How many doctors does a barrel of oil buy?

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." -- Friedrich Hayek

Recently it has been reported in the news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro have struck a deal to exchange oil for doctors.

Is it really that simple? Is that all there is to it? Two presidents get together and exchange goods and the world is a better place? Is it really that easy to run a centrally controlled economy?

There is an interesting essay by Leonard Read entitled I, Pencil. In it Read goes into the immense complexity involved in producing the lowly and deceptively simple pencil. He discusses some of the literally hundreds of industries that have to come together in order to have the right goods and the right place at the right time to produce what is needed when it is needed.

I'm curious. How did Chavez and Castro determine that X amount of oil is worth Y amount of doctors? How did they determine that? What all did they take into consideration to arrive at the specific values they arrived at?

Did they consider how many mines are needed to obtain the raw materials to make the refined products such as steel other assorted materials used to make oil refineries? Did they consider how many machine shops are needed to produce all the machined goods that go into building all the facilities that produce oil? Or, how many machine shops are needed to produce the machines in the machine shops that produce the machined goods that build the facilities that produce oil?

How many trucks and trains are needed to transport the oil? How many factories are needed to produce the trucks and trains? How many machine shops to produce the machined goods that build the factories? How many machine shops to produce the machines for the machine shops that produced the machined goods for the factories?

How many trucks should be transporting oil vs. transporting cattle, produce, television sets, paper, machined goods from the machine shops and all the other assorted goods that need trucking in an economy? How does Chavez determine the allocation of trucks to goods that need trucking?

How did he determine the need for doctors? What kind of doctors does he need? How many general practitioners, surgeons, pediatricians and assorted other doctors that I couldn't even begin to name? How'd he determine this?

How does he determine what the doctors need? How many facilities? How many construction workers does he need for the facilities? How many raw materials? How many factories to produce the I-beams, sheet rock, sinks and faucets, tile flooring, door knobs, computers and everything else that make a medical facility? How many factories are needed to make the tools used to build medical facilities. How many factories to build the tools that build the tools?

How many trucks does he need to transport various medical supplies? How does the quantity of trucks trucking medical supplies impact the quantity of trucks available to truck oil? If he has trucks delivering medical supplies can he still deliver the oil? Can he still deliver the machined goods he needs to build refineries to even have oil to deliver?

How does Chavez determine how to allocate the time and production of machine shops to produce machined goods for oil vs. machined goods for trucks and trains vs machined goods for medical facilities?

He must know all these things. After all, he knows that X amount of oil is worth Y amount of doctors. How did he determine this?

Or, is it he has no idea and doesn't care? Maybe it just plays well in the media; the benevolent superhero buying doctors for the poor.

Some more questions.

Why is it that Chavez and Castro get to barter with one another on the socialists' international free-market but their people can't? Why is it their plans subordinate the plans of individuals?

The doctors that Castro is selling (or renting?), how are they chosen? Do they have any say in the matter? Or are they just another good like oil, cars and sheep, to be bartered on the socialists' international free-market?

Evidently the 'free' education the doctors received in Cuba wasn't so free after all. The people? Cogs in the wheel.

Also, one wonders, why doesn't Chavez hire doctors from the free market? I mean the real free market where individuals are free to bargain their own prices?

Oh wait, I know, because then he'd have to offer individuals valuable incentives to attract them to Venezuela.

Here we see the clear advantages that collective bargaining has over the free market. Or at least the clear advantages it has for ruling dictators.

One final question. Why doesn't the media ask any of these questions?

Conservative Socialism

Having become disillusioned with the Republican party I think it is time for us libertarians to at least try to build bridges with liberals. In fact, the rise of conservatism can, perhaps, be used to show them the error of their ways.

Liberals and libertarians have many of the same goals; it's their coercive methods libertarians have a problem with.

Historically, the conservatives were the coercive power. Meaning the aristocracies, theocracies and mercantilists. They were the 'Right'; authoritarian government.

The classical-liberals, meaning libertarians, we're the ones who took that power away. Meaning laissez-faire capitalism (though it hadn't yet been named that). They were the 'Left'; limited constitutional government.

Modern liberals recreated that coercive power to advance their well intentioned social agenda. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Now conservatives are back in control of that coercive power. What many liberals don't yet realize is that the conservative hijacking of their liberal socialist institutions has only just begun.

To understand why this is so, it is important to understand why the classical-liberals created a limited constitutional government and what it is that modern-liberals did, with their good intentions, to undermine it.

The Constitution required a super majority to change it. This meant that we the people would have to have a proper national debate before the government was granted a new power. But FDR changed all that. FDR by-passed the Constitution by inventing new government powers through the 'general welfare' clause. After threatening to 'pack the court', the Supreme Court agreed with him.

But the 'general welfare' clause was never intended to be a grant of a general power. The whole point of the constitution was to limit government to specific powers. If Congress has a general power then there is absolutely no purpose for the Constitution.

It is also important to note that interpreting 'general welfare' in this way was originally a right-wing strategy to undermine federal constraints. It was Alexander Hamilton, the father of modern conservatism, who first proposed it.

Regardless, today limited constitutional government is mostly a thing of the past. What we have today is a Supreme Court precedent government. It no longer takes a proper national debate and super majority to grant the government new powers. All it takes now is a single ruling by nine politically appointed justices.

Now that the conservatives have packed the court with conservative judges you can bet your boots a whole new set of legal challenges are heading their way.

Now that the conservatives have packed the court with conservative judges we're going to find out what 'general welfare' means when conservative judges interpret it as a general power of Congress. And liberals are not going to like it. And neither are libertarians.

Many conservatives would argue that this is a good thing. But I believe they will eventually become as disillusioned with the Republican party as I and many other libertarians have. Even now cracks are forming in the edifice of the party.

Never the less, George Bush has demonstrated the anti-socialist stance by conservatives is nothing more than a facade. George Bush's socialist, big government policies are not an aberration. In fact, not only is socialism compatible with conservative policy, it was invented by them. For evidence of this see Bismarck's Germany. Even our own Social Security Administration has a web page describing his contributions:

Germany became the first nation in the world to adopt an old-age social insurance program in 1889, designed by Germany's Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The idea was first put forward, at Bismarck's behest, in 1881 by Germany's Emperor, William the First, in a ground-breaking letter to the German Parliament. William wrote: ". . .those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state."

Socialist policies are inherently authoritarian. Hence the melding of fascism and national socialism early last century in Italy and Nazi Germany.

We live under a Supreme Court precedent government and now those precedents are decided by the authoritarians.

Did you really think it was about abortion and gay marriage?