Scott Walker, self-proclaimed governor of Florida, has made big pushes to force state employees and welfare recipients to get tested for unpatentable drugs. This push has been met with cheers by many people of the neoconservative persuasion. I don’t understand their reasoning but I guess somebody receiving state money is supposed to only use patentable drugs. Either way, that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is the reason Scott Walker has been pushing for drug testing of recipients of state money. It’s not because he wants to be tough on crime or believes unpatentable drug use is bad. The reason he supports drug testing is because he stands to make a fortune off of it:
If you have a $62 million investment, representing the biggest single chunk of your $218 million in wealth, and you put it in a trust under your wife’s name, does that mean you’re no longer involved in the company?
Florida Gov. Rick Scott says it does.
Scott has aggressively pursued policies like testing state workers and welfare recipients for drugs, switching Medicaid patients to private HMOs and shrinking public health clinics. All these changes could benefit that $62 million investment, but Scott sees no legal conflict between his public role and private investments.
All governmental systems eventually devolve into fascism. By this I mean the state always ends up merging with the merchants. Under socialism system the state claims ownership over all merchant activities outright. Say what you will about socialism, at least it’s upfront about wanting to merge the state and merchants. Under a republic, such as the United States, the politicians simply pass laws that favor merchants they have a financial interest in. Whether politicians mandate the use of services provided by market actors they’ve invested in or use their political connections to financially benefit their spouses the outcome is the same. The politically well-connected merchants make a fortune and everybody else suffers.