The key to true morality isn't "what would Jesus do", but "what makes sense and actually works to produce favorable outcomes". By that standard, you cannot do better than a scientist.
"Scientific" approaches to rebuild society yielded eugenics and various totalitarian (and murderous) systems. After all, the smart guys clearly know how to run everything and it'd be immoral and evil to oppose them; except when it turns out they aren't smart enough to make the system work.
Scientifically, that's strong evidence against science being the best arbiter of morality, unless you consider those good outcomes.
Personally, I don't think any good scientist would be so quick to dismiss all prior work. A scientist respects the limitation of his knowledge and research, and some of that prior work you dismiss as fairy tale has not been proven wrong. (and will never be proven wrong; science is a limited tool)
Some principles are ancient, yet still highly relevant to modern human society. "New" does not necessarily mean "better" or "correct".
They're probably just giving an answer based on current realities.
There already exist "heroic measures" that can keep an old person alive a little longer. "Staying youthful" is still being researched, and is a difficult problem. If it's even possible, it'll take quite a bit of research and then even more testing to weed out unintended side effects.
You don't need a big standing army when you have nukes. With no big armies anywhere, wars of all descriptions become less likely. A small special forces would be enough to deal with non-state threats.
Your ambassador to Foocountry got taken hostage by a rebel group.
You will now -
1. Helplessly wring your hands while issuing strongly worded statements.
2. Nuke them
3. Ponder the wisdom of having more than 2 options.
Just because you have a sledgehammer doesn't mean you need to throw away all of your other tools.
Because the city slickers think they're entitled to the amenities of rural areas, like, say, food, and transportation across rural areas via roads.
Which of those services were provided for free?
You're trying to replace a monetary system with a crude bartering system. Why? Why trade food for internet, when there is no good exchange rate? (How much food is 1 Mbps internet worth?)
No one has a right to Internet access, and it's not even essential to life like food is (which is also not provided free). Pay for it just like everyone else.
And the cost of upgrading this 4% would come from corporation's multimillion dollar profits. Like corporate charity.
This is completely identical to taxing all of the customers of the corporation, raising the price they pay by x%.
There is no free lunch. Gov't mandates do not cause goods to pop out of thin air. "Corporate profits" are not an independent pool of money that you can meddle with, because they're based on a percentage of the value people place on the goods provided.
I think it's a great benefit to businesses, educational institutions and governments to be able to expect a certain minimum bandwidth.
The groups that can really use that "minimum bandwidth" usually have the sense to locate themselves where it can be economically provided.
Some Americans like living far from human civilization. Part of that means being very far away from infrastructure, which means no "affordable" high speed internet. That's simply a tradeoff. It's not an indictment of American society - people are exercising their liberty within their economic constraints. (Economic constraints not being optional)
Frankly, I don't think you have any idea of what 3 Mb/s is capable of, and what it is not capable of. If you want to volunteer a opinion about bandwidth requirements, I suggest you stick to what you have installed. How fast is your line? Is it fast enough for what you want to do? Do you videoconference, or play games online? If you degrade yourself enough to watch online video, what's the maximum resolution you can stream? What's stopping you from upgrading your line?
As someone who's lived with 56kbps dialup, 1/1.5Mbps DSL, and 10+ Mbps cable, there's nothing wrong with what he said.
You get the majority of the benefits of "high speed internet" at 768 kbps. Now you can browse text pages and google quickly. Watching video at that speed does suck, but you can still watch it either by waiting or by degrading quality (or both). It's generally enough for online gaming, though you definitely don't want to share it with a roommate/family member streaming video at the same time.
Yes, it's nice to have "instant" downloads, high def video, and so on - just like it's nice to have a gaming rig with cutting edge CPU/GPU and 3 monitors. We call that a "luxury".
Our gov't consistently spends more than it has year after year, on "other people" - and to you that's a symptom of how selfish the American public is.
Nonsense. That politicians stay in power doing that, because they're appealing to American's better nature - "Hey, even though we're spending a lot of money, it's for other people!"
But the system is broken because the politicians are lying about that. They're skimming off the top for themselves and their buddies, and using the funds to increase their own political power rather than actually helping people.
Turns out helping people isn't about throwing money at their problems - but that's the solution a large number of politicians will push, because it involves giving them control over that money.
Yes, wind cannot last, we know it, because eventually the expanding sun will cause the entire atmosphere of the earth to be stripped off and thus wind power generation cannot last.
Why do failed wind plants in Hawaii and California mean that the industry as a whole has failed?
Failed wind plants in HI and CA are indicators that wind power doesn't work. Wind power doesn't work because it has horrible power density compared to what we actually use - hydro, coal, nuclear, natural gas. Wind power doesn't cost any less than its alternatives because you need to build a very large number of windmills, build transmission lines to each one over a large area, and then on top of that you need backup generators to cover the times when the wind isn't blowing.
Wind power doesn't provide much, and it's unreliable to boot. To make it work, you have to restructure society around it. That's a hugely expensive cost, when we have working alternatives that provide reliable and abundant power without requiring a "rewrite" of society.
If a business markets a food item as "vegetarian", they are making an objective claim that there is no meat in said product. If meat was used, the claim is false and they are engaging in fraud (and can be prosecuted for it under existing laws).
With GM foods, unless they claim "No GM ingredients!", there is no fraud. Additionally, GM is not as easy to categorize as vegetarian, kosher, or other labels - hybridization and cross breeding are genetic modifications - but are those really the foods you want to tar with a GM label?
The most important question here is - who is going to pay to collect, certify and regulate this information? It's the people who provide the money - so it's the customers. They will pay the cost in higher prices - so is a GM label really worth making all food more expensive? Why don't non-GM foods adopt marketing labels touting their lack of GM ingredients? If there's so much demand for non-GM foods, there's good profit to be made there, and the marketing campaign would pay for itself. (See "Organic". Hey, that'd be a good label to market non-GM foods; not that there's any inorganic food out there...)
.. -- not what something is worth, but what they can get away with charging you. And if any of you asshats stand up and make an "invisible hand" argument, you're waking up tomorrow with a horse head next to you.
How do you separate the worth of something from the price someone is willing to pay for it?
Outside of coercion ("Would hate to see your house burn down if you don't buy at price X"), if you voluntary give $100 for a Widget, is the Widget not worth more than $100 to you? If the Widget is not worth $100 to you, and no one is forcing you to do anything, don't you simply not buy the widget for $100?
If people don't want GM food, isn't there already an option for them in the "Organic" product section?
This labeling effort is about punishing a set of businesses. If GMO was a desirable label, they'd be using it in their marketing So the law forces a set of businesses to put a label on their product that will harm sales, but not necessarily better inform the public. What of the slippery slope on that?
If it's all about information - should every food item sold have a complete labeling of pesticides and precise composition of harmful chemicals contained, as found by the most expensive testing available? Note that even "natural, organic" products will have some level of "toxic" chemicals present; consider how pricey your organic apple would be if each one was sent through a lab for tests before you could even take a bite.
Just because it is accurate information, doesn't mean that it is highly relevant, or that it was worth the cost to present it. GMO isn't toxic; it's not like people are keeling over due to GMO foods; so then it comes down to the rather unreliable food studies to figure out what impact GMO has on the human body.
Ah, so you're saying we DO need social programs, just better managed.
See, when you say things like "I believe that the poor can afford the healthcare they need, just as they can afford the food and housing they use" you're giving the impression that we don't need ANY social programs.
I didn't say we needed (gov't) social programs. I said if we do them, we have to do them right. You make it sound like its easy. It's exceedingly difficult to do social programs right. At the federal level, it's a top-down solution that relies on the cleverness of the planners - and you ought to review the history of how central planning has consistently failed to outperform organic growth.
Yes, there is need in society - some by bad luck, some by failure. It is immoral, however, to create a system which systematically "steals from the rich to give to the poor", because it creates much potential for abuse. That is a very common side effect of social programs, because the politicians running them are more interested in buying support ("I spent trillions! I care! Vote for me!") than maintaining fiscal solvency.
If you think only a minority cannot fend for themselves, I'm not sure why you're so against my idea. There would only be a few slaves here or there, but at least they'll live and be able to work towards their debt (and maybe even freedom later on). Isn't that what you want?
What I'm opposed to in your idea is the creation of a system that grows the number and percentage of the "helpless". The natural state of man is naked poverty - it takes work and a system that rewards work to build up the wealth we enjoy right now. As far as you modify the system to punish work and reward helplessness, you will get less work and more helplessness. In a rich society, we can afford this as a luxury. But taken to excess, we stop being a rich society, and this luxury threatens the continuation of our system of liberty and justice.
Your idea is already being pursued with the current US Democratic party. A welfare class votes Democrat, while the Democratic party pushes social programs that pay the welfare class for existing. Under Obama, more Americans are under foodstamps than at any point in history, and he issued an executive order that lifts Clintonian welfare restrictions in order to get more people on the dole (and presumably voting for him). This is welfare slavery - all those people on welfare are treated as if they need it to survive, such that any other system would be inhumane for them. The problem is that we can't afford the current level of spending or the future level of spending. What cannot continue, will not.
That is the fate of every democracy where the people vote themselves bread and circuses. Wealth does not simply exist for the taking; it is created by human effort and ideas - once a majority of society decides they only need to vote themselves benefits to survive, the society loses the impetus that makes it function.
No, privatized health care needs more than that. It'll also need to allow slavery back (officially), because for people who have no money or other assets, the only thing they can use to pay for their consumption (since as you said, the user MUST pay) is with their life (and the freedoms and rights which come with it)
So this person without money requiring healthcare, is incapable of earning money? What percentage of the population is incapable of supporting itself?
Foodstamps
US government also has a history of passing bills and giving subsidies to help its agriculture industry
And did people starve to death in the US before foodstamps came into existence?
Are grocery stores required by law to give food to anyone who walks into their store and "needs" it?
You can believe whatever you want. However, in reality, the US has socialized food and housing programs... programs that would just as likely be under fire if health care isn't the focus at the moment.
The existence of such programs doesn't mean that every user needs welfare to survive. If I could get free money for existing, I'd take it. That is why these types of social programs need careful management in order to stay sustainable and a net benefit to society.
We differ in our view of humanity - you seem to think that a very large proportion cannot fend for themselves, and need a gov't program to step in in order to ensure their survival. I'm of the opinion that the majority can take care of themselves, and the important thing is for society to not discourage self-sufficiency.
Welfare programs create and encourage dependence in the citizenry, which undermines a free society. It supports accumulation of power in gov't, which breeds tyranny. Just look at New York and its mayor wanting to ban salt and fat and regulate how citizens live their daily lives. Would there be any justification for this if gov't wasn't "footing the bill"? (Actually taxpayers are footing the bill, but gov't gets to claim the credit)
One of the few things US have not socialized, amusingly, is guns. There's no "universal guncare" as far as I know.
No big gov't advocate wants to make it more difficult to manipulate and control the country. Speaking of which, doesn't Switzerland have some of the lowest crime rates in Europe?
How exactly can he pay without money? You still haven't explained how it all works.
What edge case are we talking about? Poor does not necessarily mean unemployed.
If the person in question is incapable of earning any money, then he's going to rely on the charity of society - whether it's from an individual or a group. How has your hypothetical poor ill man with no money managed to not starve to death before requiring healthcare? Why is the correct solution to his predicament a law that requires doctors to treat him without payment? (This is the status quo that you don't think I should be criticizing; this is gov't coercing the doctors)
For the poor person who manages to pay for food, he has money that may be used to pay for the healthcare he needs. He can promise to pay in the future. The doctors may choose to offer a lower billing rate based on that demonstrated need in a society without a law mandating "free" treatment. Private practices already do this to some extent as far as they are able to and want to.
The big difference between food and healthcare is that food is something you consume in roughly the same amounts on a day to day basis, and it also costs the same. Healthcare, on the other hand, is something that you might not "consume" at all for years, until one day you suddenly need it - to the point that you may well die if you don't get it - and that one-time cost is pretty high, sometimes exorbitantly so. That's why insurance or some other form of distributed payment is needed in the first place.
This scenario is entirely mitigated if doctors accept a long term payment plan for their patient. Additionally, functioning adults plan for their future. One person's lack of foresight and planning does not constitute a societal crisis.
As far as you design society to make those who plan ahead pay for everyone else, you've created a moral hazard - those who plan ahead are penalized, as they pay for themselves and those who don't plan; those who don't plan ahead are subsidized, as their poor choices are paid for by the rest of society. This is tragedy of the commons. Why would you design a system to be vulnerable to a known problem?
The problem with your (American) system is that you have a horrible hybrid of privatized and socialized that fully retains almost all the nasty aspects of the former, while very badly implementing the latter. I don't even see the point of arguing in support of that. In case you've missed it, I'm arguing in support of a true public option, as seen in Canada, Germany etc.
And I'm arguing for a pure privatized system. I don't see any reason why the ill effects of gov't meddling must be given a free pass, while every imagined problem of a free market system is proof that it's too heartless to use.
Creating a socialized system with uncontrollable costs is far more heartless than any private system. Future generations are placed on the hook for current spending - that's debt slavery. Perhaps you haven't noticed - the US borrows 40% of its budget, the vast majority of which is spent on welfare programs "for the poor".
I don't believe in the "invisible hand" always doing the best thing. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I've seen what it did to my own country back when it appeared. So, sorry, but I don't buy into Rand and Mises. Dirigisme, on the other hand, is where it's at - and guess what? - we have decades of economic prosperity in Western countries to prove that it actually works. I'm not aware of any similar experiment with laissez-faire; the closest that we ever came to that was US in the 19th century, and that ended up with Gilded Age.
The invisible hand has historically yielded good things, and has outperformed every central planning alternative ever devised. That experience is sufficient reason to support it over the alternatives - but we also have solid theory on how
Why are you convinced that the profit motive reduces costs? It doesn't when you have a non-competiitve environment as we currently have and have had for decades in the medical field. Admit that the free-market/profit oriented method has failed to hold down costs and let another method, proven to work in several first-world countries be tried here in the US.
Because the profit motive in a free market is what drives the US economy (in general) to excel. The computers we're typing this on, the internet links we're communicating over, are all provided by companies chasing profits.
The food you buy from restaurants, the groceries, your transportation? Created by companies chasing
profits.
We do have a (relatively) non competitive environment in healthcare, and that 2,000 page Obamacare bill is symptomatic of the type of gov't meddling we've allowed for the past century. When gov't creates a problem, they don't get to shirk responsibility and blame the markets for doing what the gov't incentivized them to do.
One more point I forgot to cover: Insurance is not healthcare. Insurance is a method to mitigate financial risks, but people can and do afford their healthcare without insurance policies.
My point was rather that most people who do argue for pure privatized health care aren't willing to say "yes, the guy should be left out to bleed & die", even though that's the only logically consistent answer, for the reasons that you describe. In other words, most people aren't really for private insurance, they're perfectly willing to make exceptions when challenged on emotional level. Once you start making those, it makes more sense to go all the way.
He doesn't have to bleed out and die. The only thing required under a privatized healthcare system is that the user MUST pay for the services he consumes - no different than any other market. Food is far more essential to our day to day existence - where's universal "foodcare"? We don't need it. Foodbanks and soup kitchens exist at a local level to serve those who really need help (and some who don't). People are not starving in a "privatized foodcare system".
I believe that the poor can afford the healthcare they need, just as they can afford the food and housing they use. The handwringing that they can't afford healthcare is based on static analysis of a perverted market where the paying patients are paying for themselves and all the nonpaying patients, and the non-patients desperately hope they won't become a patient. It's perverted because it encourages everyone to become a nonpaying patient, and the costs keep getting higher and higher for the honest paying patient as people decide its in their best interest to obe a non-paying patient.
Healthcare socialists are pretending that the poor that were bleeding and dying in the streets before the "mandatory ER care" law was passed. Uh, no. If they were, you'd cite the historical death rates before and after the law - evidence instead of extrapolation. Instead, you're using a false dilemma to appeal to emotion. There are more possibiliites than "treat for free as forced to by law" or "leave to die". In a privatized system, doctors can choose to "treat for free and pass the hat", or "treat now pay later". Both satisfy our desire to help the needy while not using coercion on the doctors.
Your position requires you to complain about the failings of a privatized system that we don't have, while ignoring the failings of the socialized system that we do have. Here's a question for you: Would you be happy with a public option that deliberately provides the lowest possible healthcare to control costs and to encourage everyone to buy private care if they can afford to do so? That is the type of socialized healthcare we can afford, but can you stomach it?
Your desire for price regulation is a bad idea, by the way. Bureaucrats are no more qualified than anyone else to decide what the optimal price/supply point of the market is. A law that says a computer must be priced at $1 does not actually make the computer cost $1. $1 worth of computer is not going to be a very good one. If it doesn't work in one market, it doesn't work in any market. Price regulation doesn't actually work. All it does is allow some people to underpay while others go without, or it makes everyone overpay. Neither is a good thing.
Then please explain why the US system is the most expensive, and why the system in somewhere like Australia is not only cheaper but also provides excellent care using the latest 'medical technology' and is at the forefront of medical 'research and development'.
I didn't say the existence of the profit motive guaranteed cheap healthcare. But it is the profit motive that provides a great incentive to lower costs, one part of which is finding effective treatments that people are willing to pay for. Think of the profit motive as fire - controlled, it produces warmth and energy; uncontrolled, it burns up everything. Banned, you freeze to death. Banning fire is a dumb idea. So is the idea of removing profit motive.
The US system is expensive because we've created moral hazards throughout the system - tax laws make health insurance tied to employment (which it does not need to be; auto or homeowner's insurance don't get lost when one switches jobs). This is because tax laws give tax deductions to employers for providing health benefits (which are not provided to individuals buying the health insurance they need). In short - people paying for their own insurance get taxed more heavily.
There are many elements to why US healthcare is pricey- but the short version is that the US healthcare system is far from an unfettered free market system. It's regulated out the wazoo - what insurance companies are allowed to charge for, how they run their businesses, how medical devices are created and certified, and so on.
Basic Econ: Regulations increase costs, which result in lower supply and higher prices for the goods in question. Thus, expensive healthcare. Note that I'm not saying every regulation is bad - but one must recognize the cause and effect relationship it has with the cost of goods.
There's nothing admirable about a 3rd person holding a gun to a doctor's head to force said doctor to provide treatment, "for free". That's pretty much how the law functions - ERs are forced by law to provide care that isn't paid for. The costs are ultimately passed to just the people who are able to pay and happen to be using the services of the hospital. (A subset of the total population served by the hospital, as not everyone is sick and needs the hospital's services at that point in time)
My suggestion? If we want that type of socialized healthcare, then we have to make those "mandates" pay for themselves - the gov't should levy a universal tax to pay for the policy desired. The tax won't be popular, but we're adults and we take responsibility for the policies we want.
If people decide that the policy doesn't provide good value for taxpayer money, there are alternatives - allow ER/doctors to claim procedures performed for the poor as charitable deductions - it may seem similar to the existing policy, but has the advantage of using incentives to create voluntary actions, and leaves medical providers leeway to respond to any abuse of their charity.
The key point is that people aren't entitled to healthcare. No one has the right to demand that a medical student spend years studying and practicing in medcial school, just to spend all their time after garduation providing "free" healthcare without compensation. If the doctors aren't paid in accordance with the value they provide, they are being oppressed or even enslaved. That is not what a free society should do.
Since medical care costs money, our system should to the extent possible demand that those who incur the costs, pay the costs. That is both just and fair. This also encourages the system (and the people in it) to be efficient. If I'm paying for medical care out of my own pocket, I have a very strong incentive to avoid unnecessary costs and find what's effective. The US's current system has done a lot to break this feedback loop. We need to bring it back.
Here you are claiming to have the more rigorous analysis, and then you throw out this tidbit, clearly utterly failing to understand the difference between emergency care and preventative medicine? And you have the nerve to insult this other guy when your analysis is so pathetically sloppy?
Let's see, wiki says:
Health care (or healthcare) is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans.
Both emergency care and preventative medicine fall under the definition of "healthcare". One is treatment, one is prevention. Would you seriously tell an ER doc that he is not delivering healthcare?
There's nothing wrong with the way I used the word. No one brought up the difference between preventative or emergency healthcare, so I didn't discuss the difference. Absence of discussion is not evidence of ignorance.
You complain that I'm insulting another poster. Did you even read what he typed? He threw out an accusation of "hating the poor" and being pro slavery - as far as he is insulted, he's simply getting a portion of what he dished out.
Congratulations on your selective outrage. I feel pathetically sloppy to have not made a post that conformed to your highest standards of internet discussion.
Creating a monopsony (single payer) does not increase the quality of healthcare. It forcibly pays the providers less; the providers end up providing a level of care appropriate to what is paid.
It may be more efficient, in that medical care is subject to diminishing returns such that each extra dollar spent is less efficient than the last - but it is not a better market equilibrium.
Part of the rise in US healthcare costs is in fact "socialized healthcare" policies. ERs are mandated by law to treat anyone who walks in, regardless of their ability to pay. The law does not pay the hospitals the costs incurred - so the costs come out of the pockets of the paying customers of the hopsital.
Based on those policies, there are no incentives to be a paying customer for medical services, whereas there is all the incentive to get whatever care you need "for free". It's an unstable system with a positive feedback loop for the consumption of "free healthcare".
The solution is not gov't. A law mandating computers be sold for $0.50 does not make them cost $0.50. A law mandating healthcare be provided cheaply does not make healthcare cheap. The solution is competition with the incentive of profits. That would encourage more people to become doctors and medical providers, and those medical providers chasing profits will undercut each other and drive costs down through innovation.
By the way, health insurance is not really meant to be a healthcare "all you can eat buffet". Routine medical procedures that cost $20 are going to cost $20 in insurance + overhead - there are no cost savings using insurance. Insurance is about mitigating Black Swan events - things that are unlikely to occur, but which can ruin one's financial situation should they do so. The issue of healthcare should be distinguished from the issue of health insurance. They are not interchangeable concepts.
As to your point of lowering costs you conveniently forget that if you remove the profit motive from health care you can also reduce costs but I suppose you will try to tell me that the free market rules all.
Egads, removing the profit motive from healthcare is the exact mechanism for increasing costs!
Is the gov't a for-profit enterprise? How often has it managed to balance its budget for the past 100 years? Compare that to a business - they balance their budgets monthly, or they go out of business.
No, what keeps costs down is to let people follow their profit motives, but to pit them against them each other. Same idea behind separation of powers between the executive/judicial/legislative branch, between the House and Senate, and between federal, state, and local gov'ts. Each group works to negate any advantage their competitors may have, and yields an equilibrium that benefits everyone compared to the alternatives.
We are going to have to agree to disagree on the worth of a well implemented socialized medicine regime, even though many countries have successfully implemented socialized medicine with results that provide better care for less money than the United States.
If you think the profit motive needs to be eliminated, any medical system you build will be more expensive than it could be.
Not that the US system is perfect, but socialism does nothing to reduce costs. It doesn't increase the number of doctors. It doesn't improve medical technology. It doesn't encourage research and development. All it does is say, I want what you're providing now, but I'm going to pay less for it. Basic economics - you pay less, you get less - less doctors, less drugs, less medical technology. None of that is "better care".
Complaining about profit motive is to complain that humanity is involved. "If only people were perfect, the system would be better". Well, we don't have perfect humans, and a system designed for perfect humans breaks catastrophically when run by imperfect humans. Every system built on that fantasy has collapsed or failed. No thanks.
One doesn't have to have experienced something first hand to have a valid opinion on something. Analysis is all about taking existing data points, even ones not experienced personally, and getting useful conclusions.
For those who don't care for a socialized healthcare system, part of it is simple application of economic first principles and knowledge of human nature and political systems. The other part is reading things like these, which only confirms the conclusions of the prior analysis.
To lower the price and maintain quality, the only place left to sacrifice is availability. That translates into rationing - either a class of people are judged unworthy of further medical treatment, or they're forced to wait.
Low waiting time translates to excess capacity that idles much of the time. With scheduling, one can minimize idle capacity, which costs less money, but means the patients have to wait for treatment.
One way or another, medical care costs resources that must be provided; socialized "free" healthcare doesn't cost any less than privatized healthcare; they just force you to make do with less. That may be more efficient, as healthcare is subject to diminishing returns, but we do not exist for the sake of a cost efficient healthcare system.
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The key to true morality isn't "what would Jesus do", but "what makes sense and actually works to produce favorable outcomes". By that standard, you cannot do better than a scientist.
"Scientific" approaches to rebuild society yielded eugenics and various totalitarian (and murderous) systems. After all, the smart guys clearly know how to run everything and it'd be immoral and evil to oppose them; except when it turns out they aren't smart enough to make the system work.
Scientifically, that's strong evidence against science being the best arbiter of morality, unless you consider those good outcomes.
Personally, I don't think any good scientist would be so quick to dismiss all prior work. A scientist respects the limitation of his knowledge and research, and some of that prior work you dismiss as fairy tale has not been proven wrong. (and will never be proven wrong; science is a limited tool)
Some principles are ancient, yet still highly relevant to modern human society. "New" does not necessarily mean "better" or "correct".
They're probably just giving an answer based on current realities.
There already exist "heroic measures" that can keep an old person alive a little longer. "Staying youthful" is still being researched, and is a difficult problem. If it's even possible, it'll take quite a bit of research and then even more testing to weed out unintended side effects.
You don't need a big standing army when you have nukes. With no big armies anywhere, wars of all descriptions become less likely. A small special forces would be enough to deal with non-state threats.
Your ambassador to Foocountry got taken hostage by a rebel group.
You will now -
1. Helplessly wring your hands while issuing strongly worded statements.
2. Nuke them
3. Ponder the wisdom of having more than 2 options.
Just because you have a sledgehammer doesn't mean you need to throw away all of your other tools.
Because the city slickers think they're entitled to the amenities of rural areas, like, say, food, and transportation across rural areas via roads.
Which of those services were provided for free?
You're trying to replace a monetary system with a crude bartering system. Why? Why trade food for internet, when there is no good exchange rate? (How much food is 1 Mbps internet worth?)
No one has a right to Internet access, and it's not even essential to life like food is (which is also not provided free). Pay for it just like everyone else.
And the cost of upgrading this 4% would come from corporation's multimillion dollar profits. Like corporate charity.
This is completely identical to taxing all of the customers of the corporation, raising the price they pay by x%.
There is no free lunch. Gov't mandates do not cause goods to pop out of thin air. "Corporate profits" are not an independent pool of money that you can meddle with, because they're based on a percentage of the value people place on the goods provided.
I think it's a great benefit to businesses, educational institutions and governments to be able to expect a certain minimum bandwidth.
The groups that can really use that "minimum bandwidth" usually have the sense to locate themselves where it can be economically provided.
Some Americans like living far from human civilization. Part of that means being very far away from infrastructure, which means no "affordable" high speed internet. That's simply a tradeoff. It's not an indictment of American society - people are exercising their liberty within their economic constraints. (Economic constraints not being optional)
Frankly, I don't think you have any idea of what 3 Mb/s is capable of, and what it is not capable of. If you want to volunteer a opinion about bandwidth requirements, I suggest you stick to what you have installed. How fast is your line? Is it fast enough for what you want to do? Do you videoconference, or play games online? If you degrade yourself enough to watch online video, what's the maximum resolution you can stream? What's stopping you from upgrading your line?
As someone who's lived with 56kbps dialup, 1/1.5Mbps DSL, and 10+ Mbps cable, there's nothing wrong with what he said.
You get the majority of the benefits of "high speed internet" at 768 kbps. Now you can browse text pages and google quickly. Watching video at that speed does suck, but you can still watch it either by waiting or by degrading quality (or both). It's generally enough for online gaming, though you definitely don't want to share it with a roommate/family member streaming video at the same time.
Yes, it's nice to have "instant" downloads, high def video, and so on - just like it's nice to have a gaming rig with cutting edge CPU/GPU and 3 monitors. We call that a "luxury".
Our gov't consistently spends more than it has year after year, on "other people" - and to you that's a symptom of how selfish the American public is.
Nonsense. That politicians stay in power doing that, because they're appealing to American's better nature - "Hey, even though we're spending a lot of money, it's for other people!"
But the system is broken because the politicians are lying about that. They're skimming off the top for themselves and their buddies, and using the funds to increase their own political power rather than actually helping people.
Turns out helping people isn't about throwing money at their problems - but that's the solution a large number of politicians will push, because it involves giving them control over that money.
Yes, wind cannot last, we know it, because eventually the expanding sun will cause the entire atmosphere of the earth to be stripped off and thus wind power generation cannot last.
Why do failed wind plants in Hawaii and California mean that the industry as a whole has failed?
Failed wind plants in HI and CA are indicators that wind power doesn't work. Wind power doesn't work because it has horrible power density compared to what we actually use - hydro, coal, nuclear, natural gas. Wind power doesn't cost any less than its alternatives because you need to build a very large number of windmills, build transmission lines to each one over a large area, and then on top of that you need backup generators to cover the times when the wind isn't blowing.
Wind power doesn't provide much, and it's unreliable to boot. To make it work, you have to restructure society around it. That's a hugely expensive cost, when we have working alternatives that provide reliable and abundant power without requiring a "rewrite" of society.
Solar can take up huge swaths of land, we have it empty. What are your plans for our deserts?
If you're an environmentalist, apparently it's to keep it pristine. http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/08/10/49192.htm
There's a difference between your scenarios.
If a business markets a food item as "vegetarian", they are making an objective claim that there is no meat in said product. If meat was used, the claim is false and they are engaging in fraud (and can be prosecuted for it under existing laws).
With GM foods, unless they claim "No GM ingredients!", there is no fraud. Additionally, GM is not as easy to categorize as vegetarian, kosher, or other labels - hybridization and cross breeding are genetic modifications - but are those really the foods you want to tar with a GM label?
The most important question here is - who is going to pay to collect, certify and regulate this information? It's the people who provide the money - so it's the customers. They will pay the cost in higher prices - so is a GM label really worth making all food more expensive? Why don't non-GM foods adopt marketing labels touting their lack of GM ingredients? If there's so much demand for non-GM foods, there's good profit to be made there, and the marketing campaign would pay for itself. (See "Organic". Hey, that'd be a good label to market non-GM foods; not that there's any inorganic food out there ...)
.. -- not what something is worth, but what they can get away with charging you. And if any of you asshats stand up and make an "invisible hand" argument, you're waking up tomorrow with a horse head next to you.
How do you separate the worth of something from the price someone is willing to pay for it?
Outside of coercion ("Would hate to see your house burn down if you don't buy at price X"), if you voluntary give $100 for a Widget, is the Widget not worth more than $100 to you? If the Widget is not worth $100 to you, and no one is forcing you to do anything, don't you simply not buy the widget for $100?
If people don't want GM food, isn't there already an option for them in the "Organic" product section?
This labeling effort is about punishing a set of businesses. If GMO was a desirable label, they'd be using it in their marketing So the law forces a set of businesses to put a label on their product that will harm sales, but not necessarily better inform the public. What of the slippery slope on that?
If it's all about information - should every food item sold have a complete labeling of pesticides and precise composition of harmful chemicals contained, as found by the most expensive testing available? Note that even "natural, organic" products will have some level of "toxic" chemicals present; consider how pricey your organic apple would be if each one was sent through a lab for tests before you could even take a bite.
Just because it is accurate information, doesn't mean that it is highly relevant, or that it was worth the cost to present it. GMO isn't toxic; it's not like people are keeling over due to GMO foods; so then it comes down to the rather unreliable food studies to figure out what impact GMO has on the human body.
Ah, so you're saying we DO need social programs, just better managed.
See, when you say things like "I believe that the poor can afford the healthcare they need, just as they can afford the food and housing they use" you're giving the impression that we don't need ANY social programs.
I didn't say we needed (gov't) social programs. I said if we do them, we have to do them right. You make it sound like its easy. It's exceedingly difficult to do social programs right. At the federal level, it's a top-down solution that relies on the cleverness of the planners - and you ought to review the history of how central planning has consistently failed to outperform organic growth.
Yes, there is need in society - some by bad luck, some by failure. It is immoral, however, to create a system which systematically "steals from the rich to give to the poor", because it creates much potential for abuse. That is a very common side effect of social programs, because the politicians running them are more interested in buying support ("I spent trillions! I care! Vote for me!") than maintaining fiscal solvency.
If you think only a minority cannot fend for themselves, I'm not sure why you're so against my idea. There would only be a few slaves here or there, but at least they'll live and be able to work towards their debt (and maybe even freedom later on). Isn't that what you want?
What I'm opposed to in your idea is the creation of a system that grows the number and percentage of the "helpless". The natural state of man is naked poverty - it takes work and a system that rewards work to build up the wealth we enjoy right now. As far as you modify the system to punish work and reward helplessness, you will get less work and more helplessness. In a rich society, we can afford this as a luxury. But taken to excess, we stop being a rich society, and this luxury threatens the continuation of our system of liberty and justice.
Your idea is already being pursued with the current US Democratic party. A welfare class votes Democrat, while the Democratic party pushes social programs that pay the welfare class for existing. Under Obama, more Americans are under foodstamps than at any point in history, and he issued an executive order that lifts Clintonian welfare restrictions in order to get more people on the dole (and presumably voting for him). This is welfare slavery - all those people on welfare are treated as if they need it to survive, such that any other system would be inhumane for them. The problem is that we can't afford the current level of spending or the future level of spending. What cannot continue, will not.
That is the fate of every democracy where the people vote themselves bread and circuses. Wealth does not simply exist for the taking; it is created by human effort and ideas - once a majority of society decides they only need to vote themselves benefits to survive, the society loses the impetus that makes it function.
No, privatized health care needs more than that. It'll also need to allow slavery back (officially), because for people who have no money or other assets, the only thing they can use to pay for their consumption (since as you said, the user MUST pay) is with their life (and the freedoms and rights which come with it)
So this person without money requiring healthcare, is incapable of earning money? What percentage of the population is incapable of supporting itself?
Foodstamps US government also has a history of passing bills and giving subsidies to help its agriculture industry
And did people starve to death in the US before foodstamps came into existence?
Are grocery stores required by law to give food to anyone who walks into their store and "needs" it?
You can believe whatever you want. However, in reality, the US has socialized food and housing programs... programs that would just as likely be under fire if health care isn't the focus at the moment.
The existence of such programs doesn't mean that every user needs welfare to survive. If I could get free money for existing, I'd take it. That is why these types of social programs need careful management in order to stay sustainable and a net benefit to society.
We differ in our view of humanity - you seem to think that a very large proportion cannot fend for themselves, and need a gov't program to step in in order to ensure their survival. I'm of the opinion that the majority can take care of themselves, and the important thing is for society to not discourage self-sufficiency.
Welfare programs create and encourage dependence in the citizenry, which undermines a free society. It supports accumulation of power in gov't, which breeds tyranny. Just look at New York and its mayor wanting to ban salt and fat and regulate how citizens live their daily lives. Would there be any justification for this if gov't wasn't "footing the bill"? (Actually taxpayers are footing the bill, but gov't gets to claim the credit)
One of the few things US have not socialized, amusingly, is guns. There's no "universal guncare" as far as I know.
No big gov't advocate wants to make it more difficult to manipulate and control the country. Speaking of which, doesn't Switzerland have some of the lowest crime rates in Europe?
How exactly can he pay without money? You still haven't explained how it all works.
What edge case are we talking about? Poor does not necessarily mean unemployed.
If the person in question is incapable of earning any money, then he's going to rely on the charity of society - whether it's from an individual or a group. How has your hypothetical poor ill man with no money managed to not starve to death before requiring healthcare? Why is the correct solution to his predicament a law that requires doctors to treat him without payment? (This is the status quo that you don't think I should be criticizing; this is gov't coercing the doctors)
For the poor person who manages to pay for food, he has money that may be used to pay for the healthcare he needs. He can promise to pay in the future. The doctors may choose to offer a lower billing rate based on that demonstrated need in a society without a law mandating "free" treatment. Private practices already do this to some extent as far as they are able to and want to.
The big difference between food and healthcare is that food is something you consume in roughly the same amounts on a day to day basis, and it also costs the same. Healthcare, on the other hand, is something that you might not "consume" at all for years, until one day you suddenly need it - to the point that you may well die if you don't get it - and that one-time cost is pretty high, sometimes exorbitantly so. That's why insurance or some other form of distributed payment is needed in the first place.
This scenario is entirely mitigated if doctors accept a long term payment plan for their patient. Additionally, functioning adults plan for their future. One person's lack of foresight and planning does not constitute a societal crisis.
As far as you design society to make those who plan ahead pay for everyone else, you've created a moral hazard - those who plan ahead are penalized, as they pay for themselves and those who don't plan; those who don't plan ahead are subsidized, as their poor choices are paid for by the rest of society. This is tragedy of the commons. Why would you design a system to be vulnerable to a known problem?
The problem with your (American) system is that you have a horrible hybrid of privatized and socialized that fully retains almost all the nasty aspects of the former, while very badly implementing the latter. I don't even see the point of arguing in support of that. In case you've missed it, I'm arguing in support of a true public option, as seen in Canada, Germany etc.
And I'm arguing for a pure privatized system. I don't see any reason why the ill effects of gov't meddling must be given a free pass, while every imagined problem of a free market system is proof that it's too heartless to use.
Creating a socialized system with uncontrollable costs is far more heartless than any private system. Future generations are placed on the hook for current spending - that's debt slavery. Perhaps you haven't noticed - the US borrows 40% of its budget, the vast majority of which is spent on welfare programs "for the poor".
I don't believe in the "invisible hand" always doing the best thing. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I've seen what it did to my own country back when it appeared. So, sorry, but I don't buy into Rand and Mises. Dirigisme, on the other hand, is where it's at - and guess what? - we have decades of economic prosperity in Western countries to prove that it actually works. I'm not aware of any similar experiment with laissez-faire; the closest that we ever came to that was US in the 19th century, and that ended up with Gilded Age.
The invisible hand has historically yielded good things, and has outperformed every central planning alternative ever devised. That experience is sufficient reason to support it over the alternatives - but we also have solid theory on how
Why are you convinced that the profit motive reduces costs? It doesn't when you have a non-competiitve environment as we currently have and have had for decades in the medical field. Admit that the free-market/profit oriented method has failed to hold down costs and let another method, proven to work in several first-world countries be tried here in the US.
Because the profit motive in a free market is what drives the US economy (in general) to excel. The computers we're typing this on, the internet links we're communicating over, are all provided by companies chasing profits.
The food you buy from restaurants, the groceries, your transportation? Created by companies chasing profits.
We do have a (relatively) non competitive environment in healthcare, and that 2,000 page Obamacare bill is symptomatic of the type of gov't meddling we've allowed for the past century. When gov't creates a problem, they don't get to shirk responsibility and blame the markets for doing what the gov't incentivized them to do.
One more point I forgot to cover: Insurance is not healthcare. Insurance is a method to mitigate financial risks, but people can and do afford their healthcare without insurance policies.
My point was rather that most people who do argue for pure privatized health care aren't willing to say "yes, the guy should be left out to bleed & die", even though that's the only logically consistent answer, for the reasons that you describe. In other words, most people aren't really for private insurance, they're perfectly willing to make exceptions when challenged on emotional level. Once you start making those, it makes more sense to go all the way.
He doesn't have to bleed out and die. The only thing required under a privatized healthcare system is that the user MUST pay for the services he consumes - no different than any other market. Food is far more essential to our day to day existence - where's universal "foodcare"? We don't need it. Foodbanks and soup kitchens exist at a local level to serve those who really need help (and some who don't). People are not starving in a "privatized foodcare system".
I believe that the poor can afford the healthcare they need, just as they can afford the food and housing they use. The handwringing that they can't afford healthcare is based on static analysis of a perverted market where the paying patients are paying for themselves and all the nonpaying patients, and the non-patients desperately hope they won't become a patient. It's perverted because it encourages everyone to become a nonpaying patient, and the costs keep getting higher and higher for the honest paying patient as people decide its in their best interest to obe a non-paying patient.
Healthcare socialists are pretending that the poor that were bleeding and dying in the streets before the "mandatory ER care" law was passed. Uh, no. If they were, you'd cite the historical death rates before and after the law - evidence instead of extrapolation. Instead, you're using a false dilemma to appeal to emotion. There are more possibiliites than "treat for free as forced to by law" or "leave to die". In a privatized system, doctors can choose to "treat for free and pass the hat", or "treat now pay later". Both satisfy our desire to help the needy while not using coercion on the doctors.
Your position requires you to complain about the failings of a privatized system that we don't have, while ignoring the failings of the socialized system that we do have. Here's a question for you: Would you be happy with a public option that deliberately provides the lowest possible healthcare to control costs and to encourage everyone to buy private care if they can afford to do so? That is the type of socialized healthcare we can afford, but can you stomach it?
Your desire for price regulation is a bad idea, by the way. Bureaucrats are no more qualified than anyone else to decide what the optimal price/supply point of the market is. A law that says a computer must be priced at $1 does not actually make the computer cost $1. $1 worth of computer is not going to be a very good one. If it doesn't work in one market, it doesn't work in any market. Price regulation doesn't actually work. All it does is allow some people to underpay while others go without, or it makes everyone overpay. Neither is a good thing.
Then please explain why the US system is the most expensive, and why the system in somewhere like Australia is not only cheaper but also provides excellent care using the latest 'medical technology' and is at the forefront of medical 'research and development'.
I didn't say the existence of the profit motive guaranteed cheap healthcare. But it is the profit motive that provides a great incentive to lower costs, one part of which is finding effective treatments that people are willing to pay for. Think of the profit motive as fire - controlled, it produces warmth and energy; uncontrolled, it burns up everything. Banned, you freeze to death. Banning fire is a dumb idea. So is the idea of removing profit motive.
The US system is expensive because we've created moral hazards throughout the system - tax laws make health insurance tied to employment (which it does not need to be; auto or homeowner's insurance don't get lost when one switches jobs). This is because tax laws give tax deductions to employers for providing health benefits (which are not provided to individuals buying the health insurance they need). In short - people paying for their own insurance get taxed more heavily.
There are many elements to why US healthcare is pricey- but the short version is that the US healthcare system is far from an unfettered free market system. It's regulated out the wazoo - what insurance companies are allowed to charge for, how they run their businesses, how medical devices are created and certified, and so on.
Basic Econ: Regulations increase costs, which result in lower supply and higher prices for the goods in question. Thus, expensive healthcare. Note that I'm not saying every regulation is bad - but one must recognize the cause and effect relationship it has with the cost of goods.
There's nothing admirable about a 3rd person holding a gun to a doctor's head to force said doctor to provide treatment, "for free". That's pretty much how the law functions - ERs are forced by law to provide care that isn't paid for. The costs are ultimately passed to just the people who are able to pay and happen to be using the services of the hospital. (A subset of the total population served by the hospital, as not everyone is sick and needs the hospital's services at that point in time)
My suggestion? If we want that type of socialized healthcare, then we have to make those "mandates" pay for themselves - the gov't should levy a universal tax to pay for the policy desired. The tax won't be popular, but we're adults and we take responsibility for the policies we want.
If people decide that the policy doesn't provide good value for taxpayer money, there are alternatives - allow ER/doctors to claim procedures performed for the poor as charitable deductions - it may seem similar to the existing policy, but has the advantage of using incentives to create voluntary actions, and leaves medical providers leeway to respond to any abuse of their charity.
The key point is that people aren't entitled to healthcare. No one has the right to demand that a medical student spend years studying and practicing in medcial school, just to spend all their time after garduation providing "free" healthcare without compensation. If the doctors aren't paid in accordance with the value they provide, they are being oppressed or even enslaved. That is not what a free society should do.
Since medical care costs money, our system should to the extent possible demand that those who incur the costs, pay the costs. That is both just and fair. This also encourages the system (and the people in it) to be efficient. If I'm paying for medical care out of my own pocket, I have a very strong incentive to avoid unnecessary costs and find what's effective. The US's current system has done a lot to break this feedback loop. We need to bring it back.
Here you are claiming to have the more rigorous analysis, and then you throw out this tidbit, clearly utterly failing to understand the difference between emergency care and preventative medicine? And you have the nerve to insult this other guy when your analysis is so pathetically sloppy?
Let's see, wiki says:
Health care (or healthcare) is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans.
Both emergency care and preventative medicine fall under the definition of "healthcare". One is treatment, one is prevention. Would you seriously tell an ER doc that he is not delivering healthcare?
There's nothing wrong with the way I used the word. No one brought up the difference between preventative or emergency healthcare, so I didn't discuss the difference. Absence of discussion is not evidence of ignorance.
You complain that I'm insulting another poster. Did you even read what he typed? He threw out an accusation of "hating the poor" and being pro slavery - as far as he is insulted, he's simply getting a portion of what he dished out.
Congratulations on your selective outrage. I feel pathetically sloppy to have not made a post that conformed to your highest standards of internet discussion.
Creating a monopsony (single payer) does not increase the quality of healthcare. It forcibly pays the providers less; the providers end up providing a level of care appropriate to what is paid.
It may be more efficient, in that medical care is subject to diminishing returns such that each extra dollar spent is less efficient than the last - but it is not a better market equilibrium.
Part of the rise in US healthcare costs is in fact "socialized healthcare" policies. ERs are mandated by law to treat anyone who walks in, regardless of their ability to pay. The law does not pay the hospitals the costs incurred - so the costs come out of the pockets of the paying customers of the hopsital.
Based on those policies, there are no incentives to be a paying customer for medical services, whereas there is all the incentive to get whatever care you need "for free". It's an unstable system with a positive feedback loop for the consumption of "free healthcare".
The solution is not gov't. A law mandating computers be sold for $0.50 does not make them cost $0.50. A law mandating healthcare be provided cheaply does not make healthcare cheap. The solution is competition with the incentive of profits. That would encourage more people to become doctors and medical providers, and those medical providers chasing profits will undercut each other and drive costs down through innovation.
By the way, health insurance is not really meant to be a healthcare "all you can eat buffet". Routine medical procedures that cost $20 are going to cost $20 in insurance + overhead - there are no cost savings using insurance. Insurance is about mitigating Black Swan events - things that are unlikely to occur, but which can ruin one's financial situation should they do so. The issue of healthcare should be distinguished from the issue of health insurance. They are not interchangeable concepts.
As to your point of lowering costs you conveniently forget that if you remove the profit motive from health care you can also reduce costs but I suppose you will try to tell me that the free market rules all.
Egads, removing the profit motive from healthcare is the exact mechanism for increasing costs!
Is the gov't a for-profit enterprise? How often has it managed to balance its budget for the past 100 years? Compare that to a business - they balance their budgets monthly, or they go out of business.
No, what keeps costs down is to let people follow their profit motives, but to pit them against them each other. Same idea behind separation of powers between the executive/judicial/legislative branch, between the House and Senate, and between federal, state, and local gov'ts. Each group works to negate any advantage their competitors may have, and yields an equilibrium that benefits everyone compared to the alternatives.
We are going to have to agree to disagree on the worth of a well implemented socialized medicine regime, even though many countries have successfully implemented socialized medicine with results that provide better care for less money than the United States.
If you think the profit motive needs to be eliminated, any medical system you build will be more expensive than it could be.
Not that the US system is perfect, but socialism does nothing to reduce costs. It doesn't increase the number of doctors. It doesn't improve medical technology. It doesn't encourage research and development. All it does is say, I want what you're providing now, but I'm going to pay less for it. Basic economics - you pay less, you get less - less doctors, less drugs, less medical technology. None of that is "better care".
Complaining about profit motive is to complain that humanity is involved. "If only people were perfect, the system would be better". Well, we don't have perfect humans, and a system designed for perfect humans breaks catastrophically when run by imperfect humans. Every system built on that fantasy has collapsed or failed. No thanks.
One doesn't have to have experienced something first hand to have a valid opinion on something. Analysis is all about taking existing data points, even ones not experienced personally, and getting useful conclusions.
For those who don't care for a socialized healthcare system, part of it is simple application of economic first principles and knowledge of human nature and political systems. The other part is reading things like these, which only confirms the conclusions of the prior analysis.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html
http://gulftoday.ae/portal/60d849a4-4525-4afa-aad9-5acaedc5c0e3.aspx
To lower the price and maintain quality, the only place left to sacrifice is availability. That translates into rationing - either a class of people are judged unworthy of further medical treatment, or they're forced to wait.
Low waiting time translates to excess capacity that idles much of the time. With scheduling, one can minimize idle capacity, which costs less money, but means the patients have to wait for treatment.
One way or another, medical care costs resources that must be provided; socialized "free" healthcare doesn't cost any less than privatized healthcare; they just force you to make do with less. That may be more efficient, as healthcare is subject to diminishing returns, but we do not exist for the sake of a cost efficient healthcare system.