Friends of Peter Schmidt

04/11/2026

04/11/2026

The ugliest part of statism is that it trains people to call extraction normal. You work, build, save, invest, buy, sell, inherit, own property, and somehow there is always another hand waiting to take a cut. It never ends because the system was never designed around consent. It was designed around access. Access to your labor. Access to your time. Access to your future.

And then the same political class that drains all of this wealth turns around and demands gratitude for giving a fraction of it back in inefficient programs, bloated bureaucracies, and endless promises. That is not freedom. That is dependency dressed up as civilization.

A truly free society would not treat productive people like a revenue source to be carved up from every angle. Statism survives by convincing the public that being endlessly taxed, regulated, monitored, and milked is just the price of living in society. It is not. It is the price of allowing rulers to stand above everyone else.

04/10/2026

Why does a simple doctor’s visit feel like a bureaucratic nightmare? 🏥📑

From a Christian Libertarian and Austrian Economic perspective, the American healthcare "system" isn't a failure of the free market—it’s a Frankenstein’s monster created by decades of government distortion. When we decouple the patient from the payment, we lose more than just money; we lose our agency and our dignity.

Here is why the current "middleman" model is a mess:

1. The Problem of Employer-Tied Insurance 🔗
Ever wonder why your health is tied to your 9-to-5? It was a historical accident. During WWII, the government froze wages. To compete for workers, companies started offering "fringe benefits" like health insurance. The state then made these benefits tax-exempt for bosses, but not for individuals.

The Result: "Job Lock." Millions stay in roles they dislike just to keep "benefits," distorting the labor market and stripping individuals of their portable medical freedom.

2. The Death of the Price Signal 📉
In a healthy market, the buyer and seller negotiate. In healthcare, the "buyer" (you) is separated from the "seller" (the doctor) by a Third-Party Payer (Insurance/Government).

Moral Hazard: If you aren't paying the bill directly, you have no incentive to shop for value. If the doctor isn't billing you directly, they have no incentive to lower prices.

Economic Blindness: As Ludwig von Mises argued, without a functioning price system, we have no idea what a surgery should actually cost. It’s all bureaucratic guesswork.

3. The "Middleman Tax" (PBMs & Insurance) 🧛‍♂️
Insurance was meant for catastrophes (like a house fire), but we’ve turned it into a pre-payment plan for routine care.

The Black Box: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and insurers act as gatekeepers, negotiating "rebates" that stay in their pockets while you pay inflated premiums. They add layers of cost without adding a single unit of actual healing.

4. A Moral Violation of Subsidiarity ⛪
As Christians, we believe in Subsidiarity: problems should be handled at the most local level possible. Healthcare is a deeply personal, relational act.

Stewardship: When the state or a corporation manages your health "package," they are acting as the steward of your body.

The Solution: True charity isn't a government mandate; it’s Mutual Aid. We need to return to voluntary associations and "Healthcare Sharing Ministries" where we actually bear one another's burdens, not just pay into a faceless fund.

The Path Forward: Decouple insurance from employment. End the tax bias. Return to Direct Primary Care (DPC) where you pay your doctor, not a middleman. It’s time to restore the dignity of the person and the efficiency of the market. 🕊️✨

04/09/2026

The state has never created wealth. It has only mastered the art of taking what productive people build, running it through layers of coercion, waste, bureaucracy, debt, inflation, and political theater, then handing a small portion of it back while demanding gratitude for its “generosity.”

That is one of the biggest psychological scams in modern society.

People are trained from childhood to think government “provides” things, as if politicians and bureaucrats somehow manufacture food, housing, medicine, roads, healthcare, retirement income, education, or relief out of thin air. But they do not create those things. Workers create them. Builders create them. Truckers move them. Engineers design them. Entrepreneurs risk capital to make them possible. Families sacrifice for them. Producers, savers, inventors, and ordinary people make civilization function. The state just inserts itself in the middle and claims ownership over the flow.

And the ugliest part is what happens next.

Once the state has taken enough from everyone through taxes, inflation, licensing, fines, debt, and monetary manipulation, it rebrands a fraction of that stolen wealth as “help.” Suddenly the people who were robbed are supposed to feel thankful when a tiny slice of their own productivity gets returned to society with strings attached, paperwork attached, surveillance attached, and political propaganda attached.

That is not generosity. That is institutionalized theft dressed up as compassion.

A truly free society would not depend on rulers seizing resources and redistributing them for power, votes, and control. It would allow wealth to stay in the hands of the people who actually earned it, created it, and know best how to use it. Real prosperity comes from voluntary exchange, private production, mutual aid, innovation, and human cooperation, not from political middlemen pretending to be providers.

The state wants credit for solving problems it often helped create in the first place.

And once you really see that, it becomes impossible to unsee.
Everything the state “gives” was first taken from someone else.
Usually from millions of someone elses.

And after skimming off its cut, it expects applause for returning pennies.

Full stop.

04/08/2026

Before April 8, 1913, you had zero say over who represented your state in the U.S. Senate.

Zero.

State legislatures picked them. Often in backrooms. Often with bribes.

One Montana legislator openly sold his Senate vote for $250. Another election deadlock left Delaware with no senators for four years. The system wasn't noble. It was rotten.

So the Seventeenth Amendment gave you the power. Direct election of senators. A victory for the people.

Or was it?

The argument FOR: Democracy works when citizens choose their leaders. No more corrupt deals. No more empty Senate seats. Accountability.

The argument AGAINST (and this is the part history classes skip):

The Senate was designed to represent state governments, not mob opinion. James Madison warned that direct elections would turn senators into "mere demagogues." States would lose their voice in Washington. Power would shift to big cities, big money, and big media.

And critics were right about one thing: Within decades, Senate campaigns became the most expensive in history. Populists and celebrities won seats once held by sober statesmen.

The 2026 question:

Has direct election made the Senate better? Or did we trade legislative corruption for billionaire-funded attack ads?

You still can't name your state representative to the Electoral College. You never elected the Supreme Court. But for 113 years, you have chosen your senator.

Was that progress—or a subtle loss of balance?

💬 Would you go back to legislature-chosen senators? Yes or no?

04/08/2026

What makes a Ponzi scheme immoral is not just that it collapses. It is that it depends on a constant flow of new participants to sustain promises made to earlier ones. The structure itself guarantees that someone, eventually, is left holding the bag.

Now take a step back and look at how many large systems in modern society operate. When payouts to current beneficiaries rely almost entirely on the contributions of new entrants, when the math only works if the base keeps expanding, when future obligations vastly exceed current funding, you are no longer dealing with something stable. You are dealing with a system that requires perpetual growth to avoid exposure.

This is where statism becomes dangerous. It normalizes structures that would be called fraudulent if done privately, then shields them with legality and force. The conversation gets flipped. Instead of asking whether the system is sustainable or ethical, people are told to trust it simply because it is institutionalized.

History shows us over and over that centralized systems built on forced participation and long term promises tend to drift toward insolvency or restructuring. Not because people are evil, but because incentives matter. When those designing the system are not personally accountable for its long term outcomes, the pressure to maintain the illusion today outweighs the need to fix the reality tomorrow.

The real question is not whether one system is labeled legitimate and another is labeled criminal. The real question is this: does the structure depend on constant new input to sustain old promises, and can it survive without that growth?

If the answer is no, then the label does not change the underlying reality.

04/08/2026

Does the state protect our health, or does it stand in the way of our healing? 🛡️💊

From a Christian Libertarian and Austrian Economic perspective, the institutions we’re told "keep us safe"—like the FDA and Intellectual Property (IP) laws—often act as a bottleneck for human flourishing. When we replace the organic discovery of the market with the rigid edicts of a bureaucracy, we lose more than just money; we lose lives.

Here are 4 reasons why we need to rethink the medical status quo:

1. The "Legal Monopoly" of IP Laws 🛑
In a free market, ideas aren't scarce. If I use a formula to save a life, it doesn't stop you from doing the same. But modern IP laws turn ideas into state-enforced monopolies.

The Ladder of Innovation: Instead of scientists building on each other's work, patents "fence off" knowledge for decades.

The Stewardship Issue: As Christians, we believe in the mandate to alleviate suffering. Is it truly "good stewardship" to use the hand of the state to block a competitor from making a life-saving medicine cheaper and more accessible?

You may want to take a look at our last post about IP here: https://www.facebook.com/thechristianlibertarian/posts/pfbid02TMbPncDsippuqjDQqpfDoVhhUkdM2JvLW46Yq22fBdfuQN7X3cyCDe8MpWc7Fayhl

2. The "Invisible Graves" of the FDA 🪦
Economist Frédéric Bastiat taught us to look at the "Seen vs. the Unseen."

The Seen: A drug with a side effect makes the evening news. The FDA is terrified of this.

The Unseen: The thousands of people who die waiting for a 10-year, $2 billion approval process to finish. These people are in "invisible graves."
By prioritizing bureaucratic "safety" over the individual’s Right to Try, the state strips the patient of their agency and dignity.

3. Regulatory Capture: Big Pharma’s "Moat" 🏰
Heavy regulation doesn't just "check" big corporations; it protects them.

Barriers to Entry: When it costs billions to clear regulatory hurdles, small, innovative startups are priced out before they even start.

The Result: We end up with a "Medical Monopoly" where only the giants can afford to play, and niche cures for rare diseases are abandoned because the "compliance cost" is too high to justify.

4. The Moral Alternative: Decentralized Trust 🤝
We don't need a government stamp to have safety. We need voluntary certification.

Earned Trust: Imagine a world where independent medical guilds, Christian charities, and third-party labs (like Underwriters Laboratories) compete to certify the safety and efficacy of drugs.

True Liberty: This moves the authority back where it belongs: to the individual, their family, and their physician.

Health isn't a gift from the state; it's a blessing that flourishes when we honor the Imago Dei and the freedom to innovate. Let’s break the barriers to healing. 🕊️✨

04/06/2026