April

Fortunately, It's Just a Game by Candace Allen Lessons from Monopoly. Have Doc.tors Forsaken Their Ethics? by Jeffrey A. Singer Restoring the Hippocratic Ethic and patient autonomy. Rising HealthCare Costs: Who's the Villain? by Charles Van Eaton Individual accountability, not government intelVention,will help control healthcare spending. Justice or Legal Extortion? by Sarah J. McCarthy The U.S. civil justice system has become little more than a spectacular sweepstakes game with anti-business bias. Are We Burying Ourselves in Garbage? by Richard Shedenhelm The alleged crisis in municipal solid waste disposal. Eco-Fascism by Russell Madden A new threat to private property. Herbert Spencer: Liberty and Unlimited Human Progress by Jim Powell April 27 marks the 175th birthday of one of liberty's early champions. The U.S. Banking Debacle of the 1980s: A Lesson in Government Mismanagement by George G. Kaufman An analysis of a government failure.

COLUMNS NOTES from FEE-Budget Deficits by Hans F. Sennholz IDEAS and CONSEQUENCES-Comparable Worth or Incomparably Worthless? by Lawrence UZ Reed A MATTER of PRINCIPLE-Values or Virtues? by Robert James Bidinotto ECONOMICS on TRIAL-Friedman vs. the Austrians, Part II by Mark Skousen DEPARTMENTS Perspective-"Economics 101-From Prison" by KL. Billingsley Letters to the Editor Book Reviews Perpetuating Poverty: The World Bank, The IMP, and the Developing World edited by Doug Bandow and Ian Vasquez, reviewed by Ken Ewert; Scarcity or Abundance? A Debate on the Environment by Norman Myers and Julian Simon, reviewed by Jonathan H. Adler; The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881-1908)edited by Frank H. Brooks, reviewed by Gregory P. Pavlik; Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer ofAmerican Government by Jonathan Rauch, reviewed by William H. Peterson; What Went Right in the 1980s by Richard B. McKenzie, reviewed by Raymond J. Keating; Separating School and State by Sheldon Richman, reviewed by George C. Leef.

THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 Phone (914) 591-7230 FAX (914) 591-8910 President: Hans F. Sennholz ManagingEditor: Beth A. Hoffman GuestEditor: Richard H. Timberlake EditorEmeritus Paul L. Poirot Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Book ReviewEditor Robert Batemarco Marymount College, Tarrytown, New York AssisttzntEditor Gregory P. Pavlik Columnists Robert James Bidinotto Stqff Writer, Reader's Digest Lawrence W. Reed Mackinac Center for Public Policy Midland, Michigan Mark Skousen Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida ContributingEditors Charles W. Baird California State University, Hayward Doug Bandow Cato Institute, Washington, D.C. E. Calvin Beisner Covenant College, Chattanooga, Tennessee Peter J. Boettke New York University Donald J. Boudreaux Clemson University Clarence B. Carson American Textbook Committee Wadley, Alabama John Chamberlain Cheshire, Connecticut Thomas J. DiLorenzo Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland Joseph S. Fulda New York, New York Roger W. Garrison Auburn University Bettina Bien Greaves Resident Scholar, FEE Robert Higgs The Independent Institute, Oakland, California John Hospers University of Southern California Tibor R. Machan Auburn University Ronald Nash Reformed Theological Seminary Maitland, Florida Edmund A. Opitz Chatham, Massachusetts James L. Payne Sandpoint, Idaho William H. Peterson Washington, D.C.

Jane S. Shaw PERC, Bozeman, Montana Richard H. Timberlake University of Georgia Lawrence H. White University of Georgia The Freeman is the monthly publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533. FEE, established in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a non-political, educa tional champion of private property, the free market, and limited government. FEE is classified as a 26 USC 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Copyright © 1995 by The Foundation for Economic Education. Permission is granted to reprint any article in this issue, provided appropriate credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to The Foundation. The costs of Foundation projects and services are met through donations, which are invited in any amount. Donors of $30.00or more receive a subscription to TheFreeman. Student subscriptionsare $10.00 for the nine-month academic year; $5.00 per semester. Additional copies of singleissues of The Freeman are $2.00. For foreign delivery, a donation of $40.00a year is suggested to cover mailingcosts.

Bound volumes of The Freeman are available from The Foundation for calendar years 1912to date. The Freeman is available in microform from University Microfilms, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106. PERSPECTIVE Economics lOt-From Prison Education, as the late Malcolm Mugge ridge observed, has become the great mumbo-jumbo and fraud of our time. But prison, as it has through the ages, continues to teach invaluable lessons. It was only when lying on rotting prison straw that Alexander Solzhenitsyn finally understood that the line between good and evil does not run between nations, political parties, or social classes, but right down the middle of every human heart. The great Russian writer would not have learned that essential truth in any American public high school, or even at Harvard, where he once received a rather frosty reception. A more recent case in the United States brought home some lessons about the prison system itself.

Patrick J. Nolan was once the rising conservative star of the California Assem bly, where he served as Republican leader. Mr. Nolan became embroiled in an elabo rate FBI sting operation, in which the fed eral agency went so far as to establish a phony shrimp-processing company and even float phony bills in the California legislature. One of these bills passed and agents had to tell Governor George Deuk mejian to veto the measure because it was a fake. This case itself is a lesson in how the government spends our money but there is much more. Nolan was one of those who accepted contributions from the agent-entrepreneurs. While the details of the case would require a lengthy article, some Sacramento insiders believe Mr. Nolan is innocent. But after another high-profile target of the scam pleaded guilty, Mr. Nolan didn't like his chances and caved in. A lawyer with a degree from the University of Southern California, Mr. Nolan found his economic education continuing at the Federal Prison Camp in Dublin, California.

"It came as quite a shock to me," Mr. Nolan writes, "to learn that our judicial and penal systems are just like every other bureaucracy . . . [W]here was my healthy 202 SUspIcIon toward government structures? Why did I think these agencies were exempt from the excesses of other parts of govern mentjust because I agreed with their aims1" Like all bureaucracies, says Mr. Nolan, "the judicial-penal complex spends lavishly trying to convince us they are doing all they can to protect us and if they had a little more money they could get the job done." Mr. Nolan realized that the system had a stake in expanding, not reducing, the num ber of people under its control. Hence, bureaucrats indulge a classic "bait-and switch" operation in which they exploit the public's legitimate fears of violent crime as the basis for yet more spending. But Nolan notes that when they get the money, as they have in the recent Clinton crime bill, they don't target murderers, rapists, and mug gers. Rather, says Nolan, "when the dollars are spent most go to combat a newly ex panded list of nonviolent, often unintended and, in fact, often quite innocent transgres sions against the bureaucratic regulations and controls government increasingly im poses to hamstring the people." In fact, he says, "they go after nonviolent criminals because they are easier to get." And here Mr. Nolan speaks from direct experience.

The former assemblyman noted that a "substantial portion" of his fellow inmates had been incarcerated for "bureaucratic 'crimes' arising from disputes with govern ment employees over billing procedure, loan documentation, late filingof documents or other violations of statutes that are tech nical in nature." The message the system sends, he says is "submit to the bureaucrats PERSPECTIVE or be destroyed." And that process comes with a price. "Bureaucrats and government lawyers," he adds, "consumed massive resources in prosecuting these men. Courtrooms were tied up for weeks while their cases were tried. Now they languish in prison, costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars for food, housing, and prison guards, not to mention the loss of their productivity to the econo my." But on paper each conviction looks good, "like the body counts that came out of Vietnam." Mr. Nolan also observed that government lawyers, prison builders and suppliers have done very well under the current system, which welcomes lock-'em-up measures such as "three strikes and you're out."

According to the most recent figures, Amer ican prisons now house over one million inmates-a staggering, unprecedented num ber. It would be easy to dismiss Mr. Nolan's rude awakening as a self-serving defense, but that would be to miss an important lesson, indeed, a challenge to his fellow conservatives. Says Mr. Nolan: "All gov ernment bureaucracies-even those founded to do things we like-not only tend to become self-perpetuating, they expand to serve those who work for them and do business with them." It has seldom been put any better, even by someone not in prison. D -K.L. BILLINGSLEY Mr. Billingsley is a media fellow of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. 203 THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY How Gold Was Money How Gold Could Be MoneyAgain by Richard H. Timberlake 1. Gold and Silver: The Money of the Constitution Students, scholars, and some curious people who occasionally stray into the text of the U.S. Constitution are properly puz zled by what seems to be that document's "plain language" and some of the things they see around them in the world today.