism's titanic deedsThe Titanic showed that government safety regulations do not protect people. The tragedy reveals that government regulations dictated the minimum number of allowable life boats, and that the owners originally exceeded - by far - the minimum and still exceeded the minimum when the ship launched. Furthermore, the futility of "minimum life boat" regulations was shown by the failure to fill the boats that were on board. No life boat regulation can guarantee safety if seats are left empty. As with every tragedy, the statists receive even greater applause for reforming their failed regulations while blaming "profits" for the loss of lives. While bureaucrats gain brainless praise for worthless government regulations, the real savior goes unsung: capitalism. Today, a Titanic tragedy could still occur despite whatever stale regulations are currently on the books, but such a strategy could be averted by the fruits of capitalism. Even if there were not a single life boat on board, capitalism has created jet planes, helicopters and high speed boats that can rush to drop inflatable rafts and life preservers. And large inflatable boats with automatic inflation can be in abundant supply in very little space. Thanks to capitalism, all manners of communication are possible from ship to shore, including radios, individual radio-alert beacons and satellite/cellular phones in the very hands of passengers. Radar, sonar and other technology is used to detect icebergs. Night viewing devices and intense lighting is available to detect dangers at sea. No matter how many times any type of mishap repeats itself, most
people will just whine for "more regulations" and never sense their own
absurd redundancy. The savvy traveler doesn't need a life boat or a
ship because he can carry his own inflatable boat in a suitcase with its
own automatic air source for high-speed inflation. He can carry his own
satellite communication device. Bureaucratic statism does not save lives,
capitalism does. http://131.247.46.2/199803/19980316/opinion/19980316-comment3.html Libertarianism & Safety Regulations http://rexcurry.net/safetyregs.html Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire http://rexcurry.net/shirtwaist.html |
CHILD SAFETY SEATS KILL Child safety seats kill. They not only kill the children who ride in them, they kill entire families too. http://rexcurry.net/safetyregs.html The regulatory horrors are hidden because the government does not want people to know the dangers (to life and liberty) created by thieving bureaucracies that pretend to aid safety with dictates foisted upon "ignorant and uncaring" graduates of the government's schools. This topic is so suppressed that a recent internet search for "child safety seats kill" provided no results with or without quotation marks, other than that of Dr. Rex Curry's report on the topic, the first for that web search. Curry is a lawyer and a libertarian spokesman known as Dr. Capitalism. He exposes unintended consequences of safety regulations, consequences that are suppressed by media and government. The work proves the maxim "Capitalism heals. Socialism kills." http://rexcurry.net/doctor-capitalism-dr-capitalism-heals-socialism-kills.gif Child car seats kill because of three terrifying problems: (1) Children die from heat or exposure after being forgotten in cars and (2) Entire families die after parents leave cars running overnight in garages, filling homes with deadly carbon monoxide (3) Children die from rear-facing seats that are/were incompatible with another "safety" feature: car air bags. Entire families have perished because people drive inside a hot garage and leave the car engine running in order to continue the cooling air conditioner while struggling with the children and their safety seats. After children are inside the home, no one remembers to turn off the car. The heartbreak spreads when another parent discovers that she has accidentally killed her infant by forgetting the infant in the car's back seat under a sweltering sun all day, instead of being dropped off at day care or another destination. The deaths are a result of government regulations that require rear-facing child seats placed in the rear seat of the car, making it impossible for parents to see their children. Only an idiot (or someone desiring to kill children) would have imposed such a regulation. The response of the evil bureaucrats has been that the deaths would not result if there was more "parental supervision," and that is in complete contradiction of the bureaucratic regulation that defeats parental supervision (where parents would place children so that they would be visible, duh). Only capitalism is overcoming the deadly effects of the socialist regulations by providing gadgets that warn parents about children obscured by government. Child booster seats kill even after a history of fatalities due to incompatibiliy with air bags. Rear-facing infant seats would push infants into the front passenger seat via an exploding air bag slamming into the back of the child's seat. It would break the infant's neck. It is sad to note that one of the government's "solutions" for avoiding air-bag deaths was to put the children in the rear seats away from the "life-saving" air bag feature. That led to children baking to death in cars and entire families killed by carbon monoxide. ********* Strapping in a child can lead to deaths if the car catches fire because it might not be possible to release the child in time, or at all (and the parent might be unconscious, incapacitated or dead). For the same reasons, strapping in a child can cause drowning deaths if the car becomes submerged. Straps on a booster seat can kill a child in even a medium speed head-on collision of the type shown in NHTSA videos. A booster seat puts a child's head closer to the roof of the car, increasing the chance that its head will be crushed in a roll-over. Elevating a child makes it more likely that the child will be killed in an override, while it might have survived lower down. A strapped in child may suffer serious injury or death from the straps in case of other types of collisions, as well as head-on. Strapping in a child makes it more likely that the child will be crushed in other accidents where the child cannot avoid the blow or be pushed aside. A study released 12/08/2006 in the British Medical Journal warns parents not to let their babies sleep in car seats because there is a risk they could stop breathing. That danger is echoed by researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Some of the problem involves infants "flopping forward" in the seats, even when they are left in the seats inside the home, or in the car. TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE
The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 is often misused as a example of the need for safety codes and child labor laws. http://rexcurry.net/shirtwaist.html It is actually a warning to employers and employees to beware of the misdeeds and negligence of other employees. It also shows the need for private fire departments instead of government-run fire departments. http://rexcurry.net/lawyer.html The workers were 17, 18, and 19 years old or older. So workers were not children, and would not be controlled by present child labor laws and thus the incident provides no support for child labor laws. There are persistent myths that doors were locked and that fire escapes were faulty, even though a judge exonerated the owner of the building and the proprietors of the Triangle Compnay, and an insurance company paid $64,925 for property damage. In comparison, the government-operated fire department was slow to arrive, and it's ladders could not reach beyond the 6th floor to the fire that was raging on the 9th floor. The building was 12 floors high, and New York City had buildings 50 stories high at that time. There was one door locked, though there were multiple exits that were used by many to escape. The exits included stairs, a fire escape and two elevators that were used heroically by the operators. The fire started on the 8th floor, and everyone on that floor escaped. Most people on the 10th floor escaped. The 9th floor suffered the greatest loss of life where 100 of 250 people still escaped. There were about 500 people in the building, 350 escaped and about 150 died. The fire did not burn downward and the building is still standing to this day in New York City. What is telling about the persistent myths is how they lay blame upon the workers. One popular claim is that remote doors were locked because workers would use them for stealing or use them for unauthorized breaks for smoking cigarettes (thereby gold-bricking and also breaking factory rules against smoking). Not only does this persistent myth lay blame upon the workers for creating the reason for the alleged locking of the doors, it also suggests the source of the fire: unauthorized and negligent smoking by employees. Socialists deliberately lied about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in order to blame capitalism and to cover-up for the usual failures of socialism. In a market system with private fire departments, there is a direct incentive for the customer of the fire-prevention service to make sure that firefighters are properly equipped for their particular building's needs, or for customers to provide for their own safety and fire equipment. Thanks to capitalism, and to the incompetence of government, there is a strong incentive to create ways of avoiding dependence on government fire departments today. There are sprinkler systems, smoke detectors that are cheap and widely distributed, flame retardent materials, and appliances (microwave ovens etc) that do not use flames as their predecessors did (stoves and heaters that used wood, coal, gas etc). The book "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America" by David Von Drehle busts a lot of myths. The book explains that Triangle was not a sweatshop. The fire was not arson by the owners. Von Drehle's book is full of detail. Most stories about the fire lack detail. Most stories are vague anecdotes from socialists that use the fire as a call for more government regulation. Another interesting bit from Drehle: Fiorello La Guardia was a socialist before he became a republican. Von Drehle has also drawn comparisons to the World Trade Towers on 9-11-2001, including the fact that people leapt to their deaths. People leapt to their deaths at Triangle's building because the government's fire department didn't have ladders to reach the fire's height. Government didn't have ladders to reach the Trade Tower fire either. Today, the average fire-truck's ladder at a government's fire department reaches only to the 8th floor. Government operates most fire departments but they don't operate firetruck factories. Firetruck factories make trucks that reach from 15 to 33 floors, but they are rarely available in government's fire departments. Von Drehle says that the Shirtwaist fire might have been extinguished but for a problem with a water hose for fires that did not function. It was probably from a government water system that failed. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company owners suffered greatly, but the government's fire department didn't. It is fortunate that the Shirtwaist company was not operated by the government, or the loss of life would have been even greater. Government angers foreigners into flying private planes into private businesses, and then government security fails to prevent it from happening. And what about the much-vaunted government regulations imposed after the Shirtwaist fire? The Trade Towers collapsed completely, and the Shirtwaist building still stands and is in use in NYC today. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire exposes the myth of safety from government regulations, including those regulations imposed after the fire, and it shows that safety comes from capitalism and its technology. http://RexCurry.net |
| DR. CAPITALISM Dr. Rex Curry is known as "Dr. Capitalism" because of his work to end socialized medicine in the United States and worldwide. But the real Dr. Capitalism is a healthcare professional who remains anonymous while advising Dr. Curry about libertarian trends in medicine. A great T-shirt recently viewed states on the front "Capitalism Heals" and on the back "Socialism Kills." A similar sign says "Capitalism Heals, Socialism Kills!" http://rexcurry.net/doctor-capitalism-dr-capitalism-heals-socialism-kills.gif Every individual's health is his or her personal responsibility. We should be free to do what we think is necessary to take care of ourselves without interference from anyone. The businesses mentioned at Dr. Capitalism's web site help toward that end. That is right and good. It is the sort of freedom that everyone should have. It is enraging to see that the medical profession in concert with the state often prevents economic freedom in medicine. *************** HPV vaccine is an example of the need to remove government from medicine. The Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine Governor Rick Perry should be investigated for bribery and criminal conduct. Greedy socialism. He issues executive orders acts like a dictator. He should have ended his comment with a Nazi salute. It is called the slut vaccine because Rick Perry is a slut and a whore. He can inject the girls while they chant the Pledge of Allegiance. Why not make the flu vaccine mandatory for adults every year? The Food and Drug Administration approved the HPV vaccine last year for girls and women from 9 to 26 after studies indicated that it was extremely effective against infection by four of the dozens of strains of HPV, including the ones responsible for most cases of cervical and anal cancer. Why did he wait until 14, and not order it at 9 or younger? Some religious folks object and argue that the vaccine promotes promiscuity? Does the vaccine promote promiscuity? Government schools promote promiscuity. They are so bad and boring that anyone would be driven to drink, drugs and sex through boredom and hopelessness. It is the Soviet effect. It is another reason to end government schools. The Republican-socialist might acheive the opposite of his intention because the vaccine does not prevent all HPV, therefore, if more sex occurs as a result of the vaccine, then more HPV might occur, and therefore more cervical cancer. It could also cause a lot more of many other diseases and problems. Must end the FDA Must end government schools To the question "will you encourage your children to take it?" an intelligent parent will respond "Not at this time. We will wait for more information and more results." Socialized medicine is not planned parenthood. It is a plan to replace parenthood. Government schools are a plan to replace parenthood. Take your children out of government schools and away from republican-socialists like Rick Perry. Remove your children from government schools. Save them from socialized medicine and Nazi style aggression. ***************** Doctor Capitalism writes to http://rexcurry.net in response to an article about long lines for so-called "free" flu shots from the government, that prove socialism is destroying medicine in the U.S.A. (As elsewhere). Here are Doctor Capitalism’s comments: Hey, we're just lucky that flu shots are still VOLUNTARY. I'm shocked that the government hasn't made them mandatory for Medicare and Medicaid recipients. As you know, many vaccines now are compulsory for school attendance. Flu will be next. One area the author didn't mention is the mystery surrounding why the Fujian strain was left out of this year's vaccine. It's becoming the predominant strain. Why didn't the CDC recognize that and include it? There's a bigger story there. For your information, health departments aren't required to give free shots. Some charge $15 for flu and $20 for pneumonia. They are turned down every day by patients who have high risk chronic diseases and don't think $15 is worth it. For some of these patients, it could save them a trip to the hospital, which would cost thousands. The difference is the $15 is out of their own pocket and they would be a charity case if they were admitted for a severe complication of the flu at the hospital. Speaking of so-called “free” health care, I also see every day a few patients who seem to have very minor cold symptoms that could be easily treated by over the counter remedies and who insist on being evaluated in the clinic. I wouldn't dream of seeking medical care if similarly afflicted, but I guess I can feel good about it because they're wasting my time and not the emergency room’s time. I'm saving the government lots of money on that one. yours in liberty, Doctor Capitalism ******************* Two patients limp into two different American healthcare businesses with the same complaint. Both have trouble walking and appear to require a hip replacement. The first patient is examined within the hour, is x-rayed the same day and has a time booked for surgery the following week. The second sees the family doctor after waiting a week for an appointment, then waits eighteen weeks to see a specialist, then gets an x-ray, which isn't reviewed for another month and finally has his surgery scheduled for 6 months from then. Why the different treatment for the two patients? The first is a dog at a veterinarian..... The second is a human on medicare. ************************** The U.S. Healthcare Certificate of Need Sourcebook By Robert James Cimasi, ASA, CBA, AVA, FCBI, CM&A, CMP 1587982757 - Paperback - 512 pages US $199.95 Certificate of Need (CON) has had a broad impact on healthcare providers and markets for over three decades. As the bibliographies and other resources in this book illustrate, there is a large amount of literature documenting CON regulation over the years. This work is the result of over two years of dedicated, focused research resulting in a comprehensive reference manual and sourcebook encompassing the statutory, regulatory, administrative, and legal aspects CON regulation from its inception in the late 1960s to the present. The U.S. Healthcare Certificate of Need Sourcebook provides detailed descriptions, on a state-by-state basis, of CON regulatory requirements, including application thresholds and utilization data. The book is supplemented with numerous appendices. The U.S. Healthcare Certificate of Need Sourcebook is comprehensive in its treatment CON, which is a growing and increasingly contentious, political, and legal healthcare nightmare. As a young attorney in the general counsel’s office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the late 1970s, the author first learned of the federal government’s quixotic efforts to rein in the rapid growth of healthcare to Americans. With its confusing acronyms and labyrinth of regulatory protocols, the Certificate of Need (CON) program became his ticket out of government service into the private practice of law. Indeed, for much of the next ten years the author was in the middle of a fierce battle between luddite regulators and helpful healthcare providers fighting for economic freedom but stymied by the government’s franchise bureaucracy. |
OUR DISEASED DEMOCRACY by Lady Liberty Last week was a tough one for a couple of my friends. One of them was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had to have immediate surgery to remove the originating tumor, and she's now waiting to hear a recommended course of treatment dependent on the results of tests to determine the cancer's spread. As of today, her prognosis is reasonably good. In the most awful of coincidences, another friend was diagnosed with lung cancer just two days later. Her prognosis is less favorable. Though she's already commenced with chemotherapy treatments, surgery isn't an option because the cancer cells have already spread beyond her lungs and into her liver and her bones. It's an unreasonable but inevitable fact that most of us, on hearing such news, begin to question all sorts of perfectly benign symptoms we feel or see in our own bodies. Is that stomach twinge indigestion or something worse? Is that chest pain a pulled muscle or a damaged heart making its presence felt? Is that funny looking spot on our leg just a spider vein or the outcroppings of some more malevolent growth? The positive aspect of all this is, of course, that we may actually find a genuine problem at an early and eminently treatable stage as a result of our temporary paranoia. Most of us know that, if cancer is caught early, the treatment need not cause too much suffering. Lumpectomies, for example, are far less invasive and are often just as effective for the treatment of small and contained breast cancer masses as are the more disfiguring mastectomies. But having a breast removed or a colostomy, however traumatic, seems small potatoes in comparison to the inevitable alternatives! Chemotherapy might make you terribly sick and negatively impact your appearance temporarily (I can't think of a single woman I know who wouldn't be truly devastated at the thought of losing her hair), but again, the price pales in comparison to what will ensue without the treatment. Radiation isn't much fun, either, I'm told. But again, weigh the alternatives and radiation suddenly seems a perfectly acceptable option. The point of all this is actually a fairly simple one: You do what you can to prevent the problem. But if the problem occurs, you deal with it as aggressively as need be to save your life or, if that's not possible, to give you the best quality of life for as long as possible before the end. In the most simplistic of terms, many forms of cancer are simply collections (usually called tumors) of cancerous cells that grow together and then extend tendrils and migrating cells to invade and infect other areas of the body. If the cancers are diagnosed while they're still contained collections of cells, simple removal is often enough to effect a cure. But if the tendrils are winding about other parts and pieces of the body in complex networks of disease, and if cells have wondered off to infect distant organs, the treatment has to get more drastic. That doesn't necessarily mean the patient will die, but it does mean that the fight to live will be more difficult, more involved, and almost certainly engender more suffering along the way. Of all the things that can be done to prevent cancer, though, and of all the things that might be employed toward a cure, there's one overriding factor. That, of course, is the will of the patient. Just as it takes willpower to quit smoking, it takes willpower to to tolerate the treatment for lung cancer. And more than that, it takes a will to live for any treatment to reach its full potential. We've all heard heard stories of those who might have survived what others did, but who succumbed in large part because of their own fears and the certainty of failure. We've all heard about those who doctors say should have died but who instead survived and thrived because they simply refused to lay down and give up. If you've got medical problems or know somebody who does, I'm really not the person who ought to be giving you advice. I'm a fine cheerleader, but no kind of diagnostician or treatment guru. But the problems we have in our country today is another story. Where those are concerned, I do have a little advice, and that advice relates all too closely with the subject at hand. You see, there's a cancer in this country. The primary malignant tumor is centered in a place called Washington, DC. Just like cancer, it's comprised of those who have little in common with the rest of the body, but who never-the-less insist on running things their way and who employ out-of-control growth to achieve their ends. The sickness has spread everywhere as the cancer of government has sent its tendrils into places the Constitution never intended. There's an alphabet agency for almost every possible arena of oversight, and there are regulations for just about every eventuality. These tendrils ensure that everyone everywhere is thoroughly enmeshed in bureaucracy. With the tendrils of bureaucracy spreading far and wide as they have, little cells here and there have dispersed and started new cancerous colonies. They've alighted in places like New York and Los Angeles. They've spread their disease to the Pacific Northwest and to the Gulf Coast. They've replaced other healthier cells in cities large and small across the country. Thanks to Washington's insatiable demand for funds to maintain its parasitic presence, we now see smaller venues emulating the larger with such things as eminent domain for monetary gain and seizure of property from those merely arrested, conviction be damned. State governments are now so strangled by federal tentacles that they're thoroughly cowed by the mere threat of withdrawn federal highway funds, and are quite literally unable to see to their own citizens in the event of an emergency (I'm thinking, of course, of the debacle of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina when state and local politicians drew almost as much heat as FEMA did for the lack of forethought concerning evacuations and disaster relief caused, in large part, by the fact that everything had to be routed through far too many channels). Politicians lie, cheat, and steal, and yet somehow remain in office. They actively make exceptions to the idea of unalienable rights. And it's their actions that enable the cancer to continue to grow, and grow, and grow while the country - and freedom - gets sicker and sicker. But as metastasized as the government cancer may be, there's still some hope. We, as individuals, might consider ourselves to be similar to the white blood cells our bodies use to fight off infection and other untoward invaders. We can write and call our politicians. We can write and call each other. Certainly, we can just plain refuse to cooperate. We can go to town council meetings and speak up when we see wrongdoing. And while our individual actions might not do a whole lot to cure or even appreciably shrink the cancer tumors, we can at the very least and even on the federal level have some small effect on the speed of its growth. We, as groups, might call ourselves chemotherapy of a kind. Our collective efforts via boycotts, protest marches, petitions, and political action committees can make a real point with both the rest of the public and in local, state, and federal office buildings. The government cancer is already so bad that I don't expect grassroots chemotherapy to be any kind of a cure, but it sure as all get-out can start to shrink the tumors! We, as voters, can be likened to radiation treatment. Radiation is nasty, nasty stuff unless it's aimed right where it needs to be. And then, while it sometimes causes peripheral burns, it also does quite a job on cancerous tissues. Voters can do exactly the same thing. We can obliterate some of the worst "seeds" of the disease by voting against the most sickening issues, and by voting the most malignant politicians right out of office. (By the same token, when voters aren't "aimed" properly, we can elect more really bad politicians and endorse more really bad regulations and programs. We ought to be more careful about that. Those getting burned will end up being you and yours sooner or later, probably sooner!) Finally, we, as a whole, can act as surgeons. If the cancer is bad enough - and you had better bet that it is - we can act en masse to remove some of the worst of the cancer. We can refuse to cooperate with onerous programs like REAL ID. We can undermine every invasive program the TSA tries to implement by refusing to fly until the programs are targeted where they need to be instead of at us all. We can join the Minutemen and either actively help to patrol our vulnerable borders, or offer donations and other support to help those who can and are willing to do so. The opportunities to hack away at government largeness and largesse are many. Pick one (or several) and start slicing. None of these things, though - not our bodies' natural defenses nor any outside treatment we might care to employ - will do much to mitigate or cure our medical problem if we have the wrong attitude. The same holds true for political activism, whether our gestures are large or small. In fact, right now, the activism of many Americans is most likely to be non-existent. There are far too many people who don't do much of anything because they're convinced that it just doesn't matter. They believe that, no matter what they do, freedom and democracy (such as it is) are already on the way out in this country. I can't argue with those people in their belief that things are bad. The government cancer has clearly grown to a very, very dangerous extent. It's entirely possible that they're right, that there is no cure and that liberty is effectively doomed. But if the battle were on a smaller front, say in your own body, would you be so eager to simply give up and wait to die? I would hope not! I would hope that you'd fight until the end. I would hope that you'd not give up until you'd quite literally explored and exercised every option, and that you'd even hope for miracles in the knowledge that they do, albeit rarely, occur. I think that, like me, you would fight, and you'd fight hard. That's as it should be. Life is, after all, sweet. But what is life without liberty? Can you honestly sit back and willingly do nothing to save, or at least prolong, liberty? Yes, there may be pain and sacrifice. But the sooner we get started, the sooner we can cure ourselves of the government cancer, or shrink it, or stave off its perhaps inevitable conclusion. And we can all remember that, while rare, miracles do occur. That this country exists at all is proof of that, and what happened once can happen again if only we've the courage to truly believe it. For the record, both of the women I mention here are determined to fight. It will not likely be easy for either of them. Despite their most valiant efforts, it's possible that they will fail. But if they don't even try, the outcome isn't possible or even probable. It's certain. As a country, we're facing something more similar than I suspect we'd care to admit. I'd like to think that, singly or collectively, we've got the courage of my two friends to fight for something of such great value, too. Don't we? |
edward bellamy 
francis bellamy 
rex curry 
libertarian 
pledge of allegiance 
swastika