Yesterday I shared on Facebook the link to a blog post by Rituparna Basu of the Ayn Rand Center, on Rand Paul’s argument for a doctor’s political freedom.  I received the following comment:

Comments completely miss the mark. Doctors are slaves to the same system patients are slaves to. They are not making the money in our broken health care system. Capitalism ate democracy a long time ago. We need to stop blaming the surfs for all our problems.

My response:

You say capitalism, but it is obvious you don’t understand what the word means. True capitalism, which is a system based on the respect of individual rights (including property rights) and characterized by a separation of economics and government, has never existed anywhere (and certainly not in modern America) and so cannot have “eaten” democracy. If anything has done so, it is the altruistic/collectivist interference by the government in the economy, via taxes, regulations, subsidies, and etc. In “the public interest” of course. 

Given that there is no such thing as “the public interest” in objective terms, only the interests of a number of individuals, this means that every individual and group will fight tooth and nail to be considered “the public.” Is it any wonder given how the government bestows and withholds favors, that lobbyists swarm the halls of power seeking to be the beneficiary of those favors to the detriment of both their rivals and the nation as a whole?