By Gigi Foster at Brownstone dot org.

The natural business model of an army is to fight enemies, so any large army will find enemies to justify its existence. Similarly, the natural business model of a government bureaucracy is to solve problems of the population it "serves," so a large bureaucracy should be expected to find or invent problems to justify its existence.

In similar manners will a religion find or invent threats to our spirit or soul for which it is the solution, and government-subsidised scientists find or invent threats to humanity for which they are the solution.

Promoting behaviours and mindsets that serve to justify and perpetuate the industry is simply inherent to the way each of these industries operates. Those within an industry who do not play along quickly find themselves poor and ignored.

What is the business model of the medical profession? How does it naturally make its money, and what will that mean for the behaviour and worldview promoted by its members? Does the answer vary depending on what kind of 'medic' we are talking about, whether it be a pharmaceutical manufacturer, clinician, surgeon, pathologist, faith healer, or Ayurvedic?

The Mindset of the "Medicine" Business

From Hippocrates onwards, the simplest type of 'medic' has been an individual-to-individual supplier of healing services. This person supposedly has been guided by an ethical obligation to 'do no harm.' Arguably, the most revealing saying of Hippocrates is not the famous Oath, but rather the following: "It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has."

This saying advises the healer to take a holistic view of an individual patient, which may sound good on the surface but is implicitly somewhat paternalistic. Hippocrates invites the medic to consider himself akin to a god or a Jesus-like figure, doing no harm and aspiring to high-level wisdom to sort out the deep problems of each individual patient he comes across.

In terms of mindset and marketing, medics have an economic incentive to see disease everywhere and to pretend to be able to fight it. An especially strong incentive exists to see chronic illness everywhere, since anything chronic enables a medic to find lifelong patients. Like any parasitical entity, the medic's business is optimised when the host is not killed quickly but can be drained over time.

The weakened host/patient is bled for as long as possible until the end is inevitable, at which point the bleeding ramps up to the maximum output level (essentially, what remains of the host is eaten). In biological terms, the most economically successful medic is a lifelong symbiont-parasite who becomes a detritivore at the end of a patient's life.

Those in the medical profession may do some good early in the life of their hosts and at moments of acute injury or major illness during adulthood, as these actions promote survival of the host, which enables future parasitism. Beyond this, medics have a natural incentive to tell people that they are ill and in need of constant checkups and treatments, and to turn the final year of a patient's life into a miserable enslavement to expensive 'healing.'

Turning Disease into Dollars

In the US, the medical industry now accounts for 18% of GDP, meaning almost one in five dollars generated ends up in the pocket of a medic of some sort. In fairness, the US is the global outlier: it delivers a similar life expectancy (about 78) as both China and Cuba deliver to their people at about 20 times the per-capita cost spent by China, and 10 times that spent by Cuba. In China, only one in 20 dollars of GDP is spent on "medics," broadly defined.

From these comparisons, we might deduce that only 1/10 of the health budget in the US buys actual health. So what is the other 90% spent on?

Consider the graph below, showing total medical costs by age category in the Netherlands, a country with many similar health-sector features as the US, an...