Liberty Dollar

To the Editor:

Lawrence H. White’s focus on the difficulties of launching a competing currency and its minimum personal rewards are well known (“A Competitor for the Fed?” July 2000). So in response to such difficulties, NORFED’s plan is simply to develop a currency owned by the people and built on the free enterprise system (FES). “When the People own the money, they control the government. When the government owns the money, it controls the People.”

One of the greatest difficulties is that the new gold- and silver-backed ALDollar (American Liberty Dollar) did not clear through the fiat Federal Reserve System (FRS). For that reason a $20 American Liberty Check was issued on October 1, 2000. More than just a commemorative for NORFED’s second anniversary, the ALCheck is a powerful, proactive, educational tool that carries the message “Free Our Money.” More importantly, it is depositable into any bank.

FES vs. FRS. Which system will it be? Rejoice! NORFED’s solution to our nation’s manipulated government currency is simple and profitable: Stop using “their” money. Start using the Liberty Dollar and return America to value—one dollar at a time.

—Bernard von NotHaus,
Senior Economist NORFED (www.norfed.org)

Compassionate Capitalism

To the Editor:

If Tom Palmer (“For-Profit Medicine and the Compassion Motive,” October 2000) wants to generalize on the basis of a single experience at a nonprofit hospital, let me do the same with his article. Free-market proponents err in attributing to the economic system blame that properly should be laid on individual human character.

His conclusion, that compassionate care is more likely in a hospital motivated by profit, of course is plausible. But it is conceivable that what was perceived as “compassion” was artful pretense and not genuine concern. It may be that truly compassionate doctors and nurses are more comfortable working at a nonprofit institution. Until a study more credible than an anecdote is done to suggest otherwise, a more plausible explanation is simply that Palmer unfortunately found himself cared for by a jerk.

Of people with sour personalities there is no shortage, not in medicine, or law, or anywhere. There are caring doctors and nurses and there are cold doctors and nurses at all hospitals, because hospitals are staffed by people.

Indeed, the reality of medical economics and physician reimbursement is exceedingly complex. To simplistically dichotomize the situation as Palmer does makes his article read more like a fable than an instructive experience.

By the way, I would ask if the procedure done by the unconcerned doctor at the nonprofit institution resulted in pain relief. It could be argued that what the compassionate doctor owes his patient is skill and good judgment, not necessarily warmth and kindness, although these human qualities certainly are to be desired.

—Merrill A. Cohen
York, Pennsylvania

Mr. Palmer replies:

Mr. Cohen raises some interesting points in his letter. First, I certainly agree—as I clearly stated in the essay he criticizes—that the sample size was too small to draw any robust conclusions. So we agree on that. What I tried to get across in my personal story was that the pursuit of profit can plausibly be tied to compassion, precisely because the profit-seeker must put himself or herself into the position of others in order to—as the British say—“gain their custom,” that is, to make them into customers. That makes it a hypothesis, or a plausible candidate, for an explanation. And suggesting plausible candidates for explanations is not a bad thing to do. The hypothesis is that incentives matter. When we find that fairly consistently you get more courteous service at the local FedEx office than at the local Post Office and more concern for the value of your time at the car repair shop than at the Department of Motor Vehicles, we find a general pattern. Plenty of experience shows that incentives matter. I merely wanted to suggest that they may also matter in more areas than most people may currently believe.

As to whether a doctor’s compassion is “artful pretense” rather than “genuine concern,” I have no way of knowing. It also may not matter as an ethical matter. Recall that “ethics” is derived from the Greek word for “habit”; to be habituated into considering the feelings and interests of others when interacting with them is to become a better person. Character is not normally something you’re just born with; you acquire it through experience and habit. Being habituated through incentives to take into account the feelings and interests of others will certainly have an effect on individual human character. So I reject Mr. Cohen’s stark dichotomy between “the economic system” and “individual human character.” Surely they are related, and that was all my essay was intended to suggest.

Mr. Cohen’s final question is clear, but the suggestion that follows it is not. The answer to the question is that I did indeed enjoy an amelioration of my condition because of the injection I received at the nonprofit hospital. But the term “what the compassionate doctor owes his patient” is unclear. If Mr. Cohen is referring to the result of contract, it would be hard to contract for kindness. But how would it have diminished a doctor’s efficiency to exhibit concern for my well-being as well? My vision of a good society includes not only material improvement, but warmth and kindness too. There’s more to life than material goods, after all, and I believe it to be not only a reasonable hypothesis that capitalism nurtures kindness and concern for others but also a fact supported by mountains of historical evidence. Concern for others who are otherwise unknown to us is virtually unknown in societies that do not engage in trade, and as the range of trade has increased, so has the scope of philanthropy. And not only philanthropy, but also kindness to animals, which is virtually unknown in noncapitalist societies.

I’d wager that if you want a society characterized by widespread kindness and compassion toward strangers, you’re more likely to get it with a free market economy.