About the Nothing Store

As Obama and crew print and borrow more and more money, the U.S. dollar faces an uncertain future.

But three cheers for our Unmighty Dollars -- print as many as you like. They're already worth Nothing, so they can't go down in value.

Comments? Email The Nothing Store team!

The Nothing Store issues new currency weekly.


Counterfeiting Instructions:

Click on a denomination above, print the bills, cut them out, and stuff in an envelope. Send to your congressman or senator marked as a CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION. They'll get the message! For the address of your congressman, click here for senators and here for representatives.



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To live outside the law you must be honest. –Bob Dylan

March 26, 2010 Dylan was correct of course; the best enforcement of honest behavior comes from word of mouth, whether its our friends and neighbors, or the sellers ratings on Ebay. With the internet, the world is our neighborhood.

It’s also true that to live outside religion you must be moral.

The more laws we make and the more religions we follow, the more we create hiding places for crooks, degenerates, and their more ordinary kin, the incompetents.

Nobody really understands what the consequences will be of the new health care law. But that is understandable, since it was initiated and passed by those who think honesty and fairness must be enforced, and morality imposed. To them, anything with thousands of pages of rules and regulations must be good.

If your goal is to manage human behavior, then more management is better and an end in itself. Your enemy is chaos, and since freedom is the most chaotic of human behaviors, it follows that freedom is bad. They will not say this of course, but we have learned to watch what people do, not what they say.

So what will happen as the health law comes into effect? Opinions abound, details differ, consequences debated, but we try to look at the bigger picture and see how best to protect ourselves and our families. We believe if everyone did this–looked out for themselves–then a better society would result. But we leave such musings for the political philosophers; the Founders already worked this out, and there’s not much we could add to the discussion.

We see developing an even bigger market in medical tourism. This trend began when the government initiated Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s and accelerated when health insurance companies were regulated in the 1970s through “managed care” laws.

The wealthy have always been able to buy the best medical care, just like they can buy the best of everything. It has been ever thus, and will remain so. The rest of us try to buy the best we can afford. Over time, competition drives prices down and quality up. Everyone benefits.

As medicine became ever more regulated, the wealthy began traveling to wherever in the world they could get the best treatments in the fastest time. The Canadian politician came to America for his heart surgery, and Saudi princes import surgeons and entire medical teams when they need to.

We went to Florida a couple years ago for back surgery, and we were happy to pay a portion up front in cash to get better care. The same operation was offered near where we lived, but in this Florida clinic we were treated like royalty, with catered food in the waiting room and reclining massage chairs. In these pleasant and sunny surroundings we were joined by many Brits and Canadians, some of whom had scrimped and saved to come to Florida and enjoy the same care. “You Americans are nuts to even think about letting the government further muck around with your health care,” they told us.

We asked what they would do if American medicine became more like Canada’s or England’s. “Go somewhere else,” they said.

And now we see that “somewhere else” is nearly the whole world. Wikipedia lists 50 countries that promote medical tourism.

From the Wikipedia entry: A large draw to medical travel is convenience and speed. Countries that operate public health-care systems are often so taxed that it can take considerable time to get non-urgent medical care. Using Canada as an example, an estimated 782,936 Canadians spent time on medical waiting lists in 2005, waiting an average of 9.4 weeks. Canada has set waiting-time benchmarks, e. g. 26 weeks for a hip replacement and 16 weeks for cataract surgery, for non-urgent medical procedures.

When complex regulations and politics make costs go up, as is always the case, even ordinary people will begin to look outside our borders. When insurance is 12k a year, even the dimmest among us will realize they would be better off paying the fine for not having insurance, paying out of pocket for small stuff, and saving for that knee replacement in a beach-front clinic in Costa Rica.

When demand grows, supply follows.

You might even get an American doctor. As doctors and nurses become even more frustrated laboring in the dark bowels of the medical bureacracy, don’t be surprised to see them working abroad, at least part-time. Often those with the best skills and those best able to teach will be the most welcome in foreign clinics.

Doctors Without Borders may take on a whole new meaning.

Of course as soon as this trend dawns on the politicians they will start screaming about exporting jobs. But they won't do much about it, because just like they exempted themselves from Obamacare, they will be jetting off to Switzerland for those fancy Pelosi facelifts.

Already we are hearing reports of the wealthy and the well-connected traveling to take advantage of the new therapies based on targeted cell regeneration and repair.

For emergencies, we’re still at the mercy of government-run health care. C’est la vie. All these taxes should get us something. We’re talking here about elective procedures.


Traveling abroad, you may not be able to sue anybody if something goes wrong, and you will have to do your own research and make your own decisions. If you’re not comfortable with that, if you’d rather have someone else look out for you, if you rely on laws for honesty and church-goers for morality, then you will be better off with Obamacare. Good luck.

Not us. We plan to take advantage of those beautiful unintended consequences. We are saving our pennies. We've always wanted an excuse to visit Costa Rica.