Mixing Our Economy

A GOOD FRIEND of mine was sitting on a bar stool at the island in the kitchen of her home one fine, normal evening, taking a bite of steak. She began to choke. The noise alerted her husband, who was in another room. He hastened to her, and just as he was approaching her from behind, within a few inches of reaching her, ready to do heimlich, she bolted straight upward off the stool, and lunged backwards, and fell through the air, and hit the back of her head on the tile with what her husband later said was a sickening smack, like a gun shot. She was helicoptered to a distant, high level hospital, where she spent three miserable months, then died. They had no insurance, and her husband filed bankruptcy. He's paying for the thirty two thousand dollar helicopter ride twenty dollars a month, for as long as it takes. He gets to keep the house. The total medical bill was two point seven million american dollars. Suffice to say, he is among the millions of americans who are fortunate to have bankruptcy as an option. Even if he had had insurance, the co payments would have bankrupted him. Without bankruptcy protection, without this artificial government involvement in the free market economy, capitalism would probably collapse in a dark hole of debt. Government, through the legal system, intervenes in the free market by allowing for "incorporation" of businesses, and providing intellectual property protection in the form of patents and copyrights. Bankruptcy, incorporation, and patents, three indispensible components of a capitalist economy, all three of them government enacted and enforced, aka, socialistic. Without government involvement in the economy, there is no economy, or no organized, sane economy, it seems. Can you imagine a country without bankruptcy, corporations, or patents and copyrights? Good luck growing your business, or making any money off your invention, book, or song. The hard rough edges of free market capitalism must be smoothed and softened by cooperative economic contrivances. Here's to our mixed economy!