"I think it's naive about the power of an entrenched going concern which owns the wires."
That may be. I was simply trying to show what the ultimate goal should look like, not necessarily how to get there.
"No, really it's just the money. If they own every local newspaper and all the ones outside the city (or their equivalents do), then you're hosed."
How? Once people realize they're being fed misinformation, demand will surge for a local paper with news closer to the truth, and individuals will see that demand and want to cash in on it. They will create new newspapers to fill that demand. The only thing that could stop that from happening is the barrel of a gun backed by a law. Such a law could not exist if politicians were unable to fulfill the demand among corrupt companies for the ability monopolize the public. These corrupt companies exist, and their demand exists, and politicians are filling the demand. Stop the supply, and the demand will starve to death.
"Your dollar vote goes to Kodos or to Kang. The "I'll choose the other guy" response is how it's supposed to work, idealistically; unfortunately the reality is that finding your trustworthy independent news source is very difficult, and finding it in a conventional print or televised medium is approaching impossible."
Once that "other guy" is found though, word will spread rapidly and the market will shift to support him. His job is maintained provided that he supplies what the public wants, and as long as they want the truth, he will want to give it to them.
"Yes, private enterprise and competition are supposed to ensure these things don't happen; but initial imbalances enable firms to snowball their existing success, to the point that they approach and surpass governments in their power to dick with individual liberties."
Again, you are not making sense. How can a company "dick with liberties" if they have no political power. They cannot physically hold you at gunpoint, because you could call the police - the enforcers maintaining your rights. Only when the government is open to financial manipulation can a company "dick with liberties" and get away with it.
"You really think any private enterprise could arrange for the right of ways without government interference?"
They would want to because there would be demand for it. People want the internet, and companies want profits. It is only when you politically force the market to give people only one choice that companies are able to keep prices high and make ridiculous restrictions to save their asses. Given the choice between a company blocking P2P and one allowing it, I would choose the latter and influence my friends/family/coworkers to do the same. We don't have that choice. Why do you believe that the reason you only have one company to choose from in your area is only the fault of the company?
"Really? How many papers do you have where you live. Most major cities seem to have only one real option."
That is a false analogy. The reason the number of local newspapers has gone down is because more and more people have been getting their news from radio (80+ years), television (60+ years), and most importantly today, the internet. That is an example of the market in action. People want their news in a more convenient way and are shifting their funding to these other media. Local newspapers have adapted to the changing market by creating ad-supported websites offering local news. I see no monopoly here.
With that said, in my area we have larger newspapers, and smaller ones, and ones that are free but supported through advertisements. And if I want, I can have one from another city delivered to my doorstep, as you admitted.
Agreed, however, that statement "I did it because I could" is also being made by the politicians who make these regulations. If you legally remove the ability to add restrictions such as this to the market, you prevent the market from being deformed as it currently is in the case of internet service.
"That said, there's no reason for the FCC to go out of their way to enable Information Domination."
The FCC does what it does because its members are influenced by friends and financiers. The reason I have only one cable choice in my area is due to government interference.
"No, they'll try to monetize that, and (as collateral damage) limit citizens' access to external sources of information."
How exactly can a company with no political influence be able to limit my access to anything? It is only because politics (laws, regulations) are tied to money (donations from companies) are they able to restrict my access. If the local newspaper refuses to print news from outside the city, I will drop them and subscribe to another paper offering more news. I will tell my friends and neighbors to do the same, and they will willingly choose to either keep or drop their subscription as well.
Comcast is only a symptom. Comcast would not be able to get away with what it currently can if not for the local monopolies handed to it by the government. The company has manipulated the government to avoid upgrading their lines to actually handle the bandwidth they claim to their customers.
"Comcast deserves all the examination it has gotten, and more. They have been terrible."
The real problem, though, is that the government is able to impose such monopolies on us. It's pointless to go after companies as they become problems, because these companies will continue to spring up. The effective approach is to stop the problem at the source: get politics out of money. Don't permit legislation that creates monopolies and destroys competition. Trash these FCC regulations, and the market will take care of itself. People will have choices, and companies will have to compete to offer what people want at the lowest price possible. And idiotic situations such as the one we currently find ourselves in will not be able to thrive.
Comcast would not be able to get away with what it currently can if not for the local monopolies handed to it by the government. The company has manipulated the government to avoid upgrading their lines to actually handle the bandwidth they claim to their customers.
The real problem, though, is that the government is able to impose such monopolies on us. It's pointless to go after companies as they become problems, because these companies will continue to spring up. The effective approach is to stop the problem at the source: get politics out of money. Don't permit legislation that creates monopolies and destroys competition. Trash these FCC regulations, and the market will take care of itself. People will have choices, and companies will have to compete to offer what people want at the lowest price possible. And idiotic situations such as the one we currently find ourselves in will not be able to thrive.
How many people in the US still rely solely on newspapers for their news? If the point of this cross-ownership restriction is to prevent manipulation of the media, the manipulation will be restricted to the media under the company's ownership. Once people realize the company is feeding them bad information (which they can more and more easily accomplish thanks to the internet), the company will get a bad image and be rejected by willing individuals. A newspaper is only as strong as its readership base.
"That's ok - he'll still put his life on the line to protect your right to continue to whine."
I am helping fund the position that he voluntarily chose to fill with full understanding of what dangers are involved with that position. Throw in the fact that my funding is not voluntary given (in which case I would gladly fork over to the government more than my share), but forcibly taken from me for the simple reason that I was born here and need to survive. I and anyone else in this situation (read: all US citizens) are free and justified to whine.
I was a joke. I was pointing out how dumb it would be to throw out all your DVDs and buy a bunch of overpriced discs just because they're the new thing.
How does that work? Are their pants down in(side) the cookie jar, or are they physically standing inside some freak monster cookie jar, with their pants down?
Let's see how much you love it when your potential employer brings up a list of the local strip clubs you've visited in the last year, or informs you of the number of times you've exceeded the speed limit in the city (besides the number of times you've actually been stopped by the police), and then asks you to "explain again why we should hire you."
"The result will be judged accurate when there are lots of duplicate experiments getting the same result."
You can do the same experiment as many times as you want, but as long as you are using the same theoretical foundations, you won't get any closer to the actual result. The only way to judge that the results are accurate are to devise experiments capable of giving results similarly precise but which are founded on different, but accepted, principles. Sort of like how the various methods for dating fossils give similar results.
"Fourthly, the ideal free market and free society assume that information is perfect, complete and has zero acquisition-cost. This is one of the reasons that we do not have free markets nor free societies (in the ideal sense)."
Regarding your fourth point in more detail, it is not necessarily true that the free market requires perfect competition or perfect information to function. There are arguments both ways. Follow through the following example and analysis as provided by Brian Simpson's book "Markets Don't Fail!" (quoted from a review of the book):
"One of the most popular criticisms of the market involves asymmetric information. This term is 'used to describe a situation where either the buyer or seller in a market exchange has some information that the other does not have.'(p.189)
This situation, it is claimed, can lead to complete breakdown of a market. The most famous example is the lemons problem in the used car market, analyzed by George Akerlof. Buyers of used cars have much less information that dealers about which cars are "lemons." "Because of this uncertainty, buyers will be reluctant to pay as much money for any particular car when compared to a situation in which they know for certain that a car they are buying is not a lemon."(p.190) Sellers will react by withdrawing the best cars from the market, since they will deem the prices offered for them inadequate. This in turn induces buyers to offer even lower prices, since, with the best cars withdrawn, the chances of getting a lemon increase. A spiraling process threatens to destroy this market entirely.
"Simpson's strategy of response should by now be familiar. He first notes that the free market has means of supplying information to those who need it. "For instance, businesses often stand behind their products to show that they think their products are worth buying. They use warranties and guarantees to protect customers from defects and to insure that customers are satisfied." (p.193) If car buyers want more information about used cars, why will they be unable to secure it? And, after all, there is a flourishing used car market, Akerlof to the contrary notwithstanding. I venture to add an additional point. Why is it assumed that sellers of the best cars, when they set their asking prices, will not take into account the buyers' lack of information?
"Just as with network effects, Simpson carries his criticism further. It is almost impossible to find a transaction in which persons have exactly equal information. Asymmetries of information are everywhere present, and no acceptable criteria have been advanced for separating "acceptable" from "unacceptable" asymmetries. And suppose that a market does break down, in just the fashion that Akerlof has described. This would come about through the voluntary acts of people that do not violate rights. If so, the government is not justified in interfering , even if it could increase "efficiency" by doing so."
"how would you recoup the cost associated with catching a life-threatening disease from someone who have so few assets that what you could recoup would not be sufficient to pay for the treatment (if there was one)?"
These are all symptoms of the same problem. Ideally costs would be a fraction of they are now thanks to competition (both among insurance companies and among doctors) reducing the cost of insurance, medication, and treatment, and setting up payment plans that are of the most benefit to the customer. This would mean you could set up a payment plan with the healthcare provider and a payment plan with the defendant. Alternatively, requests could be made to the community for donations - this is exactly what taxes are, except that in the tax-free situation, competition would drive down costs for everyone involved. It is the government that is (unintentionally?) keeping these costs inflated.
"Weeding out undesirables semi-permanently by putting them in ghettos or isolation wards at the point of a gun for the profit and protection of others... no, thank you."
Who is suggesting doing this? Forcing people to do anything at the point of a gun is immoral and illegal.
"I am willing to pay a tax to keep the amount of diseases down, so that I am healthier and that society does not need to confine ill people to a much greater extent."
This is key here. There is no problem with voluntary taxation, just as there is no problem with donating part of your income to a cause you deem worthy. The problem occurs when you tell everyone else in the country that they must support your chosen cause.
"Or do we stick all the after-some-treatment-but-not-enough disease-spreading poor people in a place where they won't be bothering us currently-healthy?"
Forcing anyone off of their property is a violation of their fundamental rights. So no, we don't stick anyone anywhere!
"I realize that this is purely speculatively, but with the current social dynamics, people would not spend money on preventative care in the near future, because they would believe that the lowest-cost insurance will cover them. We would thus see a spike, at least temporarily, in the amount of communicable diseases being, well, communicated."
Can we agree that it is the poor that are primarily spreading communicable disease? How would a competition-driven cost-reducing insurance system not enable more poor people to get basic healthcare and afford drugs (also competition-driven) that would prevent these diseases.
Additionally, those 3% of (the most common) causes of death that are caused by communicable diseases were specifically caused by influenza and pneumonia, both of which have various vaccines. Insurance companies would have an incentive to persuade its customers to vaccinate (fewer infected customers to treat in the future) - this incentive would lead to increased access to vaccines, reduced cost to the customer, and (most importantly) increased vaccination.
"Secondly, some people will not allow themselves to be isolated just because they can communicate diseases. Even people with incurable communicable diseases today whose actions show that they will not stop spreading them are not kept separated from the population."
As long as they are not trespassing on others' property, or spreading the disease onto others' property (such as if they stood on the sidewalk and coughed all over your mailbox), what problem would they be? The moment they trespass onto private property without the owner's consent, or the moment they are found to have been concealing their disease from an affected property owner, they can be prosecuted. In the case of an emergency situation such as a plague, things are different. The military would be called in to set up quarantines and infected individuals would be forcibly quarantined to avoid violating the rights of the rest of the public. This situation is in fact ide
"Most post-secondary institutions in this country require all students and employees to carry insurance. Many private companies also require insurance as a condition of employment."
The only difference is that you can walk away from such a job. You cannot walk away from the current system without leaving the country or going to jail.
"Even more so, what fundamental right is being violated in universal health care?"
I don't think you've understood this discussion at all. I want health insurance. I want to be prepared for emergencies. I don't want the fruit of my labor going to support other people's definitions of "insurance". Not only would my money be going to plenty of people trying to exploit the system, but it would be leaving my city and my state to benefit other cities and states; this is detrimental to the local economy.
As for fundamental rights - the right to property. I am working and being compensated for my labor. Taxation (such as universal healthcare) allows strangers to be compensated for my labor. That is a violation of a fundamental right.
"But I don't get to chose to withhold the portion of my tax dollars that go to the war because I don't support it.
Exactly, yours and my rights were violated in that case, and continue to be violated. Voluntary taxation I have no problem with. I too would not have given a cent to this war, but my only choice (literally made at gunpoint) was to accept it or go to jail.
"If I can't withhold the part of my tax dollars that are used to kill people, why do you get to withhold the part of your tax dollars that could be used to heal people?"
Two wrongs don't make a right. Rights violations are rights violations and the ends do not justify the means, ever.
I was not ignoring the tragedy of the commons example, but simply trying to clarify outright what "issues" he was specifically referring to. In the case of tragedy of the commons, one of the proposed solutions is privatization with the financial incentive to keep the resource sustainable.
I would also ask you to clarify what is meant by the "common good" on a per-person scale in a given situation. You would quickly find that determining who should and shouldn't benefit in a given case would have to be guided by whim or arbitrary rules of unknown foundation.
Regardless, the "common good" should not infringe upon individual rights and freedoms.
Ignoring your fear mongering, equivocation, and poor attempt at equating healthcare in a completely different (both socially and scientifically) era to today's era, the only argument of substance in your post is the claim that we need to help sick people because they can infect non-sick people. First of all, that would only be true for communicable diseases. This clarification alone eliminates 97% of the most common causes of death. As for communicable disease, individual property rights are enough to counteract unintentional outbreaks. In emergency situations, the government would be able to quarantine infected individuals. If an infected invidiual trespasses onto your property without your consent, they can be prosecuted. If someone you come into contact with misinforms you about their infection status, they too can be prosecuted. This serves as a deterrent and a retroactive means to compensation.
"I find it amusing how you and your ilk tout the wonders of the free market, without ever realizing that what you propose is neither free nor market-driven."
In what way is a society in which people are free to give their earnings to whoever they want not a free society? In what way is a society in which people compete to provide what people want at the lowest price possible not market driven?
"You're just demanding that someone else pay the bill for you, whether through taxes or charity."
Where is that even close to being implied by what I said? Can you please clarify how I am demanding someone else to pay my bill when I say that I should be able to pay my own bill and not pay others' bills?
Slashdot Mirror
"I think it's naive about the power of an entrenched going concern which owns the wires."
That may be. I was simply trying to show what the ultimate goal should look like, not necessarily how to get there.
"No, really it's just the money. If they own every local newspaper and all the ones outside the city (or their equivalents do), then you're hosed."
How? Once people realize they're being fed misinformation, demand will surge for a local paper with news closer to the truth, and individuals will see that demand and want to cash in on it. They will create new newspapers to fill that demand. The only thing that could stop that from happening is the barrel of a gun backed by a law. Such a law could not exist if politicians were unable to fulfill the demand among corrupt companies for the ability monopolize the public. These corrupt companies exist, and their demand exists, and politicians are filling the demand. Stop the supply, and the demand will starve to death.
"Your dollar vote goes to Kodos or to Kang. The "I'll choose the other guy" response is how it's supposed to work, idealistically; unfortunately the reality is that finding your trustworthy independent news source is very difficult, and finding it in a conventional print or televised medium is approaching impossible."
Once that "other guy" is found though, word will spread rapidly and the market will shift to support him. His job is maintained provided that he supplies what the public wants, and as long as they want the truth, he will want to give it to them.
"Yes, private enterprise and competition are supposed to ensure these things don't happen; but initial imbalances enable firms to snowball their existing success, to the point that they approach and surpass governments in their power to dick with individual liberties."
Again, you are not making sense. How can a company "dick with liberties" if they have no political power. They cannot physically hold you at gunpoint, because you could call the police - the enforcers maintaining your rights. Only when the government is open to financial manipulation can a company "dick with liberties" and get away with it.
"You really think any private enterprise could arrange for the right of ways without government interference?"
They would want to because there would be demand for it. People want the internet, and companies want profits. It is only when you politically force the market to give people only one choice that companies are able to keep prices high and make ridiculous restrictions to save their asses. Given the choice between a company blocking P2P and one allowing it, I would choose the latter and influence my friends/family/coworkers to do the same. We don't have that choice. Why do you believe that the reason you only have one company to choose from in your area is only the fault of the company?
"Really? How many papers do you have where you live. Most major cities seem to have only one real option."
That is a false analogy. The reason the number of local newspapers has gone down is because more and more people have been getting their news from radio (80+ years), television (60+ years), and most importantly today, the internet. That is an example of the market in action. People want their news in a more convenient way and are shifting their funding to these other media. Local newspapers have adapted to the changing market by creating ad-supported websites offering local news. I see no monopoly here.
With that said, in my area we have larger newspapers, and smaller ones, and ones that are free but supported through advertisements. And if I want, I can have one from another city delivered to my doorstep, as you admitted.
Agreed, however, that statement "I did it because I could" is also being made by the politicians who make these regulations. If you legally remove the ability to add restrictions such as this to the market, you prevent the market from being deformed as it currently is in the case of internet service.
"That said, there's no reason for the FCC to go out of their way to enable Information Domination."
The FCC does what it does because its members are influenced by friends and financiers. The reason I have only one cable choice in my area is due to government interference.
"No, they'll try to monetize that, and (as collateral damage) limit citizens' access to external sources of information."
How exactly can a company with no political influence be able to limit my access to anything? It is only because politics (laws, regulations) are tied to money (donations from companies) are they able to restrict my access. If the local newspaper refuses to print news from outside the city, I will drop them and subscribe to another paper offering more news. I will tell my friends and neighbors to do the same, and they will willingly choose to either keep or drop their subscription as well.
Comcast is only a symptom. Comcast would not be able to get away with what it currently can if not for the local monopolies handed to it by the government. The company has manipulated the government to avoid upgrading their lines to actually handle the bandwidth they claim to their customers.
"Comcast deserves all the examination it has gotten, and more. They have been terrible."
The real problem, though, is that the government is able to impose such monopolies on us. It's pointless to go after companies as they become problems, because these companies will continue to spring up. The effective approach is to stop the problem at the source: get politics out of money. Don't permit legislation that creates monopolies and destroys competition. Trash these FCC regulations, and the market will take care of itself. People will have choices, and companies will have to compete to offer what people want at the lowest price possible. And idiotic situations such as the one we currently find ourselves in will not be able to thrive.
Comcast would not be able to get away with what it currently can if not for the local monopolies handed to it by the government. The company has manipulated the government to avoid upgrading their lines to actually handle the bandwidth they claim to their customers.
The real problem, though, is that the government is able to impose such monopolies on us. It's pointless to go after companies as they become problems, because these companies will continue to spring up. The effective approach is to stop the problem at the source: get politics out of money. Don't permit legislation that creates monopolies and destroys competition. Trash these FCC regulations, and the market will take care of itself. People will have choices, and companies will have to compete to offer what people want at the lowest price possible. And idiotic situations such as the one we currently find ourselves in will not be able to thrive.
How many people in the US still rely solely on newspapers for their news? If the point of this cross-ownership restriction is to prevent manipulation of the media, the manipulation will be restricted to the media under the company's ownership. Once people realize the company is feeding them bad information (which they can more and more easily accomplish thanks to the internet), the company will get a bad image and be rejected by willing individuals. A newspaper is only as strong as its readership base.
Remind me again where the problem is?
So you'll be fine if I falsely accuse you of being a child molester to every company you apply for a job at?
"The way I see it, telepathy is basically wireless communications."
...you mean like talking?
Free speech doesn't include libel or slander.
Yes. That's why we have courts. It's a rights violation to shut down the entire site simply because there is the possibility of slander.
"That's ok - he'll still put his life on the line to protect your right to continue to whine."
I am helping fund the position that he voluntarily chose to fill with full understanding of what dangers are involved with that position. Throw in the fact that my funding is not voluntary given (in which case I would gladly fork over to the government more than my share), but forcibly taken from me for the simple reason that I was born here and need to survive. I and anyone else in this situation (read: all US citizens) are free and justified to whine.
Just make a pacemaker for the pacemaker. That way, if it ever shuts down, it'll have a tiny little heart inside it to get it going again.
I was a joke. I was pointing out how dumb it would be to throw out all your DVDs and buy a bunch of overpriced discs just because they're the new thing.
*WHOOOSH*
"as the world changes over to digital televisions, analog sets and obsolete set-top boxes and DVDs"
That's what I plan on doing. I'm going to throw out all my DVDs and buy the Blu-Ray equivalent.
Or maybe I'll just keep the DVDs (and the player) and buy whatever cable adapters I need to get them working on these newfangled devices.
"caught with their pants down in the cookie jar"
How does that work? Are their pants down in(side) the cookie jar, or are they physically standing inside some freak monster cookie jar, with their pants down?
Let's see how much you love it when your potential employer brings up a list of the local strip clubs you've visited in the last year, or informs you of the number of times you've exceeded the speed limit in the city (besides the number of times you've actually been stopped by the police), and then asks you to "explain again why we should hire you."
"The result will be judged accurate when there are lots of duplicate experiments getting the same result."
You can do the same experiment as many times as you want, but as long as you are using the same theoretical foundations, you won't get any closer to the actual result. The only way to judge that the results are accurate are to devise experiments capable of giving results similarly precise but which are founded on different, but accepted, principles. Sort of like how the various methods for dating fossils give similar results.
"Is it that inconceivable that a country can have excellent healthcare but at the same time severely limit its people's political freedoms?"
It depends on what you mean by "excellent healthcare" and how it is impacting the economy as a whole. Care to clarify?
And all they've given up is their inalienable rights as human beings. Yay!
"Fourthly, the ideal free market and free society assume that information is perfect, complete and has zero acquisition-cost. This is one of the reasons that we do not have free markets nor free societies (in the ideal sense)."
Regarding your fourth point in more detail, it is not necessarily true that the free market requires perfect competition or perfect information to function. There are arguments both ways. Follow through the following example and analysis as provided by Brian Simpson's book "Markets Don't Fail!" (quoted from a review of the book):
"One of the most popular criticisms of the market involves asymmetric information. This term is 'used to describe a situation where either the buyer or seller in a market exchange has some information that the other does not have.'(p.189)
This situation, it is claimed, can lead to complete breakdown of a market. The most famous example is the lemons problem in the used car market, analyzed by George Akerlof. Buyers of used cars have much less information that dealers about which cars are "lemons." "Because of this uncertainty, buyers will be reluctant to pay as much money for any particular car when compared to a situation in which they know for certain that a car they are buying is not a lemon."(p.190) Sellers will react by withdrawing the best cars from the market, since they will deem the prices offered for them inadequate. This in turn induces buyers to offer even lower prices, since, with the best cars withdrawn, the chances of getting a lemon increase. A spiraling process threatens to destroy this market entirely.
"Simpson's strategy of response should by now be familiar. He first notes that the free market has means of supplying information to those who need it. "For instance, businesses often stand behind their products to show that they think their products are worth buying. They use warranties and guarantees to protect customers from defects and to insure that customers are satisfied." (p.193) If car buyers want more information about used cars, why will they be unable to secure it? And, after all, there is a flourishing used car market, Akerlof to the contrary notwithstanding. I venture to add an additional point. Why is it assumed that sellers of the best cars, when they set their asking prices, will not take into account the buyers' lack of information?
"Just as with network effects, Simpson carries his criticism further. It is almost impossible to find a transaction in which persons have exactly equal information. Asymmetries of information are everywhere present, and no acceptable criteria have been advanced for separating "acceptable" from "unacceptable" asymmetries. And suppose that a market does break down, in just the fashion that Akerlof has described. This would come about through the voluntary acts of people that do not violate rights. If so, the government is not justified in interfering , even if it could increase "efficiency" by doing so."
"how would you recoup the cost associated with catching a life-threatening disease from someone who have so few assets that what you could recoup would not be sufficient to pay for the treatment (if there was one)?"
These are all symptoms of the same problem. Ideally costs would be a fraction of they are now thanks to competition (both among insurance companies and among doctors) reducing the cost of insurance, medication, and treatment, and setting up payment plans that are of the most benefit to the customer. This would mean you could set up a payment plan with the healthcare provider and a payment plan with the defendant. Alternatively, requests could be made to the community for donations - this is exactly what taxes are, except that in the tax-free situation, competition would drive down costs for everyone involved. It is the government that is (unintentionally?) keeping these costs inflated.
"Weeding out undesirables semi-permanently by putting them in ghettos or isolation wards at the point of a gun for the profit and protection of others... no, thank you."
Who is suggesting doing this? Forcing people to do anything at the point of a gun is immoral and illegal.
"I am willing to pay a tax to keep the amount of diseases down, so that I am healthier and that society does not need to confine ill people to a much greater extent."
This is key here. There is no problem with voluntary taxation, just as there is no problem with donating part of your income to a cause you deem worthy. The problem occurs when you tell everyone else in the country that they must support your chosen cause.
"Or do we stick all the after-some-treatment-but-not-enough disease-spreading poor people in a place where they won't be bothering us currently-healthy?"
Forcing anyone off of their property is a violation of their fundamental rights. So no, we don't stick anyone anywhere!
"I realize that this is purely speculatively, but with the current social dynamics, people would not spend money on preventative care in the near future, because they would believe that the lowest-cost insurance will cover them. We would thus see a spike, at least temporarily, in the amount of communicable diseases being, well, communicated."
Can we agree that it is the poor that are primarily spreading communicable disease? How would a competition-driven cost-reducing insurance system not enable more poor people to get basic healthcare and afford drugs (also competition-driven) that would prevent these diseases.
Additionally, those 3% of (the most common) causes of death that are caused by communicable diseases were specifically caused by influenza and pneumonia, both of which have various vaccines. Insurance companies would have an incentive to persuade its customers to vaccinate (fewer infected customers to treat in the future) - this incentive would lead to increased access to vaccines, reduced cost to the customer, and (most importantly) increased vaccination.
"Secondly, some people will not allow themselves to be isolated just because they can communicate diseases. Even people with incurable communicable diseases today whose actions show that they will not stop spreading them are not kept separated from the population."
As long as they are not trespassing on others' property, or spreading the disease onto others' property (such as if they stood on the sidewalk and coughed all over your mailbox), what problem would they be? The moment they trespass onto private property without the owner's consent, or the moment they are found to have been concealing their disease from an affected property owner, they can be prosecuted. In the case of an emergency situation such as a plague, things are different. The military would be called in to set up quarantines and infected individuals would be forcibly quarantined to avoid violating the rights of the rest of the public. This situation is in fact ide
"Most post-secondary institutions in this country require all students and employees to carry insurance. Many private companies also require insurance as a condition of employment."
The only difference is that you can walk away from such a job. You cannot walk away from the current system without leaving the country or going to jail.
"Even more so, what fundamental right is being violated in universal health care?"
I don't think you've understood this discussion at all. I want health insurance. I want to be prepared for emergencies. I don't want the fruit of my labor going to support other people's definitions of "insurance". Not only would my money be going to plenty of people trying to exploit the system, but it would be leaving my city and my state to benefit other cities and states; this is detrimental to the local economy.
As for fundamental rights - the right to property. I am working and being compensated for my labor. Taxation (such as universal healthcare) allows strangers to be compensated for my labor. That is a violation of a fundamental right.
"But I don't get to chose to withhold the portion of my tax dollars that go to the war because I don't support it.
Exactly, yours and my rights were violated in that case, and continue to be violated. Voluntary taxation I have no problem with. I too would not have given a cent to this war, but my only choice (literally made at gunpoint) was to accept it or go to jail.
"If I can't withhold the part of my tax dollars that are used to kill people, why do you get to withhold the part of your tax dollars that could be used to heal people?"
Two wrongs don't make a right. Rights violations are rights violations and the ends do not justify the means, ever.
I was not ignoring the tragedy of the commons example, but simply trying to clarify outright what "issues" he was specifically referring to. In the case of tragedy of the commons, one of the proposed solutions is privatization with the financial incentive to keep the resource sustainable.
I would also ask you to clarify what is meant by the "common good" on a per-person scale in a given situation. You would quickly find that determining who should and shouldn't benefit in a given case would have to be guided by whim or arbitrary rules of unknown foundation.
Regardless, the "common good" should not infringe upon individual rights and freedoms.
Ignoring your fear mongering, equivocation, and poor attempt at equating healthcare in a completely different (both socially and scientifically) era to today's era, the only argument of substance in your post is the claim that we need to help sick people because they can infect non-sick people. First of all, that would only be true for communicable diseases. This clarification alone eliminates 97% of the most common causes of death. As for communicable disease, individual property rights are enough to counteract unintentional outbreaks. In emergency situations, the government would be able to quarantine infected individuals. If an infected invidiual trespasses onto your property without your consent, they can be prosecuted. If someone you come into contact with misinforms you about their infection status, they too can be prosecuted. This serves as a deterrent and a retroactive means to compensation.
"I find it amusing how you and your ilk tout the wonders of the free market, without ever realizing that what you propose is neither free nor market-driven."
In what way is a society in which people are free to give their earnings to whoever they want not a free society? In what way is a society in which people compete to provide what people want at the lowest price possible not market driven?
"You're just demanding that someone else pay the bill for you, whether through taxes or charity."
Where is that even close to being implied by what I said? Can you please clarify how I am demanding someone else to pay my bill when I say that I should be able to pay my own bill and not pay others' bills?