There is nothing more important to living well than a fully-functional mind as part of a healthy body. We all value our health, and yet we trust governments to tell us which food, drugs, and chemicals are safe. They only care about our health so long as it serves their interests. Besides the desire to keep citizens docile and obedient, when it comes to the health industry, governments increase their power by getting citizens to trust them, then selling that trust to the highest bidders in the food, pharmaceutical, and medical industries. Government approval is not good enough if you care about your health. If we are to be free, we must be healthy. If we are to be healthy, we must stop trusting governments.



Except for those who are completely food-independent (by gathering, growing, raising, and/or hunting all of their own food) we rely on many indirect information sources to determine if the food we consume is safe. We seek the approval of experts and authorities to save us from having to do a detailed analysis of everything we eat. There’s nothing wrong with that if we know who to trust. Many private organizations test food for pollution and bacteria and are critical to ensuring food safety all over the world. In many places, governments have completely taken over food safety services. This often results in bribes, lower standards, poor oversight, and opportunities for unscrupulous people to take advantage of people who will eat whatever governments say is safe.

Abuse of food safety authority often means that foods which are unsafe are approved because of bribes, while healthy food producers are shut down or harassed by regulators. Natural, decentralized, or organic food sources are made illegal, and producers who can’t or won’t buy off politicians get shut down. Some extreme interventions have obvious disastrous effects, but the less obvious and more widespread effects can be worse. When foods are subsidized, the market is distorted and industrialized crops become much cheaper, crowding healthy foods out of the market. The detrimental effect on the health of poor people, who have no choice but to eat the subsidized food, is immeasurable.

A relatively new intrusion in the food industry is the regulation (or more importantly, protection from liability) related to genetically-modified food production. Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) have great potential. We can now alter the genetic properties of so many living things to better meet our needs. However, this technology comes with many dangers like making food less safe, polluting non-GMO crops, and throwing ecosystems out of balance. Because this technology is being pursued by massive corporations already adept at bending governments to their purposes, we suffer the consequences of the unsafe side effects of this technology without the chance to hold producers liable. Conscious consumerism can address these problems, but as long as we trust governments to decide what is safe, we don’t stand a chance against dishonest producers.

When governments are used to control pharmaceuticals, many life-saving drugs are kept away from people until their manufacturers can navigate the approval process. Many unsafe drugs are approved because the regulators have been bought off. Due to subsidization of the pharmaceutical industry, patients are encouraged to turn to pills when much more effective, but less profitable cures are available. Doctors who are protected from accountability and paid to push prescriptions will sacrifice the health of their patients for profit. In some cases, doctors can be made liable for not providing specific treatments. Vaccines have a role to play, but because of their mass appeal, they are often required, subsidized, or pushed by governments, and “public health” is compromised to serve government sponsors. While modern medicine has its virtues and can accomplish things natural remedies never could, the balance between natural remedies and modern medicine is skewed toward corporate interests by trusting governments to oversee the health care industry.

The modern, government-controlled lifestyle makes people unhappy in many ways. When unhappiness is uncontrollable, it is known as depression, and it affects millions of people all over the world. But unlike many diseases, depression is not an organic phenomenon, and aside from the obvious ways that governments make us unhappy, there are some specific policies that promote depression. Many government-approved ingredients in processed foods, pollution deemed acceptable by governments, and drugs judged safe by governments cause depression. Governments also promote depression-inducing tax slave lifestyles with limited access to nature. By choosing a different lifestyle, we can avoid these risk factors.

The choice is clear: trust the government and sacrifice your health for corporate profits, or think for yourself and enjoy a healthy life. While governments limit our choices and make healthy living more difficult and more expensive, this is one area where we still have many choices. We can grow our own food, be more conscious consumers, exercise properly, eat right, seek natural remedies, and collect our own water! We can opt out of the unhealthy lifestyles promoted to keep us enslaved! Choosing to be unhealthy and susceptible to chronic diseases makes you more dependent on modern medicine. In the long run, investing in your health pays off by helping avert chronic disease. If you can’t be healthy, you can’t be free.

Chapter 9 Section II From FREEDOM! by Adam Kokesh



I am the author of FREEDOM!, a book endorsed (I mean banned) by the US Department of “Justice.” You can get a copy here. I’m running for Not-President in 2020 on the platform of the peaceful, orderly, and responsible dissolution of the United States federal government. You can find out more here. You can find an event near you here. Whoever has the top comment on this post after 24 hours can claim a free signed copy of FREEDOM! by sending me a message with their address.