Gene Healy
"You know, I must have had a thousand lunches with John, and I can't think of a single thing he's said that would specify his politics," says Prettyman, a World War II veteran who once served as an aide to Robert F. Kennedy."We were all under the impression that he's a conservative, but he always talked generalities. He's not the type to lay it all out."
Great grades, stellar resume, nice posture, nice smile, no doubt a firm handshake. But where he stands on anything is anyone's guess. What we've got here is a guy who, apparently, was genetically engineered and grown in a vat for the sole purpose of getting past the Senate Judiciary Committee. I think it was P.J. O'Rourke who wrote that every American with any wit or spunk has done something to keep himself from becoming president. So too with the Supremes, I guess.
Roderick T. Long
Good things that are now available online:
- Israel Kirzner's 1960 work on economic methodology, The Economic Point of View.
- All back issues of Rothbard's 1970s journal Libertarian Forum.
- The trailer for the movie version of the anarchist comic book V for Vendetta.
David T. Beito
If Ammon Hennacy were alive today, he’d probably be a blogger and a darn good one too. Blogging would have seemed an ideal way to promote his “One Man Revolution.” Like starting a blog, the strategy he advocated was open to everyone. For him, it required nothing more than a homemade sign, some stationary, a stamp, and a pen.
Hennacy spent decades promoting his own special brand brand of Christian anarchism, tax resistance, and pacifism. He was born on July 24, 1893 on a farm near Negley, Ohio. His ancestors were abolitionists and a picture of John Brown was on the parlor wall. As a young adult, he became a socialist and refused to register for the draft during World War I. While there, one of his cellmates, the famous Alexander Berkman, converted him to anarchism.
During World War II, Hennacy did not flinch in his pacifist views. He not only refused to register for the draft but announced that he would not pay his income taxes. He also avoided tax liability through a life of voluntary poverty, reliance on barter, and advocacy of a decentralized economy based on mutual aid (shades of Karl Hess). During this period, he declared: “As a Christian Anarchist, I refuse to support any government, for, first, as a Christian, all government denies the Sermon on the Mount by a return of evil for evil in legislatures, courts, prisons, and war. As an anarchist I agree with Jefferson that ’that government is best which governs least.’”
During the Cold War, the one man revolution kicked into high gear. In 1950, for example, he led a one-man picket against nuclear tests. He declared, “I am not paying my income taxes this year, and I haven’t done so for the last seven years. I don’t expect to stop World War III by my refusal to pay, but I don’t believe in paying for something I don’t believe in-do you?“ During this period, Hennacy became increasingly friendly with Dorothy Day, who published the Catholic Worker. In 1964, he wrote a combination autobiography and political treatise, The Book of Ammon. He died in 1970.
David T. Beito
One of my heroes is Charles Evers. Long before Martin Luther King, Jr., he risked life and limb in the most repressive state of the country to fight Jim Crow and disfranchisement. All the while, he struggled successfully as an entrepreneur. In 1963, Evers took over as field secretary of the Mississippi state NAACP after the murder of his brother Medgar Evers. In this role, was instrumental in registering more blacks than probably any other individual. He was elected the first black mayor of Fayette in the late 1960s.
Much to the dismay of his former allies, Evers joined the GOP during the 1980s and later belonged to the the state central committee of the party. His recent book, Have No Fear: The Charles Evers Story, is a ringing defense of self-help and the second amendment. As a civil rights activist, Evers knew from personal experience the importance of being armed to the teeth.
Evers intends to remain a Republican but he has not lost his independent streak. Booker Rising reports that Evers (now 82) is a critic of George W. Bush and the Iraq war, much like he opposed Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War as a Democrat:I feel there should be blacks in every Party. I believe in most of the things Republicans stand for....I'm against abortion. I'm for prayer in schools. I'm for economic independence. I don't believe in welfare. I think it's a joke. I believe welfare makes you lazy and unproductive. The only thing I don't agree with is the war. I think the war is wrong. I think the President is wrong on this. The main thing I believe in is freedom. I don't think the Republicans say it as much as Democrats, but I think the Democrats say one thing and do another. Most of them are white."
When I became mayor, I had to run as an independent because the Democrats wouldn't allow us to run as a Democrat back in those days. But once we broke the Democrats down and took over the seat, I was a national committee member, went to Chicago and took the Party away from the old Democrats. And what did they do? They ran to the Republican Party. So my thinking was, once we got blacks into the Democratic Party, let's do the same in the Republican Party and make damn sure they don't get away with nothin'. That's why I'm with the Republican Party. I want to make sure we have blacks who will stand up in each Party and that's me. I don't bow to none of 'em and my folks can trust me. I will never sell out to them. I tell them what they gotta do for our folk and that's to make sure we're included; not superior, but equal."
Keith Halderman
Elder also relates the story of Joy and Carl Gamble whose home of thirty-five years has been threatened by eminent domain for private profit. He includes an excerpt from his radio program with the following question and answer. "Larry: They're offering you twice, three times, what they first offered you, Joy, and you're not taking it? Joy: It's not a question of money. It's our home ... money does not buy everything."
The second piece is by former Congressman Bob Barr. I have blogged before about my mixed feelings towards Barr, however, if he keeps on writing columns like this one I will have to start counting myself an admirer. In this essay he takes on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals reminding us that, “PETA didn't want you to see: two PETA employees attending a court hearing Tuesday in North Carolina on charges they killed and dumped 31 cats and dogs in a shopping center's trash bins.”
He then goes on to give some examples of the animal right’s movement’s attitude towards medical researchers who use animal testing in their work. Barr concludes that, “The message here -- often repeated by the lunatic fringe of animal-rights terrorism -- is that experimenting on animals is an offense punishable by death. In other words, animal lives must be protected, even if it means sacrificing human lives.”
I agree with him because I have always believed that the animals rights movement is not about raising animals up to our level but rather bringing humans down to the level of animals. And, if you are confused about the repercussions of their agenda ponder for a moment how temporarily unwanted dogs and cats are treated by PETA in North Carolina.
David T. Beito
Mark Brady
David T. Beito
In the 1995 case of Barry v. Little, Judge Roberts argued—free of charge—before the D.C. Court of Appeals on behalf of a class of the neediest welfare recipients, challenging a termination of benefits under the District’s Public Assistance Act of 1982.
Unfortunately, I doubt that the conservatives, and some libertarians, who are participating in the Roberts lovefest will pay much attention.
If this is true, it does not seem that Roberts is a promising foot soldier, as some on the left have charged, for the mythical"Constitution in Exile" movement.
UPDATE: Over at Volokh, Randy Barnett has some perceptive comments on the Judge Roberts enigma. ANOTHER UDPATE: According to today's New York Times Laurence Tribe, a liberal professor of constitutional law at Harvard, remembers Roberts as a student there and has kept in touch with him over the years. He does not recall Roberts as a political conservative. "He's conservative in manner and conservative in approach," Tribe said."He's a person who is cautious and careful, that's true. But he is also someone quite deeply immersed in the law, and he loves it. He believes in it as a discipline and pursues it in principle and not by way of politics."
Roderick T. Long
The glorious march of dead libertarians revivified continues! I’ve recently translated, and posted in the Molinari Online Library, three articles hitherto unavailable in English: two by anarcho-Belgian Gustave de Molinari, and one about him.
- Anticipating Rothbard’s 1965 observation that state socialists seek to achieve liberal goals through the use of conservative means, Molinari's 1848"Utopia of Liberty" extends an olive branch to his socialist opponents, urging them to adopt libertarian rather than authoritarian strategies for improving the condition of the working class. This article is billed as the first in a series of outreach letters to socialists, but it's unclear whether more were published (I'll find out after I get access to the relevant issues of the Journal des Économistes); but in any case the article's approach makes it in effect a practice run for Molinari's more ambitious Soirées, published the following year.
- Molinari's mentor Frédéric Bastiat famously marveled that Paris gets fed without the help of central planning, thanks to the spontaneous order of the market. In"The Feeding of Paris During the Siege" (1871), written in Paris during the closing months of the Franco-Prussian War while the siege was still under way, Molinari describes how governmental efforts to remedy the economic effects of the Prussian blockade generally made matters worse by disrupting the self-regulatory functions of the price system. While Molinari grants (perhaps too generously) the legitimacy, in principle, of governmental intervention in case of emergency, he effectively shows how no emergency powers can repeal the basic laws of economics -- a useful lesson for fans of post-hurricane"anti-gouging laws" today.
- Upon Molinari’s death in 1912, his protégé Yves Guyot wrote an obituary notice and biographical sketch of his mentor. While downplaying the anarchistic dimensions of Molinari's thought, Guyot lays particular stress on Molinari's scheme for"labour-exchanges" (bourses du travail), i.e., stock-exchanges for labour, designed to enhance the bargaining power of the working class by increasing workers' mobility. (For some possible drawbacks to this approach, see H. C. Emery's comments.) Guyot's short-term optimism about the abolition of war in the 20th century makes sad reading today, but his long-term conviction that"truth once advanced is never lost," though it may for a time be"preserved only by some," offers inspiration for those seeking to win these 19th-century thinkers a wider audience today.
This is the first appearance of these essays in English. More dead-libertarian goodness to follow!
Steven Horwitz
The prize committee consists of:
Peter Boettke, George Mason University
Emily Chamlee-Wright, Beloit College
Steven Horwitz, St. Lawrence University
David Prychitko, Northern Michigan University
Deadline for submissions is September 1, 2005. Decisions will be made by September 15.
All questions and submissions should be sent, either electronically or by mail, to:
Peter Boettke
Department of Economics
George Mason University, MSN 3G4
Fairfax, VA 22030
pboettke@gmu.edu
More information on the SDAE can be found here.
I know that many L&P contributors and readers knew and admired Don. Feel free to pass this announcement on to other blogs or websites, or communicate it to colleagues and students at your schools.
David T. Beito
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's recent decision in Kelo v. New London essentially expanded the power of local governments to use eminent domain -- a power the Fifth Amendment reserves for public use -- for economic development.In Downtown Pittsburgh, this threat has provided property owners a powerful disincentive against making improvements to their buildings, yet these people may be in the best position to convert vacant office and retail space into housing. They could draw on the equity in their buildings, finance without subsidies and charge lower rents. And if a project can't get done without public financing, then it shouldn't get done at all.
We don't need to save Downtown overnight. Its plight is a symptom of the city's decline, not a cause of it. There are a host of other incentives short of subsidies the city could provide to make Downtown housing more affordable to both developers and residents. Free parking for residents would be a good place to start.
Would any of this work? There's no way to know. But we know what doesn't work.
David T. Beito
Like her contemporary, Booker T. Washington, Walker often sang the praises of thrift. She called on blacks to emulate “the wealthiest men” of Richmond who accumulated vast bank accounts with “simply a dollar or two to which they constantly added.” Walker regarded the advancement of black women as precondition for collective and political advancement, but said they could never reach their potential so long as a husband could “lord it over, or dominate the wife.” She considered equal marriages to be a prerequisite to building entrepreneurship. Walker asked: “What stronger combination could God make-then the partnership of a businessman and businesswoman[?]”
Walker was an energetic participant in a valiant rear guard action against disfranchisement and Jim Crow. In 1904, she was a leader in protests against a law that segregated streetcars in Richmond. From 1923 until her death in 1934, she served on the board of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Partly because of her efforts, by the 1920s about 80 percent of eligible black voters were women. The bank she founded, now called the Bank and Trust Company of Richmond, still exists today and has assets of over $100 million.
I discuss Walker in From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 . She is also the subject of a new biography by Muriel Miller Branch and Dorothy Marie Rice, Pennies to Dollars: The Story of Maggie Lena Walker.
Keith Halderman
The communication contained a link for contacting my congressman and as faithful readers of this column know I usually include my own beginning to these pre-written e-mails, which I have posted below.
Dear Congressman Wynn
So far, you have been very good on issues concerning the war on people who use certain kinds of drugs and even though I am a Libertarian I am seriously considering voting for you in the next election. However, if you cannot see how this ugly ban on financial aid for students with drug convictions is a punishment solely reserved for people of limited means and therefore unfair and un-American then I will not be able to support you.
On the other hand, if you could recognize how this war on ourselves is costing enormous amounts of resources better used elsewhere; if you could understand the immorality of punishing vices as though they were crimes; if you could know that the war on people who use certain kinds of drugs is the most racist institution that we have in American society today; if you could realize that there are dozens of reasons, tens of thousands of stories, and a mountain of empirical data which testify to the vast harm done by drug prohibition then maybe you could stand up with me and ever growing number of people who agree with me, saying loudly this evil policy must change!
If you could do that then I would proudly pull the lever for you because you would be one of the very few congressmen doing their job, representing the people instead of the bureaucracy.
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
And now in the current issue (July 11 & 18, 2005), Surowiecki has written the best defense of allowing the Chinese to buy Unocal that I have seen. Check it out on p. 40.
Check out the following Neva Chonin column, entitled"London Calling," from the pink pages (entertainment section) of this past Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle.
Its comparison of U.S. and British responses to terrorism contains a lot of truth.
Mark Brady
This is the first detailed account of all non-combatants reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the continuing conflict. It is based on comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 media reports published between March 2003 and March 2005. Read it, or at least read the summary. Republicans have their talking points. This is one of ours.
William Marina
Financial Times July 18, 2005
Employers take a psychometric view of hopefuls
By Ruth Sullivan
Psychometric testing, which can help to assess personality traits, is enjoying a renaissance. This approach - allowing companies to build up a fuller picture of job applicants and to select executives with leadership potential - is being used by a growing number of top companies.
The practice dates at least as far back as the second world war, when the British army experimented with the technique to measure officers' ability and leadership skills. Companies have been trialling it mostly since the 1970s, and its growing importance was signalled 18 months ago, when James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son, was obliged to take a psychometric test as part of the selection process for the chief executive job at BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster that is part of his father's media empire.
Now, a new survey of FTSE 100 companies - conducted by The Test Agency Hogrefe, a psychometric test publisher - shows that most large corporations are using some form of psychometric testing: of the 73 responding to the survey, 59 said they did so.
"It has taken a long time to get through to corporate use," says Nigel Evans, a chartered psychologist and psychological testing verifier at the British Psychological Society. So why the growing popularity? One reason is that, with the rise of the internet, companies are receiving large volumes of applications, especially from recent graduates. Yet, intriguingly, managers are the employees most subjected to psychometric testing, with 80 per cent of the respondents using tests on this group. Some 13 per cent of the responding companies revealed that they use psychometric testing for board- level appointments.
Wendy Lord, chief psychologist at The Test Agency, says that a good mix of psychometric tests can help to find the right person - and this, in turn, is likely to lead to more job satisfaction, better performance, higher productivity and a greater likelihood of retaining staff.
The most popular psychometric tests are those measuring aspects of behavioural style or motivation - usually in the form of questionnaires - and those assessing intellectual power or the potential to learn in particular areas.
A classic questionnaire includes the question: " 'Most of what happens in life depends on being in the right place at the right time.' How much do you agree? Strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree or strongly disagree?" Such inquiries attempt to determine the extent to which a person believes they are captain of their own destiny.
Some companies have seen a rise in the retention of staff following the use of testing. Virgin Mobile, the virtual mobile phone operator and a FTSE 250 company, saw the retention rate of new recruits show an encouraging rise after it started using psychometric testing more consistently two years ago. Phillip Mather, head of human resources business delivery, says the biggest improvement in retention has come from giving candidates personality tests: "They have helped us better identify which individuals would enjoy and fit our culture". Previously newcomers to the company have arrived and it has taken up to 12 months for them to realise that Virgin Mobile's self-directed culture is not for them, he says.
"Recruitment is expensive and as companies focus on the bottom line they realise they can reduce the risk [in recruitment]," says Mike Dodd from Academy HR, an independent consulting company. Over the past five years the consultancy has seen a large rise in the use of psychometric testing in large and medium-sized companies.
But some employers, especially smaller companies, are still put off by the cost and time involved, particularly the expense of using qualified professionals - whether in-house or outsourced - to choose and interpret tests.
While 95 per cent of respondents revealed that they use psychometric testing only for recruitment purposes, some - notably Rolls- Royce - use them for staff development. The company can, for example, establish which employees are team players or team leaders.
Gus diZerega
I have the following surmise. If we go to some of the greatest classical liberals of the past, we find that they had a richer sense of what the institutions of a free society were than those appropriating the term today. In particular, they did not reduce free institutions to economics.
Alexis de Tocqueville, for example, emphasized the importance of what we call today civil society - that network of independent voluntary associations that for the most part were not simply businesses. He contrasted it to the state and saw it as the crucial player in keeping administration from growing out of control - a replacement for the old aristocracy without its bad habits.
Today many businesses have grown to become mighty corporations. In doing so they have exited civil society to become part of what Karl Hess, jr. calls, and I approve, the market order contrasted with the market place. The difference between market place and market order is simple to describe, and I have personal experience to back me up. The small business I ran profitably for some 17 years or so was a part of the market place. For me, market prices were signals, as von Mises called them, telling me where the best decisions could be made in economic terms. I then translated this information into my own set of values, along with anything else I found relevant, and acted. The market place is a realm of freedom.
Public corporations have no such freedom. They are required by law to privilege market values over all others. If they do not, and shares therefore fall in money terms, they are open to takeover bids. Voting power is based on economic investment, and no other values. If a CEO decides to raise wages higher than the market demands, he is open to suit by shareholders, as happened to Henry Ford. In short, the public corporation is a creature of the market order. The market order is the realm of impersonal organizations organized solely to pursue economic values. It is not a realm of freedom except to the degree that CEOs can find wiggle room around these pressures. Some do, and do good things, others do, and do bad things. But even for them freedom is very limited, and for others, virtually nonexistent.
Except as consumers - which is why consumer has replaced words like citizen and human being in so much libertarian and economic analysis. The problem is that while all of us are consumers, none of us are just consumers. And the consumer role is fundamentally passive: choosing among alternatives entrepreneurs bring before them.
I am not arguing that public corporations are bad. I am arguing they are not realms of freedom in the sense that classical liberals defended - and that these men and women did not much discuss them because the seminal works were written before the corporate economy had really emerged. However, one can easily find signs of unease with these institutions on the part of many of those times.
Over time the differences between market places and market orders has become blurred - in my opinion because the fight against socialism gradually turned most definitions of liberalism over to economists. And the free market economists were brilliantly successful in their challenge to socialism. The best, such as Hayek, did not reduce a free society to economic terms, but their followers often tended to do so. Economic theory was so successful at battling socialism that it seemed to some that everything could be reduced to it.
This development has had several disastrous consequences that we are experiencing now.
1.) Corporate freedom is equated with individual freedom. This predisposed libertarians not to ask what they were giving up when they were paid by the wealthy to defend business interests against government. Think tanks are not realms of intellectual freedom because they allow, as a rule (I am painting with a broad brush, some small exceptions exist), only certain dimensions of classical liberalism to be explored - those dimensions that are most in harmony with the interests of corporate economies.
2.) Therefore, for most libertarians the business community and its representatives are the most trusted defenders of liberty - something that is demonstrably false. For example, corporations have been at the forefront in urging centralization and standardization of political power because it is easier for them to organize on a large scale. This makes plenty of theoretical sense. The instrumental organizations within a spontaneous order, be they corporations in a market or parties in a democracy or (by analogy) individual animals in an ecology, are always threatened by the uncertainties of that order and will always seek to reduce them, ultimately turning it into a planned organization, if they can. This will be disastrous for most but good for the organization that pulls it off.
3.) The economization of classical liberal theory has made it difficult to see, let alone appreciate this problem. Anarcho-capitalism (of which I once was a proponent) carries this to its extreme. That is, instead of seeing business and government as intertwined, and necessarily so because the market requires a legal order (I will not discuss the fantasy of “stateless law” under modern conditions here) anarcho-capitalists see all the bad effects of this intertwining as due to government, the good effects as due to business.
Think of an observation about the Kelo decision I recently read on the Hayek listserve. It was made, the poster argued, so government can raise more tax money. This is of course partly correct. But there is another part - so well connected business people can take advantage of political power to make even MORE money - and the added taxes they pay are essentially the cost of hiring the hit man. No hit man, no abuses. But no one to hire the hit man, no abuses either. And the wealthy seeking more provide the market for the hit man. This blindness is both theoretical and practical, for it helps explain why the Republican party is given such a free walk by so many libertarians and so-called classical liberals.
4.) This state of affairs allows oligarchs and their toadies and would-be oligarchs to pose as defenders of liberty when all they are is defenders against some forms of power the better to increase other forms of power.
5.) A more adequate analysis would see that we now have at least a three way division in the relevant parts of society that classical liberal theory focused on: government, the market order, and civil society. Of the three, only the third is really the realm of human freedom. This three-way division fits poorly into the good guys bad guys model of a two party system. It also fits poorly into the good guys bad guys model of state vs. market and of two party politics. It's only advantage is that it is closer to reality.
This summer I will finish a book on this issue as it applies to the environment.
Mark Brady
Gus diZerega
Western Dems embrace Dean
by kos
Mon Jul 18th, 2005 at 12:42:26 PDT
Jerome has a great post on local reaction to Dean's tour of Western states. In Montana, the state party chair was running away until he heard Dean speak. Then he couldn't wait to get his picture taken with the chairman. In Utah, he gave a cogent and passionate defense of the Democratic Party's stance on abortion:
"I'm tired of Republicans telling us we're pro-abortion. I served on the board of Planned Parenthood for five years. I don't know anybody who's pro-abortion," he said. "Most people in this country would like to see the abortion rate go down. That includes Democrats and Republicans. The difference between the parties is that we believe a woman makes that decision about her health care -- and they believe Tom Delay makes it."
But my favorite was in Idaho, where he said this:
"We didn't quite win in Idaho the last time, but we're not quitting," he said. "People say, 'Why'd you come here? This is a Republican state,' but they're wrong.
"This is a libertarian area. We're going to win on a Western platform next time."
We're not going to win Idaho next time, on any platform. But we can start chipping away. A "Western platform" is the future of the Democratic Party, and one that I embrace to my very core -- fiscal and personal responsibility, rugged individualism, freedom to live one's life without government intrusion into the doctor's office or the bedroom. The intersection of libertarianism, good government, and economic populism.
It's good that Dean is preaching that gospel, and it's awesome that it's being well received in the West.
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/7/18/154226/257
Gus diZerega
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2005/tst071805.htm
CAFTA and Dietary Supplements
July 18, 2005
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement in the next two weeks, and one little-known provision of the agreement desperately needs to be exposed to public view. CAFTA, like the World Trade Organization, may serve as a forum for restricting or even banning dietary supplements in the U.S.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission, organized by the United Nations in the 1960s, is charged with "harmonizing" food and supplement rules between all nations of the world. Under Codex rules, even basic vitamins and minerals require a doctor's prescription. The European Union already has adopted Codex-type regulations, regulations that will be in effect across Europe later this year. This raises concerns that the Europeans will challenge our relatively open market for health supplements in a WTO forum. This is hardly far-fetched, as Congress already has cravenly changed our tax laws to comply with a WTO order.
Like WTO, CAFTA increases the possibility that Codex regulations will be imposed on the American public. Section 6 of CAFTA discusses Codex as a regulatory standard for nations that join the agreement. If CAFTA has nothing to do with dietary supplements, as CAFTA supporters claim, why in the world does it specifically mention Codex?
Unquestionably there has been a slow but sustained effort to regulate dietary supplements on an international level. WTO and CAFTA are part of this effort. Passage of CAFTA does not mean your supplements will be outlawed immediately, but it will mean that another international trade body will have a say over whether American supplement regulations meet international standards. And make no mistake about it, those international standards are moving steadily toward the Codex regime and its draconian restrictions on health freedom. So the question is this: Does CAFTA, with its link to Codex, make it more likely or less likely that someday you will need a doctor's prescription to buy even simple supplements like Vitamin C? The answer is clear. CAFTA means less freedom for you, and more control for bureaucrats who do not answer to American voters.
Pharmaceutical companies have spent billions of dollars trying to get Washington to regulate your dietary supplements like European governments do. So far, that effort has failed in America, in part because of a 1994 law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Big Pharma and the medical establishment hate this Act, because it allows consumers some measure of freedom to buy the supplements they want. Americans like this freedom, however-- especially the health conscious Baby Boomers.
This is why the drug companies support WTO and CAFTA. They see international trade agreements as a way to do an end run around American law and restrict supplements through international regulations.
The largely government-run health care establishment, including the nominally private pharmaceutical companies, want government to control the dietary supplement industry-- so that only they can manufacture and distribute supplements. If that happens, as it already is happening in Europe, the supplements you now take will be available only by prescription and at a much higher cost-- if they are available at all. This This alone is sufficient reason for Congress to oppose the unconstitutional, sovereignty-destroying CAFTA bill.
