You lack imagination. When most people were farmers/hunters, they didn't HAVE any of the industries, which appeared only after most of the people were FREED from the burden of having to farm/hunt/gather food.
People create new industries when they get more time freed from things they used to do to survive. There is no difference here, it's only about timing. There were years in those times as well, where people were mostly losing jobs, not gaining them.
Of-course USA and many European countries have other problems, namely - government that is destroying ability to save in US denominated assets (super inflation policies) and regulations/income taxes/subsidies to preferred monopolies are killing actual free market capitalism in USA (there is barely any left in very few industries).
Before your scenario arrives, which will happen a few decades down the road, there will be another scenario - USA will be bankrupt as US bonds are no longer bought, US dollar is printed out of existence to buy back all that debt and all imports into USA stop from other nations, who won't trade in US dollars anymore.
USA is going to have to restart savings and capitalism and manufacturing base again, so I think your scenario is shifted even further down the road for US.
FDR? The same FDR who destroyed the longest, most profitable private rail road system in the world in order to make shift work, to tax airlines and to build subsidized roads while taking down the rail track? In one government swoop the guy managed to destroy a profitable private rail system, to reduce transportation efficiency, to force airlines into a mode, where they couldn't survive without subsidies, to create a road system, which encouraged suburban sprawl, over-reliance on cars, over-use of oil for gasoline, over-pollution and creation of a type of infrastructure that cannot be maintained if left without subsidies? This is the move that turned a recession into a depression, you want that? You'll get it obviously, now that Obama wants to build the rail again, again with gov't intervention. Once he is done, it will be so expensive that again, it will never be viable by itself without huge subsidies, as nobody would be able to afford to buy tickets without huge subsidies. Just like the road system in USA now.
You call that a 'rough rider'? That's rough alright, but it's rough in all the wrong ways.
Capitalism is not 'trading capital for labor', this is so silly.
Capitalism is saving and (re)investing. Exactly what is the money (re)invested into is irrelevant, as long as it's actual savings, and not some government subsidy.
Capitalism is of-course about organizing tools/labor/possibly land in order to make profit, but those things (tools/labor/land) can be used interchangeably, it doesn't really have to be labor, it doesn't have to be manual labor, it doesn't have to be human labor either.
As to 'what people will be doing' - I bet there were questions just like this one 200 years ago when first capitalists were organizing tools (steam engines, machines), land (factory floors) and labor (workers, engineers, management, etc.) in a way that allowed producing more machines, which eventually removed the need for 95% of human farmers, and only 5% of farmers were needed to feed 100% of population.
The mechanism is to specifically prohibit government to pass any laws regarding economic outcomes for anybody. To forbid gov't from taxing income, from regulating businesses and from subsidizing businesses. Forbid gov't from subsidizing individuals, from taxing income of individuals and from regulating the way individuals do business.
This has to be coded into the law in a way that would make it impossible to be changed.
Unfortunately, I'm not certain that there is much reason to believe that America can get out of this rut, which is like an extreme experiment in unbridled free-market capitalism that has gone badly wrong.
- can you point out any unbridled free-market capitalism for me please, because I fail to see any, where the government is intersecting its power with the desires of the companies, which kills competition and goes directly AGAINST any unbridled free-market capitalism?
I wouldn't mode you down based on your rant, I would mode you down based on this lie.
state boards of education get together a group of experts, teachers and sometimes even parents to come up with a comprehensive curriculum
- well, that's a huge problem in itself, isn't it? Some totally unelected people, without any accountability, are deciding on such things?
I don't want anybody to decide what the curriculum should be at any level except the school itself, this way I can choose the school that I prefer and vote with my money.
It is utterly irrelevant for me personally, what precisely is the mechanism by which my rights are violated.
For example I am 100% against all income taxes, against taxing income at all levels, regardless of the situation, basically completely against funding government through income.
Income taxes still exist, so from my perspective these are my rights that are violated to the fruits of my labor, not to what I would spend on myself, but how I would invest my own money.
How is it different for me whether this is a dictator deciding to share my income or the mob?
Tired and old argument, and completely false as well. Also, you are an AC, why not sign in?
It is government that creates monopolies and absent government involvement into markets the monopolies are not there. Government created tycoons and robber barons and trusts, but 19 century USA has shown what mostly free market can achieve. It made USA the wealthiest producer/creditor nation of the time.
Majority of people in the pre-industrial world were occupied gathering food/farming/hunting. Basically everything people did was about food.
Capitalism and industrial revolution put an end to that. Now 5% of population feeds the entire population. What were those poor 95% of people to do with themselves?
It's insane, how is society going to survive, when 95% of people do not need to grow their own food any longer. We need a super-one-new-brave-world-government-big-brother to solve it for us.
Fuck Krugman. Fuck the fact that he got a Nobel prize. There shouldn't be a fucking Nobel prize in Economics. (Not that the 'Peace' prize is any better.)
What Krugman wants is to put people digging ditches and government (taxes/borrowing/printing) to pay for it, and then other people to come right behind them and fill those ditches up with dirt, so they could be dug again by the third batch of people.
Note, that I am insulting the guy, but I am telling the actual facts. He did on a radio program said exactly that, that it would be better for people to be given government jobs digging ditches, even IF it creates traffic jams. I am insulting the guy, he doesn't understand economics. I am insulting him, he doesn't understand inflation. I am insulting him, as he is part of the machine that is destroying and distorting even the most basic understanding of real economic principles in people. I am insulting him, fuck him. But this is not a troll, I am very open about insulting the fucking guy, fucking piece of shit. And the Nobel prize is dead until he returns it (and possibly Obama as well.)
What is REALLY needed is removal of government stronghold on the economics and monetary supply and interest rates and to allow people to try and fail, to risk and fail, to try and risk and fail, so that SOME of them can try and succeed and create something new that sticks to the market, and none of it is going to come from government spending, because at this point governments have no money to spend.
Of-course this is not going to happen, the government is not going to just stop being, stop spending, stop wars, stop whatever it does, until the last dollar is worth 0. It's just too lucrative to be in government, to work with government, to be around even. You get special contracts, treatment, privileges, you get an easy pass. So instead of fixing the problem, the gov't is going to make it so terrible (and it did already) that there will be no return, and the economic collapse is now evidently unavoidable. Thanks to Keynesian shamans like Krugman, who provide the ideological arguments that are devoid of any actual economic truths but do serve to push forward the agenda of those, who are in power and who benefit from being in power.
We need ridiculous amounts of money thrown at scientists and engineers with no stipulations or requirements to show progress
I immediately declare that I am a scientist / engineer and I need ridiculous amounts of money, because obviously, this is what's going to create more jobs for people - throwing money at some of them.
The fatal flaw to your arguments in the other thread is that medical care was mostly cheap in 1920 because there wasn't a hell of a lot they could do. It was effectively all elective. Your chances were nearly as good if you stayed at home with traditional remedies.
- wrong. Doctors in many places, including the one in the link, have improved the outcomes for patients significantly over the 19th century by using scientific approach. The innovations came in various forms, from sharing medical cases data to find better treatments, to using ethers, cocaine and other opioids for anesthesia, to understanding what role simple procedures, such as washing hands and sterilization of instruments have on medical outcomes.
The very story we are in here, is displaying the fatal flaw in YOUR reasoning, which is unaffected it seems by the data, that is showing that competition leads to lowering of prices quickly, regardless of the complexity of the matter.
How much did microprocessors cost during their first inception? How much are they today? What's the difference between them? It is competition that allowed people to progress so quickly in all aspects of creating microprocessors, and those are probably some of the most complex technologies people are involved in.
Yours is based on a theoretical free market that has never been seen in the wild.
A 1918 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of 211 families living in Columbus, Ohio found that only 7.6 of their average annual medical expenditures paid for hospital care (Ohio Report, p. 116). In fact, the chief cost associated with illness was not the cost of medical care, but rather the fact that sick people couldn't work and didn't get paid. A 1919 State of Illinois study reported that lost wages due to sickness were four times larger than the medical expenditures associated with treating the illness (State of Illinois, pp. 15-17). As a result, most people felt they didn't need health insurance. Instead, households purchased "sickness" insurance -- similar to today's "disability" insurance -- to provide income replacement in the event of illness.
... then they had more erroneous conclustions that it was insurance companies unwilling to provide health insurance. This is an erroneous conclusion because they contradict it immediately with this:
popular support for the legislation was low because of the low demand for health insurance in general
- well OBVIOUSLY if there is no demand, nobody would be providing the product. It makes perfect sense, but the authors miss it due to their preconcieved notions and ideology. But they have good data.
According to one CCMC study, the average American family had medical expenses totaling $108 in 1929, with hospital expenditures comprising 14 percent of the total bill (Falk, Rorem, and Ring 1933, p. 89). In 1929, medical charges for urban families with incomes between $2,000 and $3,000 per year averaged $67 if there were no hospitalizations, but averaged $261 if there were any illnesses that required hospitalization (see Falk, Rorem, and Ring). By 1934, Michael M. Davis, a leading advocate of reform, noted that hospital costs had risen to nearly 40 percent of a family's medical bill (Davis 1934, p. 211). By the end of the 1920s, families began to demand greater amounts of medical care, and the costs of medical care began to increase.
So they understand that costs increase due to more demand, as health care is a normal good, it's not magical in any way. As the incomes of people grew, so did demand for health care. Of-course they fail to understand that incomes grew due to government inflation, more than anything
This is exactly the attitude that I find abhorrent. We don't have to accept the 'life is tough, deal with it' mentality that seems so ingrained in US society.
- what, life is not tough? You don't have to deal with it?
Nobody has a RIGHT to any product or service.
There is no right to a Mercedes or a private airplane. Do you know why that is? Because it trumps on other people's rights NOT to provide you with Mercedes and a private airplane at their expense.
This is exactly the same thing, no exceptions. In fact it's worse, because while arguing that right to a Mercedes is stupid, because you don't die if you don't have a Mercedes, you can't argue that in health care. You just may die if you do not have health care.
But once you make it a right, then it's under government control, which comes through coercion and force.
Can I opt out of your perfect world please? I don't want to pay for your health care, do you understand? Under no circumstances will I be FORCED to pay for your health care. Under no circumstances.
I may offer a donation if there is a PRIVATE charity that deals with cases where people cannot afford their medical care. But this is a personal choice. Making health care a 'right' immediately removes my rights not to participate, because it forces me into something I absolutely did not volunteer for. This is taking away my rights to my property, my Liberties to be Free from government shackles of having to disclose all my private information about my business to the government. My affairs become public. I am against it and I find it abhorrent, morally repugnant and destructive for the economy in the long term. I say "in the long term", because such 'rights' can only be introduced by countries that at the time have STRONG economies that can withstand this kind of economic abuse. But these are the policies that lead to destruction of economies and eventually the economies become weak and die off, as we are currently observing all around the Western world.
You think you are going to keep your NHS care forever in UK? Absolutely not. It's going to become more and more scarce, more and more difficult to get, more and more rationed. The care will be of lower quality with each passing day and the pie will be getting smaller and smaller as more and more people are sharing it while fewer and fewer are actually paying for it.
The Marxist ideas that are pretty much always found in so called 'democracies' eventually lead to destruction of economy of the nation, and while your natural human inclination to help others is commendable in itself, it immediately becomes unacceptable once you cross the line where you say that people MUST be forced to provide it.
The government didn't have to let them raise the prices. The problem is not the government involvement, but the fact that they tried to get away with half-measures.
- the problem is the government involvement. Of-course once the government gets involved, doing half measures is going to be worse in the short-medium time frame, but in the long run it is irrelevant whether there were half or full measures, the system will become impossible to finance.
In my home country, the UK, we have had free universal health care for all citizens..... the French...
- I know. While UK and France etc., are spending more on social issues and less on military, the US has gone a different route. This is all in mentality, expectations, etc. The US has gone the wrong route, but the right route is not the way UK or France are doing it. The correct way is what US did have before it screwed it up.
While ideally one might imagine that complete abolition of government involvement in health care might lower prices, it has been shown time and time again that in fact it just leads to monopolies and price-fixing,
the market for health insurance exploded in size in the 1940s, growing from a total enrollment of 20,662,000 in 1940 to nearly 142,334,000 in 1950 (Health Insurance Institute 1961, Source Book, p. 10).
The private health insurance was winning on price:
So successful was commercial insurance that by the early 1950s, commercial plans had more subscribers than Blue Cross and Blue Shield. In 1951, 41.5 million people were enrolled in group or individual hospital insurance plans offered by commercial insurance companies, while only 40.9 million people were enrolled in Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans (Health Insurance Institute 1965, Source Book, p. 14).
There will always be people who are just not insured. This is life, nobody said it was going to be pleasant.
By the end of sixties the government decided that it was going to deal with the then 10-15% of population that had no medical insurance by "providing" them with it. That was the beginning of the end of normal affordable medical insurance and normal affordable health care.
Once the public money was introduced into the system, it immediately created an incentive for the insurance companies and health care providers to jack up the prices. This is simple economics - if the money that you have to spend on a good are not yours, you won't care to budget it.
Of-course this also gave a signal that there was room for lobbying the government on behalf of the insurance and medical companies.
--
In reality, the USA got the worst of 2 systems: the money was provided publicly, while the decisions on how to spend it became corporate. This is always a recipe for a disaster, and it came in form of enormous price hikes for everything.
Do I see a problem with people dying from lack of health care? YES!
Do I see government as the ultimate solution to this problem? A resounding NO! NEVER!
The only correct solution is to make health insurance and health care affordable. This is only possible through competition and complete abolition of all government involvement into the medical insurance and care.
Thales of Miletus, at around 600 BCE, described a form of static electricity
At around 450 B.C. Democritus, a later Greek philosopher, developed an atomic theory
Georg Ohm in 1827 quantified the relationship between the electric current and potential difference in a conductor
Michael Faraday in 1831 discovered electromagnetic induction
James Clerk Maxwell in 1873 published a unified theory of electricity and magnetism
Werner von Siemens in 1866 invented the industrial generator, which didn't need external magnetic power
James Wimshurst in 1878 developed an Wimshurst machine
Edison in 1882 switched on the world's first large-scale electrical supply network that provided 110 volts direct current to fifty-nine customers in lower Manhattan
Heinrich Hertz in 1886 succeeded with his radio wave transmitter
Nikola Tesla in 1887 filed a number of patents related to a competing form of power distribution known as alternating current. Began the War of Currents has. (Tesla: Induction motors, polyphase systems. Edison: telegraph, stock ticker, GE)
Alexander Popov in 1896, transmitted wireless signal across 60 meters
Guglielmo Marconi in 1896, transmitted wireless signal across 2.4 km.
John Fleming in 1904 invented the first radio tube, the diode.
Robert von Lieben in 1906 invents amplifier tube (triod)
Lee De Forest in 1906 also invents amplifier tube (triod)
Edwin Howard Armstrong in 1931, electronic television.
----
Aviation history, airplanes and helicopters, even rocketry and nuclear physics (prior to the nuclear bomb). Computer technology history. Medical developments. Agriculture. Food processing. Steam engines. Factories and assembly lines. Automobiles.
-- If you do pay attention to history you may finally recognize that most of the inventions, most of the innovations, most of the work was done privately, with private interests, private money, private people working out of interest and profit motives.
SOME things were done with public funds, this is especially true when it concerns weapons and military.
The huge experiments that government does normally end up costing something enormous, so that it has to be subsidized forever and if the subsidies stop, the entire construct falls apart. Apollo missions to the Moon come to the mind immediately. They were successful in themselves and yet nobody has been to the moon in my lifetime and I am not that young anymore either. This is because subsidies for that kind of stuff stopped.
All government subsidies stop eventually, that is why relying on technology and structures that are built with public funding and require constant subsidies to operate are and always will be inferior to those, that are developed in the private sector EVEN if it takes more time to develop them through the private sector because the timing also must be right for the idea and implementation to make sense.
I completely disagree that government subsidies are either desirable or good in the long run for anything.
AFAIC the only spending that gov't should be given a mandate to do is for minimum military protection necessary to maintain liberty and a justice system that's fair and takes care of criminal and contract laws.
I don't actually TRUST governments to do even those things right, but most people are not ready to see where the most logical conclusion of real competition must take them, because they are not free in their thinking.
I disagree fundamentally that there should be such ridiculous things as huge, decade long projects. Who the hell do you want to trust some ridiculous projects like that: people with no accountability and no reason to bother cutting costs because their bottom line will be affected? Why? Why would I ever want to fund something like that with my money? I will not. I will find every possible way to avoid funding it. It's ridiculous.
Besides, when you say something is 'guaranteed' because it's done by government. Hello. This is obviously ridiculously and patently untrue.
All government spending programs are pyramid schemes. Here is an example - SS trustee explaining that SS never was any actual fund, it was never insurance, it was never an investment strategy. Money was spent immediately and replaced with US bonds, which are all debt, that has to be realized to make payments. SS is a ponzi scheme, so is Medicare/Medicaid, so is government based education system, so is gov't based energy policy, so is the foundation of the nation's economy - government based monetary system.
I can't trust government with basics, why would I trust it with anything that requires many years, decades even, where possibility of huge abuse and fund mis-allocation is enormous, the temptations are enormous, the possibilities for corruption are enormous, where the funding is all tax/borrowing/printing based, where there is no profit motive and NO WAY to shut the fucking flood gates down?
I don't trust it. I won't trust it. I won't participate in it.
If you actually followed the provided link, you would have seen the data, government collected and university research data, which supports the claim that private enterprise was doing a better job at providing health insurance and health care than any government entity was.
I find it abhorrent to trust anything at all to the government, especially anything that deals with money, regulations of business, taxes, any sort of health care.
The only purpose for a federal government is common military defense and a common justice system (and I really do not trust them with either as well, but if you have to have federal government, those are the only things they should be given a role in.)
I would say that the current state of healthcare in the U.S. proves conclusively that "the market" isn't universally effective - you start with a broken premise. The broken premise is that there is free market in US health care, which is not true.
If you bothered to go to the link I provided to a different thread in the top comment, you would have seen that I am giving information there, that shows that private sector was the preferred solution for buying both health insurance and health services because private sector was doing it inexpensively and effectively due to real competition before the Nixon's administration screwed it up dramatically and turned something that was supposed to be health insurance into really health account management and something that was supposed to be a normal good/service (providing health care) into a subsidized monopoly situation.
It's not the market that is causing the problems for US health insurance and health care, it's the government.
<quote>We distort the market because we MUST</quote> - I disagree violently. We must not do such thing if we want to have mostly inexpensive and affordable health care and economy in general.
There are always cases of people who are poor in any economy, you will not get a 'perfect' distribution of wealth and access, regardless of what type of economy you do have. However in real free market economy you have more choices and more competition, which ends up serving the poorer people better than other systems.
<quote>No free market can exist where the consumer's options boil down to buy or die.</quote> - I disagree violently. In free market there are more choices than that. First, people have always provided health services without requiring much payment or completely free depending on the situation. There have always been volunteers and charities, the government takes that idea and perverts it on its head, turning it into an obligation and one that is forced by the threat of violence.
<quote>explicitly define the act of giving corporations sweetheart legislation against the interests of the constituency in exchange for bribes/donations to be an act of treason.</quote> - more legislation?
No, <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1799588&cid=33702246">I gave the correct proposal</a>, that is only based on the original idea in the Constitution that does not require more legislation. It only requires more strict following of the original agreement that was ratified by the States.
I will repeat it again: <b>Congress shall pass no law, that changes the status of any entity in a way that allows that entity to get any preferential treatment in economy.</b> However some more strengthening is required: <b>All national/federal banks are explicitly forbidden with an intent to prevent government from printing fiat currencies and setting short term interest rates.</b> and another one: <b>All income taxes are explicitly forbidden.</b>
Tulips? That's your entire argument? Yeah, I see how my argument is invalid because some European governments in 16 hundreds were DEBASING their currencies by replacing replacing monetary metals in them with common non monetary metals.
And how much money that government spent was wasted and never produced anything at all? You are assuming that government grants are a good thing, while forgetting that this is the money that was taken out of the economy by taxing the private sector (direct taxes or borrowing, which is deferred taxes + interest, or just money printing, which is taxing the entire net-worth via inflation).
How much money was wasted by government? How many projects have failed?
All of the wasted money, and even the money that finally did give something back at the end, all of that money was taken away from the pool of credit that the private sector never saw.
You are assuming for some reason that private sector couldn't have done the same or better research if the credit to the private sector was available not in the form of government grants but in the form of normal business credit. That's a strange assumption as well. Most of the research is done privately, especially by the manufacturing businesses, which require constant innovation to outcompete the next guy, to bring the costs of production down while coming up with another new product/service.
No. I don't see government provided incentives as good in any cases, even when you point out that there were some successes.
Well, of-course there were, you can't throw infinite amount of money at huge number of people without something sticking.
In private sector you have to make sure that what you do is not going to be all waste, that it will provide some return. This is not a bad thing, this is a good thing, it keeps people from chasing the wrong thing for too long. What prevents anybody in government from chasing the wrong thing for too long while spending seemingly infinite resources on that?
Iraq? Afghanistan?
Are the resources really unlimited? I don't think so, I think the resources are out, there is nothing left, only printing and currency destruction.
But back to the point at hand - the prices for the DNA sequencing are falling quickly. There is nothing that should hold them up for ANY technology, in ANY field, this includes medical fields as well as computer, military, energy, etc.
The real difference between prices falling and going up is government force. Government always causes prices to go up, especially in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
You lack imagination. When most people were farmers/hunters, they didn't HAVE any of the industries, which appeared only after most of the people were FREED from the burden of having to farm/hunt/gather food.
People create new industries when they get more time freed from things they used to do to survive. There is no difference here, it's only about timing. There were years in those times as well, where people were mostly losing jobs, not gaining them.
Of-course USA and many European countries have other problems, namely - government that is destroying ability to save in US denominated assets (super inflation policies) and regulations/income taxes/subsidies to preferred monopolies are killing actual free market capitalism in USA (there is barely any left in very few industries).
Before your scenario arrives, which will happen a few decades down the road, there will be another scenario - USA will be bankrupt as US bonds are no longer bought, US dollar is printed out of existence to buy back all that debt and all imports into USA stop from other nations, who won't trade in US dollars anymore.
USA is going to have to restart savings and capitalism and manufacturing base again, so I think your scenario is shifted even further down the road for US.
You didn't understand the point.
The point is that most industries didn't exist when most people were farmers.
People create entire new industries, that's the point.
sounds exactly like my last job.
FDR? The same FDR who destroyed the longest, most profitable private rail road system in the world in order to make shift work, to tax airlines and to build subsidized roads while taking down the rail track? In one government swoop the guy managed to destroy a profitable private rail system, to reduce transportation efficiency, to force airlines into a mode, where they couldn't survive without subsidies, to create a road system, which encouraged suburban sprawl, over-reliance on cars, over-use of oil for gasoline, over-pollution and creation of a type of infrastructure that cannot be maintained if left without subsidies? This is the move that turned a recession into a depression, you want that? You'll get it obviously, now that Obama wants to build the rail again, again with gov't intervention. Once he is done, it will be so expensive that again, it will never be viable by itself without huge subsidies, as nobody would be able to afford to buy tickets without huge subsidies. Just like the road system in USA now.
You call that a 'rough rider'? That's rough alright, but it's rough in all the wrong ways.
Capitalism is not 'trading capital for labor', this is so silly.
Capitalism is saving and (re)investing. Exactly what is the money (re)invested into is irrelevant, as long as it's actual savings, and not some government subsidy.
Capitalism is of-course about organizing tools/labor/possibly land in order to make profit, but those things (tools/labor/land) can be used interchangeably, it doesn't really have to be labor, it doesn't have to be manual labor, it doesn't have to be human labor either.
As to 'what people will be doing' - I bet there were questions just like this one 200 years ago when first capitalists were organizing tools (steam engines, machines), land (factory floors) and labor (workers, engineers, management, etc.) in a way that allowed producing more machines, which eventually removed the need for 95% of human farmers, and only 5% of farmers were needed to feed 100% of population.
What would those 95% of people do?
I think it's more like a rabid fool, than a rabid dog. Normally, you tease something to get a rise out of it.
PWNED. OK, this is so funny :)
No, really, I can't stop LOLing, it's insane.
What??? You have never seen a fool teasing a dog or something else he shouldn't have and then being bitten by it?
Come oooooon, this is exactly like that.
Of-course there is a mechanism.
The mechanism is to specifically prohibit government to pass any laws regarding economic outcomes for anybody. To forbid gov't from taxing income, from regulating businesses and from subsidizing businesses. Forbid gov't from subsidizing individuals, from taxing income of individuals and from regulating the way individuals do business.
This has to be coded into the law in a way that would make it impossible to be changed.
Unfortunately, I'm not certain that there is much reason to believe that America can get out of this rut, which is like an extreme experiment in unbridled free-market capitalism that has gone badly wrong.
- can you point out any unbridled free-market capitalism for me please, because I fail to see any, where the government is intersecting its power with the desires of the companies, which kills competition and goes directly AGAINST any unbridled free-market capitalism?
I wouldn't mode you down based on your rant, I would mode you down based on this lie.
state boards of education get together a group of experts, teachers and sometimes even parents to come up with a comprehensive curriculum
- well, that's a huge problem in itself, isn't it? Some totally unelected people, without any accountability, are deciding on such things?
I don't want anybody to decide what the curriculum should be at any level except the school itself, this way I can choose the school that I prefer and vote with my money.
It is utterly irrelevant for me personally, what precisely is the mechanism by which my rights are violated.
For example I am 100% against all income taxes, against taxing income at all levels, regardless of the situation, basically completely against funding government through income.
Income taxes still exist, so from my perspective these are my rights that are violated to the fruits of my labor, not to what I would spend on myself, but how I would invest my own money.
How is it different for me whether this is a dictator deciding to share my income or the mob?
what the heck is a 'girl'?
yeah, but what's the road and where's friction for the wheel?
Tired and old argument, and completely false as well. Also, you are an AC, why not sign in?
It is government that creates monopolies and absent government involvement into markets the monopolies are not there. Government created tycoons and robber barons and trusts, but 19 century USA has shown what mostly free market can achieve. It made USA the wealthiest producer/creditor nation of the time.
Majority of people in the pre-industrial world were occupied gathering food/farming/hunting. Basically everything people did was about food.
Capitalism and industrial revolution put an end to that. Now 5% of population feeds the entire population. What were those poor 95% of people to do with themselves?
It's insane, how is society going to survive, when 95% of people do not need to grow their own food any longer. We need a super-one-new-brave-world-government-big-brother to solve it for us.
Fuck Krugman. Fuck the fact that he got a Nobel prize. There shouldn't be a fucking Nobel prize in Economics. (Not that the 'Peace' prize is any better.)
What Krugman wants is to put people digging ditches and government (taxes/borrowing/printing) to pay for it, and then other people to come right behind them and fill those ditches up with dirt, so they could be dug again by the third batch of people.
Note, that I am insulting the guy, but I am telling the actual facts. He did on a radio program said exactly that, that it would be better for people to be given government jobs digging ditches, even IF it creates traffic jams. I am insulting the guy, he doesn't understand economics. I am insulting him, he doesn't understand inflation. I am insulting him, as he is part of the machine that is destroying and distorting even the most basic understanding of real economic principles in people. I am insulting him, fuck him. But this is not a troll, I am very open about insulting the fucking guy, fucking piece of shit. And the Nobel prize is dead until he returns it (and possibly Obama as well.)
What is REALLY needed is removal of government stronghold on the economics and monetary supply and interest rates and to allow people to try and fail, to risk and fail, to try and risk and fail, so that SOME of them can try and succeed and create something new that sticks to the market, and none of it is going to come from government spending, because at this point governments have no money to spend.
Of-course this is not going to happen, the government is not going to just stop being, stop spending, stop wars, stop whatever it does, until the last dollar is worth 0. It's just too lucrative to be in government, to work with government, to be around even. You get special contracts, treatment, privileges, you get an easy pass. So instead of fixing the problem, the gov't is going to make it so terrible (and it did already) that there will be no return, and the economic collapse is now evidently unavoidable. Thanks to Keynesian shamans like Krugman, who provide the ideological arguments that are devoid of any actual economic truths but do serve to push forward the agenda of those, who are in power and who benefit from being in power.
We need ridiculous amounts of money thrown at scientists and engineers with no stipulations or requirements to show progress
I immediately declare that I am a scientist / engineer and I need ridiculous amounts of money, because obviously, this is what's going to create more jobs for people - throwing money at some of them.
The fatal flaw to your arguments in the other thread is that medical care was mostly cheap in 1920 because there wasn't a hell of a lot they could do. It was effectively all elective. Your chances were nearly as good if you stayed at home with traditional remedies.
- wrong. Doctors in many places, including the one in the link, have improved the outcomes for patients significantly over the 19th century by using scientific approach. The innovations came in various forms, from sharing medical cases data to find better treatments, to using ethers, cocaine and other opioids for anesthesia, to understanding what role simple procedures, such as washing hands and sterilization of instruments have on medical outcomes.
The very story we are in here, is displaying the fatal flaw in YOUR reasoning, which is unaffected it seems by the data, that is showing that competition leads to lowering of prices quickly, regardless of the complexity of the matter.
How much did microprocessors cost during their first inception? How much are they today? What's the difference between them? It is competition that allowed people to progress so quickly in all aspects of creating microprocessors, and those are probably some of the most complex technologies people are involved in.
Yours is based on a theoretical free market that has never been seen in the wild.
- wrong.
A 1918 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of 211 families living in Columbus, Ohio found that only 7.6 of their average annual medical expenditures paid for hospital care (Ohio Report, p. 116). In fact, the chief cost associated with illness was not the cost of medical care, but rather the fact that sick people couldn't work and didn't get paid. A 1919 State of Illinois study reported that lost wages due to sickness were four times larger than the medical expenditures associated with treating the illness (State of Illinois, pp. 15-17). As a result, most people felt they didn't need health insurance. Instead, households purchased "sickness" insurance -- similar to today's "disability" insurance -- to provide income replacement in the event of illness.
popular support for the legislation was low because of the low demand for health insurance in general
- well OBVIOUSLY if there is no demand, nobody would be providing the product. It makes perfect sense, but the authors miss it due to their preconcieved notions and ideology. But they have good data.
According to one CCMC study, the average American family had medical expenses totaling $108 in 1929, with hospital expenditures comprising 14 percent of the total bill (Falk, Rorem, and Ring 1933, p. 89). In 1929, medical charges for urban families with incomes between $2,000 and $3,000 per year averaged $67 if there were no hospitalizations, but averaged $261 if there were any illnesses that required hospitalization (see Falk, Rorem, and Ring). By 1934, Michael M. Davis, a leading advocate of reform, noted that hospital costs had risen to nearly 40 percent of a family's medical bill (Davis 1934, p. 211). By the end of the 1920s, families began to demand greater amounts of medical care, and the costs of medical care began to increase.
So they understand that costs increase due to more demand, as health care is a normal good, it's not magical in any way. As the incomes of people grew, so did demand for health care. Of-course they fail to understand that incomes grew due to government inflation, more than anything
This is exactly the attitude that I find abhorrent. We don't have to accept the 'life is tough, deal with it' mentality that seems so ingrained in US society.
- what, life is not tough? You don't have to deal with it?
Nobody has a RIGHT to any product or service.
There is no right to a Mercedes or a private airplane. Do you know why that is? Because it trumps on other people's rights NOT to provide you with Mercedes and a private airplane at their expense.
This is exactly the same thing, no exceptions. In fact it's worse, because while arguing that right to a Mercedes is stupid, because you don't die if you don't have a Mercedes, you can't argue that in health care. You just may die if you do not have health care.
But once you make it a right, then it's under government control, which comes through coercion and force.
Can I opt out of your perfect world please? I don't want to pay for your health care, do you understand? Under no circumstances will I be FORCED to pay for your health care. Under no circumstances.
I may offer a donation if there is a PRIVATE charity that deals with cases where people cannot afford their medical care. But this is a personal choice. Making health care a 'right' immediately removes my rights not to participate, because it forces me into something I absolutely did not volunteer for. This is taking away my rights to my property, my Liberties to be Free from government shackles of having to disclose all my private information about my business to the government. My affairs become public. I am against it and I find it abhorrent, morally repugnant and destructive for the economy in the long term. I say "in the long term", because such 'rights' can only be introduced by countries that at the time have STRONG economies that can withstand this kind of economic abuse. But these are the policies that lead to destruction of economies and eventually the economies become weak and die off, as we are currently observing all around the Western world.
You think you are going to keep your NHS care forever in UK? Absolutely not. It's going to become more and more scarce, more and more difficult to get, more and more rationed. The care will be of lower quality with each passing day and the pie will be getting smaller and smaller as more and more people are sharing it while fewer and fewer are actually paying for it.
The Marxist ideas that are pretty much always found in so called 'democracies' eventually lead to destruction of economy of the nation, and while your natural human inclination to help others is commendable in itself, it immediately becomes unacceptable once you cross the line where you say that people MUST be forced to provide it.
The government didn't have to let them raise the prices. The problem is not the government involvement, but the fact that they tried to get away with half-measures.
- the problem is the government involvement. Of-course once the government gets involved, doing half measures is going to be worse in the short-medium time frame, but in the long run it is irrelevant whether there were half or full measures, the system will become impossible to finance.
In my home country, the UK, we have had free universal health care for all citizens ..... the French...
- I know. While UK and France etc., are spending more on social issues and less on military, the US has gone a different route. This is all in mentality, expectations, etc. The US has gone the wrong route, but the right route is not the way UK or France are doing it. The correct way is what US did have before it screwed it up.
While ideally one might imagine that complete abolition of government involvement in health care might lower prices, it has been shown time and time again that in fact it just leads to monopolies and price-fixing,
- wrong.
I don't want to repeat
Did you again not pay attention to the data?
the market for health insurance exploded in size in the 1940s, growing from a total enrollment of 20,662,000 in 1940 to nearly 142,334,000 in 1950 (Health Insurance Institute 1961, Source Book, p. 10).
The private health insurance was winning on price:
So successful was commercial insurance that by the early 1950s, commercial plans had more subscribers than Blue Cross and Blue Shield. In 1951, 41.5 million people were enrolled in group or individual hospital insurance plans offered by commercial insurance companies, while only 40.9 million people were enrolled in Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans (Health Insurance Institute 1965, Source Book, p. 14).
There will always be people who are just not insured. This is life, nobody said it was going to be pleasant.
By the end of sixties the government decided that it was going to deal with the then 10-15% of population that had no medical insurance by "providing" them with it. That was the beginning of the end of normal affordable medical insurance and normal affordable health care.
Once the public money was introduced into the system, it immediately created an incentive for the insurance companies and health care providers to jack up the prices. This is simple economics - if the money that you have to spend on a good are not yours, you won't care to budget it.
Of-course this also gave a signal that there was room for lobbying the government on behalf of the insurance and medical companies.
--
In reality, the USA got the worst of 2 systems: the money was provided publicly, while the decisions on how to spend it became corporate. This is always a recipe for a disaster, and it came in form of enormous price hikes for everything.
Do I see a problem with people dying from lack of health care? YES!
Do I see government as the ultimate solution to this problem? A resounding NO! NEVER!
The only correct solution is to make health insurance and health care affordable. This is only possible through competition and complete abolition of all government involvement into the medical insurance and care.
Some understanding of history is useful here
- INDEED.
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Aviation history, airplanes and helicopters, even rocketry and nuclear physics (prior to the nuclear bomb).
Computer technology history.
Medical developments.
Agriculture.
Food processing.
Steam engines.
Factories and assembly lines.
Automobiles.
--
If you do pay attention to history you may finally recognize that most of the inventions, most of the innovations, most of the work was done privately, with private interests, private money, private people working out of interest and profit motives.
SOME things were done with public funds, this is especially true when it concerns weapons and military.
The huge experiments that government does normally end up costing something enormous, so that it has to be subsidized forever and if the subsidies stop, the entire construct falls apart. Apollo missions to the Moon come to the mind immediately. They were successful in themselves and yet nobody has been to the moon in my lifetime and I am not that young anymore either. This is because subsidies for that kind of stuff stopped.
All government subsidies stop eventually, that is why relying on technology and structures that are built with public funding and require constant subsidies to operate are and always will be inferior to those, that are developed in the private sector EVEN if it takes more time to develop them through the private sector because the timing also must be right for the idea and implementation to make sense.
I completely disagree that government subsidies are either desirable or good in the long run for anything.
AFAIC the only spending that gov't should be given a mandate to do is for minimum military protection necessary to maintain liberty and a justice system that's fair and takes care of criminal and contract laws.
I don't actually TRUST governments to do even those things right, but most people are not ready to see where the most logical conclusion of real competition must take them, because they are not free in their thinking.
I disagree fundamentally that there should be such ridiculous things as huge, decade long projects. Who the hell do you want to trust some ridiculous projects like that: people with no accountability and no reason to bother cutting costs because their bottom line will be affected? Why? Why would I ever want to fund something like that with my money? I will not. I will find every possible way to avoid funding it. It's ridiculous.
Besides, when you say something is 'guaranteed' because it's done by government. Hello. This is obviously ridiculously and patently untrue.
All government spending programs are pyramid schemes. Here is an example - SS trustee explaining that SS never was any actual fund, it was never insurance, it was never an investment strategy. Money was spent immediately and replaced with US bonds, which are all debt, that has to be realized to make payments. SS is a ponzi scheme, so is Medicare/Medicaid, so is government based education system, so is gov't based energy policy, so is the foundation of the nation's economy - government based monetary system.
I can't trust government with basics, why would I trust it with anything that requires many years, decades even, where possibility of huge abuse and fund mis-allocation is enormous, the temptations are enormous, the possibilities for corruption are enormous, where the funding is all tax/borrowing/printing based, where there is no profit motive and NO WAY to shut the fucking flood gates down?
I don't trust it. I won't trust it. I won't participate in it.
That's why I don't hold currencies for example.
If you actually followed the provided link, you would have seen the data, government collected and university research data, which supports the claim that private enterprise was doing a better job at providing health insurance and health care than any government entity was.
I find it abhorrent to trust anything at all to the government, especially anything that deals with money, regulations of business, taxes, any sort of health care.
The only purpose for a federal government is common military defense and a common justice system (and I really do not trust them with either as well, but if you have to have federal government, those are the only things they should be given a role in.)
I would say that the current state of healthcare in the U.S. proves conclusively that "the market" isn't universally effective - you start with a broken premise. The broken premise is that there is free market in US health care, which is not true.
If you bothered to go to the link I provided to a different thread in the top comment, you would have seen that I am giving information there, that shows that private sector was the preferred solution for buying both health insurance and health services because private sector was doing it inexpensively and effectively due to real competition before the Nixon's administration screwed it up dramatically and turned something that was supposed to be health insurance into really health account management and something that was supposed to be a normal good/service (providing health care) into a subsidized monopoly situation.
It's not the market that is causing the problems for US health insurance and health care, it's the government.
<quote>We distort the market because we MUST</quote> - I disagree violently. We must not do such thing if we want to have mostly inexpensive and affordable health care and economy in general.
There are always cases of people who are poor in any economy, you will not get a 'perfect' distribution of wealth and access, regardless of what type of economy you do have. However in real free market economy you have more choices and more competition, which ends up serving the poorer people better than other systems.
<quote>No free market can exist where the consumer's options boil down to buy or die.</quote> - I disagree violently. In free market there are more choices than that. First, people have always provided health services without requiring much payment or completely free depending on the situation. There have always been volunteers and charities, the government takes that idea and perverts it on its head, turning it into an obligation and one that is forced by the threat of violence.
<quote>explicitly define the act of giving corporations sweetheart legislation against the interests of the constituency in exchange for bribes/donations to be an act of treason.</quote> - more legislation?
No, <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1799588&cid=33702246">I gave the correct proposal</a>, that is only based on the original idea in the Constitution that does not require more legislation. It only requires more strict following of the original agreement that was ratified by the States.
I will repeat it again: <b>Congress shall pass no law, that changes the status of any entity in a way that allows that entity to get any preferential treatment in economy.</b> However some more strengthening is required: <b>All national/federal banks are explicitly forbidden with an intent to prevent government from printing fiat currencies and setting short term interest rates.</b> and another one: <b>All income taxes are explicitly forbidden.</b>
Tulips? That's your entire argument? Yeah, I see how my argument is invalid because some European governments in 16 hundreds were DEBASING their currencies by replacing replacing monetary metals in them with common non monetary metals.
You are invalid.
And how much money that government spent was wasted and never produced anything at all? You are assuming that government grants are a good thing, while forgetting that this is the money that was taken out of the economy by taxing the private sector (direct taxes or borrowing, which is deferred taxes + interest, or just money printing, which is taxing the entire net-worth via inflation).
How much money was wasted by government? How many projects have failed?
All of the wasted money, and even the money that finally did give something back at the end, all of that money was taken away from the pool of credit that the private sector never saw.
You are assuming for some reason that private sector couldn't have done the same or better research if the credit to the private sector was available not in the form of government grants but in the form of normal business credit. That's a strange assumption as well. Most of the research is done privately, especially by the manufacturing businesses, which require constant innovation to outcompete the next guy, to bring the costs of production down while coming up with another new product/service.
No. I don't see government provided incentives as good in any cases, even when you point out that there were some successes.
Well, of-course there were, you can't throw infinite amount of money at huge number of people without something sticking.
In private sector you have to make sure that what you do is not going to be all waste, that it will provide some return. This is not a bad thing, this is a good thing, it keeps people from chasing the wrong thing for too long. What prevents anybody in government from chasing the wrong thing for too long while spending seemingly infinite resources on that?
Iraq?
Afghanistan?
Are the resources really unlimited? I don't think so, I think the resources are out, there is nothing left, only printing and currency destruction.
But back to the point at hand - the prices for the DNA sequencing are falling quickly. There is nothing that should hold them up for ANY technology, in ANY field, this includes medical fields as well as computer, military, energy, etc.
The real difference between prices falling and going up is government force. Government always causes prices to go up, especially in the long run.