DOCTOR ZERO: The Eff Word
Government is a terrible senior partner for any industry, because it has only one thing to bring to the partnership, and that is compulsive force. Everything government does is an expression of force: it collects taxes under the threat of imprisonment or death, blocks access to markets through licensing, and changes the rules of market competition through regulation.
Thirty years ago, I had a friend who was a doctor in her eighties and a refugee from Nazi Germany. She was a Russian Jew, whose family had fled to Germany when she was a small child. She told me how much her family had loved Germany, how modern, educated and welcoming they found their new country. When the political problems began, neither she nor her parents believed Germany would become dangerous, as their Russsian homeland had. My friend was studying in Italy, when her parents were put in concentration camps. She made it out to America, never to see her family again. I relate this because my friend was a first hand, intelligent, and experienced witness, who did not believe that anything as bad as the Nazis could happen in her country. She also said that many Europeans, at the time, looked down on America and Americans. And that they were very surprised they had to be rescued by people they had supposed were their inferiors. Whenever I think ‘it can’t happen here’, I remember her story.
Marcy O'Rourke
7 Sep 09 at 2:02 pm