opinion

This letter is in response to a published letter from Paul Smith (Executive Director, LNRMC) calling for the closing of Presbyterian Hospital in Huntersville.

Paul Smith, the executive director of Lake Norman Regional Medical Center, calls for the state to shut down Presbyterian Hospital North in Huntersville (Letters, July 1, 2005, Huntersville Herald) because PHN doesn't have a valid "Certificate of Need."

Certificate of Need? By what right does Mr. Smith or the State demand such a thing? The only legitimate "authority" a business need answer to is the market, i.e., you, me and all the individuals that comprise the buying public. We citizens are what determines whether a business is needed or not, by voting with our dollars. If PHN is "needed" it will prosper. If it's not, it won't. We certainly don't need the state or Mr. Smith to tell us what we need.

The state has neither the means to determine our needs, nor the moral authority to impose their bureaucratic determinations on us. The state exists only to serve us by protecting our liberty; it is not our master and it does not have the moral authority to deny the freedom of individuals and corporations to transact peaceful business. Any such interference is constitutes a violation of the rights of the business concerned and the rights of us individuals who would be customers.

Arrogant and totalitarian measures such as these have more in common with dictatorships and the Mafia than with business in America. Unfortunately such regulations and their exploitation by the likes of Mr. Smith are becoming all too common, consider the slew of recent anti-trust and eminent domain abuses. This degeneration of America into statism is the consequence of replacing individualism with collectivism, the individual rights of consumers, business owners, and corporations with bureacratic decrees in the name of "the public good."

The fact that immoral laws exist is a reason to oppose them, not an excuse to cynically exploit them and summon the coercive power of the state to shut down a competitor. Shame on Mr. Smith and LNRMC. And shame on us for allowing such laws and regulations to be passed.

Nigel Duckworth
July 11, 2005