Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1699

Stenorette recording made by Mrs. Frances Norton Manning at her home at 212 Halesworth Street, Santa Ana, California, during breakfast

Sunday, March 11, 1962

 

 

 

/“The editorial in the Santa Ana Register today is about socialized medicine. Anything you can say on socialized medicine?”/

 

     Socialized medicine is a misleading term. In current speech, whenever we speak of socializing anything, we mean taking it out of the jurisdiction of society, that is, of our voluntary society, and placing it under the jurisdiction of our compulsory government administration, leading to elaborate bureaucracies directing the individual lives much after the fashion of the totalitarian communities.

     The first thing that is necessary is to understand what we mean by socialized medicine. Medicine has been largely taken out of society already, because it is a closely-knit organization similar to a labor union organization in which the membership is compulsory and in which the fees and regulations and all that sort of thing are regulated either by the association itself, as a labor union regulates its own members’ behavior, or it is regulated by the political authorities, what we call the bureaucracy.

     With this broad statement that I have just made, it is hardly necessary to go into any detailed discussion of particular measures. We’re either going to have more Government licensing, limiting and control, and setting up classes of status, as a labor union — special favored class — or professional unions of all kinds — the lawyers, and the doctors and even the architects, and real-estate salesmen — they all have to be regulated by the elected political people in order supposedly to protect the general public. All this sort of arrangement is merely taking authority out of the hands of individuals, allegedly for their own protection, and placing it in the hands of arbitrary authorities whose authority may have been hereditary, or it may be by popular election. In either case, it is exercised above and beyond the will of the persons who are supposed to be served by these so-called socializations. And this of course means that we are moving, in all these measures, in the direction of a totalitarian society — or rather no society at all, because it would not be voluntary. It would be a totalitarian … or to use the strongest term, ultimately a totalitarian slavery.

    So looking at the whole question of socialized medicine and socialized anything else, we have to consider it in terms of whether it enables people to be self-determining or have their lives determined for them by some extraneous authority established as a government, and sometimes calling itself a society. Society, however, is what nature develops as in all other fields spontaneously, by growth, by development, and not by a placing of one set or class of men above all others in order to protect them — much as the lion might be set above the lamb, giving him very adequate protection, but winding up in a rather highly totalitarian state.

     A great deal could be said along these lines, but in this limited time, I think there’s perhaps sufficient been said.

 

“What is your alternative to socialized medicine?”

 

    Society itself; and society does not consist in men ruling one another. It doesn’t consist in the Cain and Abel relationship, Cain being stronger and being placed in the position of his brother’s keeper — the “Big Brother,” as we say nowadays, in the totalitarian states. The alternative consists in the development of society — and society develops by spontaneous relationships, autonomous, by the mutual consent of the persons engaged in organizing themselves. The key to all this is the free contract, in which people make mutual agreements to do good things to each other, and that is the basis of our economic society — not our un-economic, our highly bankrupt public authorities.

 

    The basis of a solvent society is the contracts that men make. These contracts comprise our economic system, which provides all of the good fruits of life, for all purposes, good and bad. It supports our very lives. It supports all the good that we do; it supports all the evil that is done. It supports all the freedom; it is freedom itself, being contract. It supports all the freedom we have; it supports all the freedom that is taken away from us. It supports itself and its members, our economic system does; it also supports our uneconomic, or political, system.

     /The/ remedy is that we should outgrow our political system, as health outgrows disease. The signs are not wanting that we are on the eve of a tremendous advance in this field. The business of real estate is just coming to be a business in which the capital, namely the real estate, is organized in large holdings, community-wide, hundreds and perhaps thousands of acres under one single ownership, incorporated or similarly organized.

 

“How does this affect socialized medicine? What does that mean to me? Does it mean that I don’t have to pay a doctor bill, or I do have to pay a doctor bill, or what?”

 

     It doesn’t mean very much to anybody, with respect to his own individual, single, personal affairs. It means a great deal to society as a whole, because the development of real-estate business through syndication and unification of capital, is developing community authorities, self-sustaining in supplying their own police, fire and other protection and thereby taking away from the political authorities their supposed function — municipal and other necessary functions — in order that people can have things together in community life. This alternative is now very rapidly developing, so that we have thousands of communities all over the country, self-sustaining, self-supporting, not imposing any burdens upon those who occupy them, /but/ on the contrary, receiving voluntary revenue in the form of rents. This is the income to the community, to the natural, social, or truly social-ized community. Social-ized, because it is owned by proprietors, and the only relation between them and the tenants or other occupants, is a free relation of voluntary contract. That’s developing at a tremendous rate in this country now, and offers the opportunity for people to get the things that government is supposed to supply — to get them at a value which the purchasers themselves fix, and supplying a revenue which keeps the community solvent instead of perpetually in debt and headed for bankruptcy, as all political communities have been throughout all time. We are emerging into true, social-ized communities, social-ized through the voluntary process of economic relationships instead of political relationships. This is developing very rapidly now, burgeoning, as some business publications say. It is being commented throughout /by/ the knowing people of the business world. It is a brand new business of supplying municipal services by municipal authorities who are not elected or otherwise arbitrarily installed but who, through the process of contract, own the property and own it as capital is owned — for the benefit of those who are served by it — thereby giving a natural, voluntary revenue for public services throughout the entire community. This is developing so rapidly, that it may be like the airplane industry, thousands of years gestating, then suddenly burgeoning as the airplane did, and as electronics did — in the private field. However, the real-estate field is always public, except so far as it is owned by the occupant. When it is owned by a syndicated or otherwise organized landlord, then it is used as capital. And capital is wealth used for the benefit of those who do not own it, but who use it for the service of others, the real, true service of others, the value of its services measured by what those who receive the services voluntarily pay for them. This is the alternative, proprietary administration of communities, large and small. A hotel is an ancient /early/ example, and the most conspicuous modern example coming to the public eye is the thousands and thousands of shopping centers …. /Tape ran out here/