Always trying to help, but remaining invincibly ignorant about the wisdom of the market, observe multiple instances of a government in spasm trying to take over private industry, and imposing a pricing model by fiat.

Example 1: ontario aims to put physicians on salary

Having smothered the market in health services with monopsony, the same kind of “single payer” monopoly that US leftists are trying to impose there, the government is shocked that money still somehow plays a part. The doctors don’t work for free! Those who don’t get paid enough can go to competing jurisdictions. Hospitals cost money to run! Patients who can have “free” health care want, shock, an infinite amount of it! To the educated highly-self-regarded class in the political elites, how much of this can possibly be unexpected?

Example 2: ontario full-day kindergarten threatens daycares

The ontario government, in a deal with its teacher unions, has decreed that it will not compete with current providers of daycare / preschool / kindergarten facilities. It will simply mandate that the new taxpayer-funded full-day kindergarten program (ages 4/5) shall be provided entirely in the public school system; and that kids are not to go to private before/after-school programs either. In other words, it’s nationalization of this segment of the education service sector, but without the decency to buy out of the current providers who are statutorily precluded from competing. By the way, with civil service unions in full control of the public education system, would you

Example 3: Toronto’s golden greenbelt opportunity: Fletcher

The Ontario Green Belt is a region where by government fiat, private farmland is no longer convertible to future development. This is to control the horrors of “urban sprawl”, where some healthy cities get bigger. This is a distortion of the real estate market: the farmers could formerly use their land as collateral for larger loans, because they anticipated a development sale a decade or two hence. With the “green belt”, their land value has dropped, since the land was in a way pseudo-nationalized too. In the same chicken-shit way as with kindergartens, of course no compensation was paid to those affected by this taking. And yet, in the linked article above, we have that intellectual giant, former (?) communist Paula Fletcher, arguing that there is “no cost” to applying “green belt” restrictions to other new areas. The “no cost” she is bragging about is that same expropriation-without-compensation trick that some governments are so fond of. But people certainly pay.

Example 4: ontario ends rebates to pharmacies

Over time, the ontario government reduces the price it is willing to pay for medicines for the provincial “free” health care system. Over the years, the pharmacies and drugmakers have found ways to counteract the market distortions by finding other ways to maintain profits, via indirect means of markups and rebates. Now ontario is about to declare illegal such arrangements, and by the way, to cut the health care system’s drug payment rates again. The pharmacies / drug-makers are howling of course, making a lot of their income suddenly illegal. Hm, do you think they were paid compensation for this particular pseudo-nationalization by regulation? Surely I jest — no, suck it up, suckers, says the province.

The commonality to these is that private property, perfectly ordinary private contracts, are casually devalued or destroyed by governmental acts, where there is no constitutional restraint placed upon them. In the case here in ontario, there seems to be no effective recourse to the law even when expropriation is blatant. The effect is a metastasizing government, fed by tax money, spewing more spending, standing on the throats of the people engaged in private enterprise. But it’s all for the public good, you see….

This cannot go on too long before the productive population does a california and leaves. I wonder how bad things have to be for people to pull a John Galt shrug. I’m sure the lefties in charge of tightening the vise are wondering the same thing. Perhaps the world financial debt crisis will explode soon enough to provide an answer.