People - The Ultimate Resource

While the Olympics were being broadcast during the last two weeks of February I watched more television than I usually watch in a year. I am fascinated by this showcase of human ability, creativity, guts and determination. Watching gifted athletes take the human body to incredible heights, many of them quite literally, fills me with reverence and awe. Whether it is the soaring, twisting jumps of the snowboarders, the breathtaking speeds achieved by downhill skiers, or the grace and strength displayed by the figure skaters the Olympics are an inspiring display of what human beings can achieve through talent, hard work and perseverance.

The magnificence of human accomplishment is front and center during special events like the Olympics but it is actually before us all the time, so much so that we tend to take it for granted. Just the past ten years has generated revolutionary changes in the way we live our daily lives and a look back over the past century reveals an even more wondrous landscape of human innovation and advancement.

That's why one must sometimes wonder if we're talking about the same species when it turns to environmental and political matters. Here the messages seems to be 1) humanity is the scourge of the planet and 2) people can't do anything without the intervention of government. Both these notions are false and counterproductive to real human progress.

The late Julian Simon once accepted the conventional view that an exploding human population threatened both mankind and the earth. A professor of business administration at the University of Maryland, Simon's interest in population economics led to his deep involvement in projects designed to curb population growth.

A funny thing happened on the way to zero-population growth, however - the research and studies Simon was pursuing directly contradicted the accepted theory that a higher population leads to lower standards of living. In fact, Simon learned, the opposite was true and in 1977 he published The Economics of Population Growth, a technical manual that attempted to reconcile what seemed to be a contradiction. This was followed in 1981 with The Ultimate Resource and in 1996 an updated version, The Ultimate Resource 2, both of which further explained how population growth actually has positive economic effects in the long run.

Simon's book is over 600 pages long and filled with charts, facts and figures so his research cannot be fully analyzed here, but summaries of data from just a couple of categories prove he was on to something. Consider agriculture: food production per capita has been increasing steadily for the past 60+ years. Along with a decreasing occurrence of famine, Simon noted average height in developed countries has been increasing for centuries, a sign that people have better access to nutritious food. At the same time food production in developed countries has increased, agricultural land in use has actually decreased as people find more efficient ways to farm. Meanwhile, the amount of land used for forests, recreation and wildlife has been rapidly increasing.

Standard of living is another indicator of the positive direction in which the world is heading. Though in the short run children necessarily require additional expense, most of these costs are borne by their parents. Over the long term society is rejuvenated by additional people and Simon found found per capita income in both developed and non-developed countries to be higher where population was growing rather than stagnating.

Finally, let's examine Simon's findings about energy. In a nutshell, Simon is optimistic that energy supplies are not only more than ample, but also that the long-run impact of additional people is likely to speed the development of cheap and almost infinite energy supplies. In addition, energy use has grown cleaner and more efficient with each new innovation, a trend Simon see continuing as long as people are free to explore, research and create.

Problems such as poverty are not the result of too many people but too little economic and political freedom, according to Simon. A snapshot of the past half-century proves that similar people living under disparate economic and political circumstances -East and West Germany, North and South Korea, China and Taiwan - can achieve very different results. Societies which embrace the political values of economic and personal liberty, respect for property rights and a free market in which fair and sensible rules are observed are simply more likely to prosper than those subject to central economic planning and totalitarian government.

Simon's research may be dismissed by the doomsayers and power mongers who seek to control the world's population and resources but those of us with a more positive outlook on the future can have confidence people are not actually the problem - they are the solution.

Health Care Insurance: A Human Right?

It has become politically popular to equate human desires and wants with human rights. This is, in fact, the battle cry of some factions in the fight for a government-run health care system. But is health care a human right? Let’s examine this premise.

The human rights of Americans are defined by our two founding documents: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration, stated it thus:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

The Constitution of the United States codified this philosophy by instituting a federal government limited in scope and function. The first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, specifically mention certain unalienable rights with which the government is forbidden to interfere. Among these are our rights to speak freely, both in written and spoken form; to worship according to the dictates of our consciences; and to bear arms for self-defense as well as protection from foreign enemies and domestic tyranny.

The founder’s understanding of what constituted a human right was informed by the writings of political philosophers from throughout history, from Plato and Cicero to Locke and Blackstone. When they wrote of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” they expressed their belief in the importance of the individual, his freedom to use his time and talents to pursue opportunities - though with no guaranteed outcomes - and his right to accumulate property in order to provide for himself and his loved ones security and prosperity.

A confusion of the term “right” has led to the current misunderstanding that anything deemed necessary or even desirable must be a right. But a right is something that, by definition, should not involve the usurpation of a fellow citizen’s rights.

Associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said “The right to sing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” In the case of health care, once the proponents of universal health care begin swinging their fists they are going to be hitting a whole lot of noses. Unfortunately, the kind of damage inflicted won’t be so easily taken care of in the local hospital emergency room, with or without insurance.

Though it is not in vogue to speak of financial rights these days, they are, in fact, supposed to be protected. They include the right to keep the fruits of one’s labor – these days that’s usually money – and the right to use those fruits as one sees fit. By expecting others to pay for healthcare, the “healthcare is a human right” crowd explicitly violates these rights. To put it bluntly, something cannot be a right when it forces others to sacrifice their own rights.

Another important argument against the concept of health care as a human right is the lack of a clear definition of what health care is. While in its most basic form one would expect it to include preventative care (for example, immunization), and medical and surgical treatment of established illness, does it also include organ transplantation, cosmetic surgery, infertility treatment and the most expensive medicines? For something to be considered a human right the minimum requirement should be that the right in question is capable of definition.

Slogans such as “Health care is a human right” sound reasonable and make great rally signs but, when examined, they do not bear up. Is health care a human right? No, it is a personal responsibility.

Audrey Pietrucha is Interim Coordinator of the Bennington County Campaign for Liberty and founder of the Southern Vermont Liberty Council.