“There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections,” US president Donald Trump declared in a February 13 Truth Social rant,  “whether approved by Congress or not!”

While I oppose government ID mandates for any purpose — as did “conservatives,” at least as late as the 1990s,  when it came to national requirements of the sort — I don’t consider voting a special case for which my objections need be stronger or weaker.

Voting in America is a ritual through which we flatter ourselves that we’re engaging in “democracy,” even “self-government,” when 99% of participants periodically choose between two convergent (and nearly identical) wings of the single state-approved political party.

As for the other 1%, which includes me (I’m a partisan Libertarian), we enjoy the freedom to cough during communion, to whisper “I rather prefer freedom” as the crowd yells “Hail Caesar,” but it’s not like our votes are going to bring down the Church of American Government.

It makes about as much difference to how we’re governed from DC as the selection of local Communist Party delegates in Norilsk made to how the Soviet Union was governed from Moscow.

Since voting is purely ceremonial affirmation of our masters’ authority over us, I don’t see that adding a card-flashing element to the liturgy makes much difference.

I am, however, glad to see Trump once again reaffirming Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought’s 2022 observation that “we are in a post constitutional moment in our country.”

Vought says that like it’s a bad thing, calling on his audience to become “radical constitutionalists.”

His version of “radical constitutionalism,” though, can’t be found anywhere in the actual Constitution. Instead of the mere functionary described in the Constitution, whose job is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Vought envisions the president as Kim Jong Un on the Potomac.

Which brings me back to voter ID.

According to Article I of the Constitution, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

And the Constitution leaves the selection of presidential electors to the states.

Here’s the constitutional role of the president in American elections:

THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

So, constitutionally, Trump is not acting — and cannot be acting — as president when he bellows “whether approved by Congress or not!”

Post constitutional much?

But that’s just saying the quiet part out loud. In reality, we’ve been in “post constitutional” mode for most of the country’s history. As early as 1867, Lysander Spooner noted that “whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Now that even supposed constitutionalists are openly admitting it, the rest of us should start acting on it.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In early February, drug company Novo Nordisk sued telehealth company Hims & Hers.

The complaint: Hims & Hers sells GLP-1 drugs at lower prices than Novo Nordisk. That’s the simple version.

The legalese version is that because semaglutide (the drug behind the Novo Nordisk’s “Wegovy” brand name) was removed from the US Food and Drug Administration’s “Drug Shortage List” more than a year ago, “compounding pharmacies” like Hims & Hers no longer operate under a Very Special Important Legal Dispensation to produce it without the permission of Novo Nordisk, which has a Very Special Important Government-Granted Monopoly, aka a patent, on the substance.

“This is a complete sham, and it has been a sham since the shortage ended,” Novo Nordisk attorney John Kuckelman tells CNBC.  “The fact is that their medicines are untested, and they’re putting patients at risk.”

That last part is a startling claim from an attorney about his own client’s product (the difference between semaglutide from Hims & Hers and semaglutide from Novo Nordisk is the name on the label), but I’m more interested in the “shortage” claim.

Novo Nordisk recently introduced Wegovy in pill form, at a price of about $150 a month. Hims & Hers had planned to offer the same chemical compound, without Wegovy branding, for about $50 a month.

The whole POINT of Novo Nordisk’s attempt to enforce its patent is to CREATE a shortage of semaglutide in pill form.

Why? Money. The patent, if enforceable, allows Novo Nordisk to charge customers AT LEAST three times as much for its pill as the market says it can  be sold profitably for. Hims & Hers wouldn’t offer it for $50 if it expected to lose money doing so.

In the theoretical economic environment of “perfect competition,” prices settle at, or infinitesimally above, the cost of production, because the seller who doesn’t offer the lowest possible price won’t move much product.

“Perfect competition” is indeed hypothetical. A million variables affect a million things. If my pencil factory is further from the store than yours, you won’t have to spend as much on shipping. If I make a better pencil commercial than you do, more people will convince themselves my pencils are better than yours. And so on, and so forth.

But even absent “perfect competition,” most people wouldn’t voluntarily pay three times as much for the same thing from Novo Nordisk as they’d pay for it from Hims & Hers.

So, what is the purpose of patents?

According to the US Constitution, it’s to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” by giving inventors the “exclusive right” to their inventions for some set period of time.

But that’s just another way of saying the purpose is to create artificial shortages so that inventors don’t have to compete with others who may copy their inventions — or even independently invent similar things.

Novo Nordisk has already reaped the benefits of being first to market and promote semaglutide, and has fared well in competition with other GLP-1 products from other inventors/manufacturers. Apparently doing well in competition isn’t enough, though — it wants the government to remove its competitors from the market.

Given the hype around semaglutide and other GLP-1s — it seems we’re being led to believe that they cure, prevent, or minimize the effects of pretty much every negative human condition, physical and mental — I’d say they make a pretty good test case against the fiction of “intellectual property.”

While I’m skeptical for the wildest claims about the benefits of GLP-1s, they’re clearly beneficial to enough people, in enough ways, that we should ask why governments are handing out price-gouging opportunities, in the form of monopolies, on them.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Civilization,” H.L. Mencken wrote in 1918, “grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. A century later, American politics seems almost entirely centered around such hobgoblins.

Immigrants (especially “unvetted” immigrants).

Drugs (especially fentanyl, but pretty much anything purchased without a prescription).

Sex trafficking (which seems to consist of pretty much anyone buying, or selling, sex, known as “the world’s oldest profession” for a reason).

Moral panic — defined on Wikipedia as “a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society” — has become our chief political currency.

It’s in the driver’s seat.

It has the wheel.

And it manifests as a form of puritanism, also conveniently defined by Mencken: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

We can’t have that! Something must be done! There oughtta be a law! And the laws always  come down less to prohibition than to permission.

You can cross an imaginary line on the ground if you’ve been “vetted” and received a “visa.”

You can get high if you have permission from a doctor (who got permission from someone else to be a doctor).

You can have some fun in the sack if you pay for a marriage license or buy someone dinner and drinks, but not if you cut out the middlemen.

As a long-time libertarian, I naturally oppose any laws that forbid or regulate voluntary, peaceful actions undertaken by and between consenting adults.

I’ve come across many complex arguments for that position. I’ve made quite a few of those arguments myself. But more and more, I see it as a simple matter in both its both moral and practical aspects.

We don’t live in anything resembling a free society. Most of us don’t want to. We’ve let politicians use our irrational fear of Mencken’s hobgoblins turn us into, for all practical purposes, Mencken’s puritans — and that puritanism, in turn, generates new hobgoblins on demand to keep the merry-go-round turning.

The cycle is an ongoing and recurring feature of history. It has its ebbs and flows. It never goes away completely, but it comes on more strongly at some times than others.

At the moment, it’s at the worst I’ve seen it in my five decades or so of being old enough to observe it. The 1970s and 1980s had their down sides, but they were far more free (and far less irrational) than the 2020s.

How to we turn the tide and get things flowing in the other direction?

Instead of regaling you with schemes for panarchy, pleas for repealing this or that law, etc., let me propose a four-word position (which I got from “dL,” a pseudonymous commenter on my blog, years ago) that, if widely adopted, would make America a much better place to live.

The four words are: “Don’t need your permission.”

If an action doesn’t violate the rights of others, you shouldn’t need anyone else’s permission to do it.

If an action does violate the rights of others, no one can rightfully give you permission to do it anyway.

Everything else, including the entire body of libertarian political theory, is just details.

Anything else, including the entirety of political theory justifying the rule of some by others, is just excuses.

Act accordingly.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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