The Economic Tyranny Of The Interstate Commerce Clause

Dr. Tibor MachanHere is an instructive comment from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the recent oral arguments presented about Obamacare:

"People who don't participate in this market are making it much more expensive for the people who do; that is, they will get, a good number of them will get services that they can't afford at the point where they need them, and the result is that everybody else's premiums get raised? It's not your free choice just to do something for yourself. What you do is going to affect others, affect them in a major way."

Ergo, we may infer from this, Congress is authorized to regulate − including coerce − commerce for us all in the United States of America.

First of all, when one applies this view to nearly anything people purchase, it would imply that everyone must act in concert with everyone else. If you don't purchase something I do purchase, say an orange colored sweater which I want badly, or blood pressure medication, which I evidently need to stay alive (judging from what my doctor suggested when she prescribed it for me), my purchase will very likely cost me much more than it would if you purchased these items as well!

One central point of having a free and not a centrally planned market system is that different people are at liberty to make very different choices in it. If just a few people buy certain goods and services, this will, of course, drive the cost of these up (if one wishes to put it that way − "drive" suggests an impersonal process but that is misleading.) Elementary economics.

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