West Palm Beach police rescue elderly from affordable dentures

On Wednesday, April 25, Roger Bean of West Palm Beach, Florida was arrested and charged for providing a service to customers who were apparently satisfied. He is a criminal without victims, at least according to those that the government claims that he victimized. Unlike other victimless criminals, though, Mr. Bean's dealings were not in prostitution, gambling, or illegal intoxicants.

For some time he had been fitting customers for dentures in his garage, manufacturing the dentures himself, and then providing them to customers for around $200 per set. This service, which usually costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000, was provided to elderly customers who were also Bean's neighbors and friends.

From the news reports, Mr. Bean hardly seems like a scam artist. According to the 72-year-old head of the neighborhood watch program, "He's helping the old people who don't have a few dollars. I think the world of him." Unlike back-room plastic surgeons who we occasionally hear about having horribly disfigured some hapless customer during a cut-rate corporeal upgrade, there is no evidence that Bean was performing invasive procedures, or, in fact, medical procedures of any kind. He was simply fitting clients for dentures and then manufacturing dentures for them.

Bean's "crimes" were against the American Dental Association, whose Commission on Dental Accreditation has been tasked with granting (and denying) accreditation to dental schools since 1979. This ADA commission enjoys a monopoly position as the only dental school accreditation agency recognized by the federal Department of Education.

Roger Bean and others like him are being persecuted for daring to compete with those dentists favored by the powers that be. After all, who were Roger Bean's crimes against? Did he defraud his customers? Or is this just economic protectionism for licensed dentists against a competitor who is providing a substitute for their services at a tenth of the price?

When it comes to transportation, not everyone needs a Cadillac. They are nice, to be sure, but many, many people can do without the luxury features of that high-end brand and instead make it from point A to point B in a Honda Civic or another, more affordable vehicle. To be sure, there are many benefits to the presence of top-shelf brands on the market. Many features now only available to the wealthiest customers will filter down to the buyers of economy-class cars in a matter of years. The purchasers of luxury brands make all of us better off in the sense that they subsidize the research and development of new products and features, effectively helping the relevant industries determine what to include in future product lines.

As with cars, not every consumer of dental services needs a dentist with a DDS or a DMD. Some people might choose to have their needs met through a less costly alternative. Unfortunately for bargain-seekers, the ADA cartel limits the number of dentists who can compete with its membership, and so it lobbied the feds to declare it to be the gatekeeper for entry into the dental profession. When service providers like Bean are arrested, it isn’t protecting the elderly, or the toothless, or the stupid. No, such heavy-handed enforcement is carried out with little regard for these “victims” and the plain fact that each one found himself, thanks to Mr. Bean, either able to afford dentures or, in other cases, able to direct their saved funds towards other ends, perhaps including life-saving or life-lengthening medical care.

The ADA has historically provided many useful services, including its evaluation of dental hygiene and health products. Just about everyone who has purchased a tube of toothpaste or a new toothbrush has seen the organization's familiar logo. The ADA endorsement has been a helpful metric for consumers in determining which products may be best suited for their dental hygienic needs. However, the real value of their "stamp of approval," just as with any other similar organization, plummets as soon as the evaluators are effectively granted a monopoly. While another, competing organization could theoretically be formed to test and rate dental health/hygiene products, the ADA would still benefit from its government-ordained appellation of "official" provider of this information. And with regards to the accreditation of dental schools, the ADA is the only (legal) game in town.

As soon as such an organization depends on government edict rather than consumer confidence for its authority, there is a much lower incentive to provide the most useful information to the public, and ultimately the public suffers. While this, the real crime against consumers goes on, the heroic Roger Bean sits in a jail cell, waiting for the criminal justice system to mete out his punishment for saving his friends and neighbors thousands of dollars.

Fiat Money and the Elderly

Yesterday I went to Montgomery, AL to speak to a group of about twenty-five retired gentlemen on the invitation of a certain Mr. Cluck. My Jeep CJ-7 committed suicide while I was en route, something for which I was not really prepared given that this occurred at around 7am. I do not usually rise until 8am or so. I was fortunate enough to be within close enough range of the speaking venue for Mr. Cluck to get in his car and pick me up from the side of Interstate 85.

I arrived at the appointed place at around 8:20am (twenty minutes late), and no one seemed angry. So far, so good. I had been asked to speak on monetary policy, gold, and inflation. Thankfully, I built the index for the new edition of Rothbard's What Has the government Done to Our Money?, which now incorporates his Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar (buy it here), over the summer. To shore up my monetary theory and history knowledge prior to my lecture, I read excerpts from The Gold Standard, (ed. Lew Rockwell; buy it here), Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle (buy it here), and other assorted essays on money, including one by Walter Block. Despite this preparation, I was still quite nervous about delivering this speech--my first libertarian talk of substantial length to a non-libertarian audience.

Having never delivered a lecture of any length on money before, I wasn't quite sure where to begin. After talking about the Mises Institute's programs and activities for a few minutes, I dove right in. First, I started out with the basics: exchange arising as a result of the division of labor's benefits to participants, the increasing complexity of barter transactions relative to the specialization of the labor force, and the medium of exchange that reconciles all of these. I talked about the criteria for choosing a good money commodity (commonly valued, durable, divisible, homogeneous).

After the introduction to basic capitalist theory, I started in on the history of money in the United States, and the gradual move from sound money to fiat money. When presenting such a horror story of corruption and hubris, it is difficult to sound even nominally pro-government. I usually don't worry about such things, but, hey, I don't like for older folks to dislike me. They usually know what they are talking about, and I didn't need another blow to the old ego (some people close to me would disagree). Despite having at least some Social Security recipients in the room, not one person piped up to defend Franklin D. Roosevelt from my assault on his "good name."

Again, so far, so good. Then I went on to the even more controversial stuff. I started talking about inflation, and how it causes the business (boom-bust) cycle. Not having been terribly familiar with the fine points of Austrian business cycle theory, this was the portion of my talk that had me sweating the most before hand. I am not certain, but I feel fairly sure that everyone who heard me got some idea as to why inflation causes the boom-bust cycle. I concluded my talk by advising everyone to include gold in their investment portfolios as an inflation hedge, and by reading quotes from both Ludwig von Mises and Ron Paul about sound money and government.

As it turns out, I shouldn't have been nervous to begin with. The only questions that were asked of me with which I felt uncomfortable were more or less financial planning questions. Since my host, Mr. Cluck, is a certified financial planner, I gave a quick disclaimer about my not being an expert in the area of investment, offered some questionable advice, and then referred the question-asker to the professional. Everyone applauded in the end, and a few gentlemen even purchased books. To ice the cake, one kind fellow gave me a ride to a auto shop, where I waited to be picked up by the tow truck driver who would be my chauffeur back to Auburn.

So, to tally the final score for the outing, I lost a car in the deal, but I netted tons of confidence in my ability to lecture for the length of a normal class period. The coolest aspect of the whole ordeal was that I reaffirmed the truth of the old adage by Lucius Annaeus Seneca that "Men learn while they teach." Now I just hope that someone comes along and asks me to lecture on tons of topics with which I am not acquainted. Then, I really might end up knowing something.