There is a growing subset of consumers who would prefer not to buy their milk this way. They want it unpasteurized, unhomogenized—in a word, “raw.” They would prefer to drink their milk as humans have consumed it for centuries, which is also how every single signer of the U.S. Constitution drank it.

To procure such a basic product, however, these consumers—with some exceptions—are forced to break the law. The basic retail sale of raw milk for human consumption is legal in only eight states—Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Mexico, and Washington. Its sale for human consumption across state lines is illegal nationwide. In some other states raw milk can be sold at the farm site only, sold through “cow share” programs, or legally marketed as “pet food.” Seventeen states completely forbid the sale of raw milk in any way.

How did this happen? We all learned in childhood about Louis Pasteur’s development of pasteurization in the mid-1800s. For mass-produced milk in an age before refrigeration, pasteurization was indeed a godsend. Early in the twentieth century, as people died at alarming rates due to contaminated milk from filthy urban dairy centers, pasteurization caught on as a hot market trend. In a time when milk collection and storage on large-scale farms was unsanitary and unrefrigerated (and when additives as diverse as marigold petals and animal brains were placed in milk to add body), pasteurization helped save lives. Thus people were willing to pay for it. But then one city after another began to mandate the process through legislation. In 1948 Michigan became the first state to ban the sale of unpasteurized milk, and other states soon followed suit. In 1986 a federal judge ordered that interstate shipments of raw milk be banned, further limiting supply for consumers.

Now, despite advances in dairy-production techniques, it doesn’t matter how clean the equipment or how healthy the cow; raw milk is either illegal or highly suspect, and state and federal bureaucracies see it as a threat to the population. Regulation overstepped the free market and did an end run around common sense.

Raw-milk advocates argue that milk in its pure state is quite beneficial to health. According to the Weston A. Price Foundation, a leading natural-foods organization, raw milk reduces the incidence of asthma, eczema, and hay fever in children. Unpasteurized milk also aids the body’s natural digestive system. Pasteurization, the Foundation insists, kills helpful bacteria and breaks down delicate proteins in milk, leading to the dairy intolerance seen in so many individuals in this modern age. Advocates also state that unpasteurized milk strengthens the immune system and provides optimal growth and development for young people.

The opinion of government officials, backed up by the bulk of the medical community, is that every bit of that is hogwash. A joint press release from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control, dated March 1, 2007, reminds consumers “of the dangers of drinking milk that has not been pasteurized.” Among the litany of diseases said to be carried by raw milk are “listeriosis, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria and brucellosis.” It is enough to make one wonder how Amish communities manage to survive.

The FDA/CDC claims that “There is no meaningful nutritional difference between pasteurized and raw milk.” The Price Foundation retorts that no research is cited by the FDA/CDC to substantiate such claims. The press release also states that “From 1998 to May 2005 CDC identified 45 outbreaks of foodborne illnesses,” accounting for “1,007 illnesses, 107 hospitalizations, and two deaths.” Aside from the fact that these are minuscule numbers for a population of nearly 300 million being tracked over seven years, there seems to be little evidence to back up the figures. Thomas Bartlett, in an article on raw milk (“The Raw Deal,” October 1, 2006), went looking for such cases of illness. In addition to finding no anecdotal evidence whatsoever, he also asked John Sheehan, then-director of the FDA’s dairy and egg safety division, for evidence linking raw milk to deadly disease outbreaks.

Sheehan admitted that he didn’t know of any such cases in the United States in the past 20 years. Nevertheless, the official line on raw milk is so ingrained as to be farcical. In interviewing a Maryland state health official about raw milk sales, Bartlett was told selling raw milk was as bad as selling marijuana, and the official compared such producers to heroin dealers.

Indeed, the question is far more important than, “Is raw milk beneficial?” or even, “Is raw milk safe?” It is this: What right does the state have to outlaw the sale of unpasteurized milk in the first place?

Imagine the case of Mark Nolt of New Line, Pennsylvania. Nolt was arrested—arrested—last May in a sting operation in which undercover officials purchased raw milk from his farm. Nolt, a Mennonite farmer with ten children, was fined $4,040, had his equipment and products seized, and was threatened with jail if he tried to sell raw milk again. His case is not unique. Nolt’s spokesman at his trial, Jonas Stoltzfus, eloquently summed up the situation: “This issue has very little to do with raw milk and health, and everything to do with freedom.”

Controlling the Milk Supply

But why milk? Indeed, as the 2008 pepper scare has proven, harmful bacteria can find their way to many other food sources. However, milk is different from most other food products. It is a staple among staples. To control the milk supply is to control the food supply.

Pasteurization is not a cheap process, and therefore the legal demand for pasteurization favors large producers. A small, independent dairy farm may very well not be able to afford pasteurization equipment (not at government standards, at least), and thus micro-dairies can rarely operate legally on their own. With the dairy industry more centralized, it becomes easier to track and regulate—and control.

Control of the milk supply has been a primary step in the state’s efforts to control the larger food supply. Agriculture continues to fall further and further under the eye of government regulation, as do businesses as diverse as potato-chip manufacturers and fast-food restaurants. The USDA, FDA, and myriad other state and federal agencies make no bones about their goal of controlling every morsel Americans consume—all for our own good, of course.

And where better to start than with milk? Think of the psychological benefits for the state emanating from such regulation. If a product as central and wholesome as milk can only be safe through government control, reliance on the paternalistic state grows. Has it worked? Ask a random acquaintance if he would consider drinking unpasteurized milk. You may very well get a look of horror in return. Why do people feel that way? Simply because they have been indoctrinated to feel that way. Why not be just as accepting of government regulation over their mayonnaise or their chicken or their lettuce? How about their water supply or the cars they drive or how warm they keep their homes in the wintertime? Though not necessarily a conscious progression, control by the state, when left unchecked, simply grows and expands naturally.

As ingrained in our social conscience as pasteurization has become, it is hard for many to step back and realize just how preposterous milk laws happen to be. One must ask if the many citizen-farmers who valiantly fought for liberty two centuries ago could have ever envisioned a “free” state in which one citizen would be legally barred from selling milk from his cow to another citizen. Even King George III would have laughed at that idea.

Therefore, as the years passed and I read more and more commentators lauding Dickens as a catalyst for collectivist economics and state-centered social programs, I grew discouraged and disquieted. I have come to find, however, that by and large these commentators were not interpreting Dickens at face value, but were in effect putting words into his mouth.

Did Dickens stand up for the poor? Yes. Did Dickens speak out on the conditions in his time? Yes. Was he anti-capitalist? Were his views socialist? Did he advocate for government welfare programs? No. 

Compared to most great novelists, Dickens has inspired an inordinate mass of biographies, and interest in his life, apart from his works, has been unceasingly strong. One reason for this is simply that Dickens lived life fully. He traveled abroad often and made many public appearances. He was an oft-seen figure (though many times anonymous) in the streets of London , exploring the city and meeting people of all backgrounds and walks of life. He was comfortable among England ‘s highest society and among its lowest classes. His understanding of the human condition, therefore, was comprehensive. 

It is no surprise, then, that in both his fiction and his nonfiction Dickens went to great lengths to present his readers with the full range of English society, including many of its most downtrodden. We should not draw political conclusions from the fact that Dickens had a heart—that he painted vivid pictures of those suffering poverty, disability, abuse, and homelessness. That he would try to win his readers’ hearts to the likes of these says nothing about his views on how they should be helped. Such inferences are made today by self-serving ideologues eager to enlist an ever-popular writer into their ranks.

Dickens presented his readers with some of literature’s most touching characters: Tiny Tim, whose handicap would doom him to a youthful death without costly treatment; Oliver Twist, the orphan forced to endure hunger, cruelty, and childhood labor; Mr. Micawber, the genial debtor tragically forced into prison; Little Nell and Jo, who would die well before their time. In presenting such characters Dickens meant to force us to face the plight of society’s least members, but he did not prescribe a collectivist solution to ending their miseries. 

Nor does he blame their plight on the still-evolving capitalist economy of his day. 

We are used to thinking of Dickens as an enemy of capitalism largely because of his timeless lampooning of certain men of business. What he was really doing, however, was attacking the vice of greed. In Our Mutual Friend he blasts the Lammles, who marry each other solely for money (only to find out that neither has any). In the same novel he forced the “mercenary” Bella Wilfer to undergo a transformation before finding happiness. In Martin Chuzzlewit relatives of the title character are ridiculed for their scheming at inheritance. 

And then there is the prototype of the heartless capitalist—Ebenezer Scrooge. But as with other characters, Dickens does not attack Scrooge as a capitalist but as a miser. As Daniel T. Oliver put it in The Freeman (December 1999): 

Scrooge’s character defect is not so much greed as miserliness. He hoards his money even at the expense of personal comfort. While many remember the single lump of coal that burns in the cold office of his assistant Bob Cratchit, the fire in Scrooge’s own office is described as “very small.”. . . Dickens gives us no reason to believe that Scrooge has ever been dishonest in his business dealings. He is thrifty, disciplined, and hard-working. What Dickens makes clear is that these virtues are not enough.

Though the protagonist throughout A Christmas Carol might be Bob Cratchit, there are sympathetic characters who are in fact capitalists. Fezziwig, a man of business, nevertheless treats his employees like family. And then there are the easily overlooked “portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold,” collecting money to “buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.” 

Indeed, Scrooge himself, on that transformative Christmas morning, does not renounce capitalism. Instead he promises to be a better man. He will live a fuller life and share his good fortune with those close to him. 

Many libertarians and other supporters of the free market will interject that Scrooge is already benefiting society as an effective businessman. The argument is also made that in lampooning Scrooge’s personality, Dickens also distorts the realities of the labor market. Michael Levin has written:

Let’s look without preconceptions at Scrooge’s allegedly underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit. The fact is, if Cratchit’s skills were worth more to anyone than the fifteen shillings Scrooge pays him weekly, there would be someone glad to offer it to him. Since no one has, and since Cratchit’s profit-maximizing boss is hardly a man to pay for nothing, Cratchit must be worth exactly his present wages.

Both arguments have merit—Scrooge, like your local banker or financier, benefits society through his business. And yes, Dickens does not express, and most likely did not fully comprehend, the realities of the labor market. But the tale of Scrooge is of personal redemption. It is not particularly realistic nor well-versed in economics. Dickens is not attempting to argue against capitalism, nor is he arguing against a free market for labor. He is arguing against personal callousness and against misanthropy. 

In chapter 33 of Socialism Ludwig von Mises lamented Dickens’s characterizations of utilitarianism and of true liberalism. However, if Dickens’s words were later co-opted to promote a socialist agenda, that is hardly his fault. Utilitarianism can be the basis of a solid capitalist economy. It can also be mutated into a communist state. Dickens might not have understood that, but he did know that utilitarianism without reasonable judgment can turn society—and the state—into something monstrous. 

Private Philanthropy, Not Public Welfare 

A Christmas Carol exemplifies, on a personal level, what Dickens was really arguing for. He was not calling for state intervention, nor for economic regulations. Instead, he argued on behalf of personal philanthropy. In the end, Scrooge helps Tiny Tim not because of socialist ideals, but because his humanity is reawakened, causing him to care for this child. Quite frankly, he does the right thing. 

In fact, a survey of Dickens’s novels shows that his protagonists and his happy endings often have something in common—a person with means helps persons of limited or no means out of the goodness of his heart. Oliver Twist is adopted by Mr. Brownlow. In Our Mutual Friend the Boffins relinquish their fortune to the rightful heir. Martin Chuzzlewit provides for his long-neglected grandchild and his true love. Mr. Pickwick forgives dishonest friends and helps them to establish a new life. And Sydney Carton gives up his very life for a pair of lovers in A Tale of Two Cities. 

One can search in vain through Dickens’s works for calls for government control of the economy or social-welfare structures. As Lauren M. E. Goodland writes in Victorian Literature and the Victorian State regarding Dickens’s treatment of sanitation in Bleak House: 

Here sanitary reform becomes fundamentally necessary to the nation’s moral and physical well-being. Yet it would be a mistake to infer from such remarks that Dickens had become a staunch proponent of the state’s duty to intervene in the lives of individuals and communities. Bleak House memorably dramatizes the need for pastorship in a society of allegedly self-reliant individuals. But it by no means clearly endorses state tutelage, nor, indeed, any other form of institutionalized authority. 

In reality Dickens often criticized state-sponsored institutions. The Ghost of Christmas Present, for instance, chastises Scrooge for relying on such institutions rather than being philanthropic himself. Using Scrooge’s own words he mocks him: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” 

Among Dickens’s most moving writings is a nonfiction article called “A Walk in a Workhouse.” In a few short pages he describes the pathetic scene of a state-sponsored parish workhouse, Victorian England’s solution to almost every social burden—orphans, abandoned children, the sick, the aged, the infirm, the insane. The problem of course was that the workhouse took away both a person’s liberty and dignity—not to mention his future. 

In all these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were bedridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. 

Such was how Dickens viewed the state’s involvement in society’s welfare. He took great pains to laud the nurses of the workhouse, who cared deeply about their wards. But the place itself—the institution—was an abomination. 

So don’t believe the English professors and the literary theorists. Charles Dickens was not a socialist at heart. Far from being an early proponent of the welfare state, he was sounding alarms for all of us. Let us finally heed his warning.

Mt. Olive, and its 500 to 800 employees, make pickles. It does not grow the cucumbers from which its pickles are made. Instead, it buys cucumbers from independent growers in North Carolina and else­where. This system—from cucumber grower to pickle producer to consumer—seems simple and benign enough. However, for five years this economic rela­tionship had been the unlikely target for boycott by an activist group called the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC).

The origin of this boycott can actually be traced back to 1952, when the federal government instituted the H-2 program, allowing the attorney general of the United States to import foreign workers in times of labor shortage. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 changed this program into H-2A, the “guest worker” program still in place today.

H-2 and H-2A have allowed the evolution of a sys­tem of immigrant labor that can encourage grave abuses by employers. Though many landowners treat their immigrant hires with dignity and due care for their welfare, the very structure of the H-2A system opens the window to abuses. Since immigrant workers under this system cannot sell their labor to another employer if they so desire, but are instead tied to one employer only, some are indeed treated poorly.

Examples abound of immigrant employees cheated out of wages; denied adequate rest, food, or water; given no medical care on suffering injuries; and so on. Such abuses are morally wrong, but it must be noted that they are not tied to the free market. Quite to the con­trary, they are linked to an outdated government program that allows a slavery-like system in lieu of free-market competition.

Instead of attacking the real root of the problem, however, activists with FLOC in 1999 decided to chase after a shadow by initiating a boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle products. Why would FLOC choose to boycott Mt. Olive? I have had occasion to pose that question to various activists myself over the past few years, including those deeply involved in the boycott. I have always received the exact same answer: “We have to start somewhere.”

On the face of it, FLOC’s boycott of Mt. Olive labors under the following logic. Immigrant laborers must unionize to better their lot. In practical terms, unionization can only happen with the acquiescence of the landowners who employ migrants. Finally, the employers will not act unless pushed by an entity with power over them, namely, their main customer: Mt. Olive Pickle.

More specifically, FLOC’s website provides this answer to the question, “Why did FLOC target the Mt. Olive Pickle Co.?

FLOC has organized the Ohio and Michigan operations of Mt. Olive Co.’s competitors, such as Vlasic Co., Heinz USA Corp., and Dean Foods Co., which includes Aunt Jane Co. and Green Bay Co. The history of other industries, like manufacturing, shows us that if we do not organize in the South, companies will shift production to take advantage of lower standards of pay and working conditions.

In other words, realizing the power of the market, FLOC knows that once unionization has begun, it cannot rest until it has been implemented across an entire market sector or industry. Of course, just why FLOC decided to target cucumber farming in the first place, instead of the myriad of other possible agricul­tural endeavors, remains a mystery.

Somehow, though, this product has become a sym­bol for economic “reformers.” As one activist used to tell me, “We won’t succeed until we all pay five dollars for a cucumber.” By this she really meant that all pro­duce should cost more than it does. She believed that there was a direct correlation between low retail prices for food and low worker wages. She refused to enter­tain the theory that higher prices across the board would simply hurt the economy in other ways and not increase overall utility. In fact, higher cucumber prices, under an H-2A–dominated system, wouldn’t help most workers in the field at all.

Such activists would do well to remember Henry Hazlitt’s maxim from Economics in One Lesson, “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or poli­cy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” But in the rush to make an example, or just to make trou­ble, flawed economic concepts become “issues” worthy of negotiation.

And indeed, the FLOC boycott did bring about negotiations. With continued negative press from the boycott—picketing of selected grocery stores, endorse­ments of the boycott by universities and religious denominations, and the like—Mt. Olive, as well as the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), which represents the state’s 1,000 independent growers, were brought separately to the negotiating table.

Mt. Olive had been adamant for years that it was simply none of its business whether or not a grower’s employees were unionized. The company chose only growers who signed compliance statements that they were acting in accordance with all applicable state and federal laws, and took other steps to ensure that it purchased cucumbers from law-abiding growers. But in the end, the topic of organizing workers was one the company had no say in, nor did it wish to have a say.

Agrees to a Plan

After five years of FLOC pressure, however, Mt. Olive agreed to a plan whereby it 1) expanded its code of conduct for North Carolina growers; 2) increased cucumber prices paid to suppliers by 2.25 percent annually for three years; and 3) provided a 3 percent annual supplement to growers providing work­ers compensation insurance coverage. At the same time, the NCGA negotiated a collective-bargaining agreement with FLOC, effectively unionizing the immigrant workers. With these two agreements in place, FLOC called an end to its boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle Company last September.

Apparently, the FLOC boycott did little to hurt Mt. Olive’s bottom line—after five years, jars of the com­pany’s pickles still line store shelves as they did in the 1990s. However, now that the boycott is over, chances are those same pickles will cost a bit more. Someone has to pay the extra cost, be it consumers, investors, Mt. Olive employees—or all three groups combined. And the migrant workers? Some may be better off, or maybe not. The main cause of their problems still has not been addressed—H-2A. Maybe someday labor activists will wake up to the fact that the free market is not their enemy—government bureaucracy is. But I wouldn’t bet the cucumber farm on it.

The work has its origin in a 1994 gun “buyback” program administered by the District of Columbia Police Department. Through this effort, the District purchased 3,000 privately owned handguns in the name of ending handgun violence. The question of what to do with all these guns was answered by artists Esther and Michael Augsburger, who suggested using them in a sculpture of a plow, playing on the well-known scriptural reference: “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).

The result was a four-ton, 16-feet high sculpture composed of steel and 3,000 disabled handguns, imitating a tremendous plow. Some might call it art, but others might call it instead the art of exploitation. The sculpture represents the fallacy of gun control and government intrusion at many levels.

First, the term “buyback” wrongly insinuates that the government has some primary right to all property to begin with, and that it was simply regaining possession of what originally belonged to it. In fact, it couldn’t buy the guns back at all.

Second, the program was based on the oft-repeated fallacy that guns, and not criminals, commit crimes. Purchasing 3,000 handguns from citizens can do nothing to reduce crime. Criminals, obviously, will not sell their weapons to the police department. As for crimes of passion, which an otherwise law-abiding gun owner might commit, no one ever needed a gun to cause another harm. The logic behind a gun “buyback” also ignores the argument—and the evidence—that gun ownership protects many citizens and actually reduces crimes. (See John Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime.)

Moreover, the law-abiding citizens who sold their guns were under the mistaken assumption that they would profit from the sale. However, they paid for their small profit in two ways. At some level they were taxed for the program. But even worse, they found themselves with slightly less freedom than before: the program represented one more lurch forward in big government’s bid for control.

One can also find an interesting misuse of scripture in the very theme of the sculpture. The scripture being referenced refers to the peacefulness of nations, not the disarming of the populace. Those who believe in a powerful, coercive government should not celebrate such a government by quoting scripture about peace. Liberties are not stripped away by peaceful governments.

Finally, the very placement of the sculpture can be seen as insulting. Those who planned the sculpture felt that the work’s proximity to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial would point out the role of handguns in violence against peace officers. On the contrary, the sculpture is a slap in the face to peace officers who serve with the intention of protecting citizens’ rights. In this case, those who gave their lives that constitutional rights might be preserved are memorialized by one monument, while another nearby lauds the stripping of one of those rights from the citizens they died to protect.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this monument is that so many citizens will pass by it in an attitude of awe and reverence, never realizing what it truly symbolizes. It is up to lovers of liberty to point out that in this case art has been used to commemorate the power of the state and the death of individual freedom.

William Pike is a graduate student at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina.

Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, as health-care costs grew, society saw a shift in provider demographics. Two conflicting things occurred during this period. First, rising physician salaries in specialties such as radiology and anesthesiology drew more and more medical students away from traditional general practice. Second, managed care became increasingly prominent. Managed care, of course, relies on general practitioners, or primary care physicians, as gatekeepers between patients and more expensive specialized care.

As the ranks of primary care physicians grew smaller, such doctors began to get lucrative offers from large urban managed care organizations. These trends left an obvious void—a shortage of rural primary care physicians. A survey of medical school seniors taken in 1979 showed that only 59 percent preferred a large or moderate city practice. By 1989 that number had grown to 80 percent.¹

Government Response

Local, state, and federal government agencies moved to check this shortage by spending tax dollars and manipulating the market. Now most states maintain some sort of program, at a cost of millions of dollars a year, to recruit and retain rural physicians. Politically, such programs are easily defended as absolutely necessary, in the words of Tennessee’s rural health office, “to improve and enhance the accessibility, availability, and affordability of quality health care.” Few voters, and certainly few legislators, are willing to argue with such a mission. However, are such agencies really efficient in the face of free-market alternatives?

How do government agencies recruit physicians for rural communities? The foremost device is money. Many states lure doctors to rural practice by paying all or part of the cost of their medical education. In some cases the state contracts with new physicians to work in a rural area for a specific amount of time in return for payment of debts at the end of that service. In other, less effective programs, students sign agreements promising to work in a rural area after completion of medical school, which the state pays for in the meantime. Obviously, this arrangement is prone to exploitation by students who, their education paid for and degrees in hand, decide not to practice rural medicine, or at least not to fulfill their entire obligation. In either case, citizens pay heavily.

Other recruitment methods also exist. States have sponsored programs to interest rural high school students in medical careers. They have also set up residency training programs in rural hospitals to give medical students the chance to experience rural life firsthand. Some of these programs have succeeded in bringing doctors to rural areas. In 1971 the University of Minnesota opened the Rural Physician Associate Program, a nine-month elective available to third-year medical students. According to the university, “Students live and train in non-metropolitan communities under the supervision of family practice and other physicians called preceptors.” Over 800 medical students have participated, and of those, 65 percent now practice in rural areas. Eighty-two percent of the participants chose primary care.²

In addition, state-sponsored recruitment agencies attempt to lure practicing physicians to rural hospitals and communities. For instance, Oregon sponsors the Healthcare Experts for Rural Oregon (HERO) program, which works with rural communities to attract compatible physicians, offering bonuses such as a state income tax credit of $5,000 for up to ten years.

Is State Recruitment Necessary?

Government-sponsored recruitment is certainly a departure from free-market principles. However, it is not the kind of government intervention that is likely to draw much criticism. The state would respond that it is fulfilling its proper role by helping rural communities find the physicians they need for quality care. The subject isn’t quite that simple, however, and the outcomes aren’t always so rosy.

The emphasis placed on recruiting physicians helps contribute to a dangerous culture of dependence among residents of rural areas. Rural communities come to see themselves as “charity cases,” unworthy of having a physician except at the start of his career and not able to support or attract a physician without state help. That culture subverts the free-market principle of voluntary exchange for mutual benefit that rules other aspects of our economy, urban and rural. Consider the advice of one publication written as a guide for those working in the field of rural physician recruitment:

Develop a recruitment fund with donations from the hospital, businesses, and community events, e.g., cake sales and high school car washes. Be prepared to spend several years of hard work developing the fund.

Consider developing a community finance plan to help new doctors purchase equipment or repay their educational debts.³

Imagine a community accepting such advice for the recruitment of bankers or lawyers. It wouldn’t happen. We do not hear of severe shortages of bankers or lawyers in rural America, not because there are necessarily too many of them, but because the free market offers a place for practitioners of these professions in small towns as well as in large cities. Advocates of state-sponsored rural physician recruitment are bound to argue that physicians cannot be compared to bankers or lawyers. But in fact, none can exist without the others. All three, along with grocers, custodians, restaurateurs, teachers, carpenters, and a host of other workers and entrepreneurs are intertwined into any local economy, and none should be singled out for special treatment. When special treatment is accorded to one occupation, the population is bound to suffer through both the cost and quality of the service offered. Lopsided dependence is no base on which to build any segment of an economy.

Just as government interference creates a culture of dependence among rural residents, it also creates a culture of transience in the rural health-care community. In the free market, physicians take up practice in a community because they want to live there and because they feel that good opportunities exist for them. Some are bound to move on, but many will stay and pursue their dreams. When physicians are lured to a community through state loan repayments, tax breaks, and other perks, a sense of transience is almost expected. One North Carolina study found that 19 percent of newly recruited rural physicians planned to leave, even when they first arrived. Fewer than half planned to stay.⁴ Though some physicians will remain in an area for a long time, others will move on to still greener pastures when their obligations are fulfilled or when they realize that their personalities and dreams do not fit the community in which they were placed. Such transience is detrimental to quality health care in small communities and merely perpetuates the recruitment problem by opening up a vacancy not long after it has been filled.

Market Alternatives

Nevertheless, primary care physicians are few and far between in much of rural America, and access to medical care there is often a real problem. But this situation must not drive us to conclude that free-market solutions don’t exist. Indeed, trends that have drawn so much discussion over the past decade may be reversing themselves. The growth of managed care organizations, which drew so many general practitioners to urban areas over the last several years, is slowing. Profits are shrinking. Consumers are clamoring for more choice.⁵ The shortage of primary care physicians nationwide may very well be turning into a surplus, as medical students realize where their best opportunities for work might be in the future.⁶ Some of these physicians will turn to rural communities on their own, realizing that markets there are open.

In the meantime, rural hospitals and communities should be encouraged to use private recruiting agents or cooperative recruiting efforts, rather than state-supported recruiting mechanisms. Such efforts are more realistic and efficient—and more satisfying in matching a doctor to a community.

In short, we must be careful not to pass off any state-sponsored program as helpful or even as harmless without a full analysis of the free-market alternatives. Though wide-ranging government health-care initiatives, such as the 1993 Clinton plan, are likely to raise the eyebrows of voters, few people will even notice something as seemingly innocuous as government-sponsored rural physician recruitment. On its surface that mission, like so many others, seems to be a proper use of tax dollars, a beneficial action on behalf of those with little political or economic power. Yet it is in exactly such cases that citizens lose freedom and independence to the state, a trend that is hard to reverse.

Notes

1. Victoria D. Weisfeld, ed., Rural Health Challenges in the 1990s, (Princeton: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, November 1993), p. 57.
2. University of Minnesota, Rural Physician Associate Program. http://www.rpap.umn.edu/. May 7, 1997.
3. Plugging the Leaks in Health Care: Harnessing Economic Opportunity in Rural America. Center for the New West. December 1992, p. K3.
4. Sari Teplin and Christine Kushner, Physician Life and Practice in Underserved Communities: Strategies for Recruitment and Retention, University of North Carolina Rural Health Research Program, March 1994, p. 8.
5. Center for Studying Health System Change, Issue Brief, Washington, D.C., May 1998.
6. “Survey shows surplus of primary care physicians.” CNN Interactive, U.S. News Story page, http://www.cnn.com/US/9804/13/doctor.shortage.ap/. April 13, 1998.

When nine-year-old Jamie Andrich tried to sell a 2,000-year-old fossilized egg he and two cousins had found while on vacation, the government of the vastly underpopulated state that is Western Australia said he couldn’t do it. The three children had found the ancient natural relic on state-owned land, and the government therefore claimed it was “public property,” and could not be privately sold. Jamie, undaunted, reburied the egg, for which a collector had offered $102,000, and refused to disclose its location until he and his cousins were justly paid.

One has to wonder how the Western Australian government would have dealt with such a situation if the individual in question had not been a nine-year-old with the attention of the world media, but in this case the government gave in. Though unable to pay the steep price being demanded, the government promised to set up a fund to raise up to $109,000 through state museum donations to help pay for the education of the three cousins. So in the end the government got its egg, and the children got their money—more or less.

But this quaint and humorous story brings up a far more serious question. Did the government of Western Australia have the right to claim the fossilized egg as its own? And for that matter, does any government have the right to claim ownership of a piece of “public property” for itself? I set the term ldquo;public property” apart because it is itself highly ambiguous. It is perhaps the central phrase around which this argument turns. A government may claim that it is protecting the interests of the masses by holding land or property in trust for the welfare of all citizens, but at what point does such action turn from being beneficial to the masses to being beneficial to the government itself?. If Jamie Andrich and his cousins had found and tried to sell a common but pretty pebble for 10 cents, would the government of Western Australia, a state three times the size of Texas but with Nebraska’s population, have used legal action to prevent the sale? Probably not.

Who or what is the “public” in “public property”? The question is applicable to Australia, to the United States, or to any nation. If I visit a state or federal park, I may fish in “public” waterways (with a license, of course—a meaningless receipt for a tax); I may picnic under the shade of “public” trees, using a “public” barbecue pit; I may set up a tent on the “public” ground; I may hike through a “public” forest. In other words, I may expend my energies and labors in an area I help support (through a variety of taxes and fees) in common with many other citizens. Of course, wanting to be a good citizen, and not disrupt the social order, I would not set fire to a “public” forest, or cut down a “public” tree, but could I not take home an autumn leaf?. A piece of driftwood? A beetle for an insect collection? A fossilized egg?

John Locke answers the question thusly:

Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.[1]

Locke then goes on to remind us, as I Timothy says, that “God has given us all things richly,” and therefore, if a person gathers “acorns, or other fruits of the earth” not in gross abundance, but according to individual need, then it is by nature his right—his property.[2]

But the growing state is always hungry to increase its powers, and keep the fruits of citizenship for itself. “Public lands” are owned by the people, not by the government. When the state begins to act as the center of a nation or region, higher than the good of the public, the time has come for a re-evaluation of its design. Abuse of land rights is often a definite sign of such overgrown government.

Consider the words of Albert Jay Nock:

After conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the state. In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the State distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms.[3]

In such a scenario the state is obviously not working for the people, but for itself.

Whether it be abusing the power of eminent domain, or whether it be refusing a young boy a tiny bit of his own nation’s incalculable wealth, no such government should be allowed to claim ownership of a nation’s resources for itself alone, unchecked. Though he may not know it, Jamie Andrich has done his countrymen a service by not letting the state run roughshod over him. The duty of vigilance is a highly important one. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to each other. []

1.   John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter V, Section 27.
2.   Ibid., Section 31.
3.   Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State (Delavan, Wisc.: Hallberg Publishing Corp., 1983 ed.), p. 64.