Very interesting, so demand can be artifically pushed up in the statistics? And thus it depends on what numbers are focused upon. The government likes to focus on the final price of a product without taking into account all the costs added to that final product because of government middlemen and increased regulations (which all cost money which is paid for by the consumer in the final product). The people that read these artificial demands are reading not the true supply end of consumers, but are reading also all the costs of middle-men thereby reading a distorted market. It is a distorted market cause the costs of the final supply of medicine for the consumers to buy is a high cost not because of consumer demand but all of the added costs that unnecessarily prop up this socialist market via government regulations and middlemen costs.
Not quite. Indeed, I agree about the focus on final cost, without looking at all the additional internal pieces imposed into health care that increase internal costs. But this is limited to internal costs, not artificial demand.
Demand is technically defined as what one gives up in order to gain something else.
When people seek medical care through medicare or medicaid, they are not giving up anything. Similarly, when all health care is included under “insurance” and there is no co-pay or deductible, they are not giving anything up. Hence, by being pushed into systems where someone else is paying most to all of the final prices, the people receiving the actual care do not care about the final prices.
To give some examples, when one does not have to pay, he will choose more expensive procedures, go to the emergency room rather than waiting in line, call an ambulance rather than seeking his own transportation, and so on.
Agreed. I believe that not all actions are pure choices and thus not all actions are reflective of human nature. It was Hashem (I think) who should that all actions are choices and therefore all actions are part of human nature.
The government will provide “pure choices” (not sure what you mean, but a choice is a choice). This thread is discussing how the government intervening will limit those choices. Thus humans will only be able to act within a limiting range of choices as the government intervenes. We could reject the governments intervention, that is a choice, but that would mean, depending on how this health care plans turns out, we (whoever tries to not be a part of it) may not end up with health care at all. And would the free market be able to compete with the physical coercive monopoly that will regulate the market even further thus limiting the choices by the point of the gun? I’m not sure how far this will play out. Even at the point of a gun there is a choice of self-defense, and that is a natural right of human nature. It is a choice. But the point of the free market is that such brute measures of choice become minimized for in a free market exchanges are made with negotiation. The government increases conflict, the free market minimizes conflict.
I agree with everything you said. You are right, “pure choices” is ambiguous. I meant…something like…“totally voluntary choices.” I think that human nature is much less complicated than you guys are trying to make it though. All of our choices stem from one very simple concept: humans are selfish, self optimizing creatures who strive to improve their own personal situation before worrying about anyone else. That’s it. That’s human nature. All our choices lead back to the question: “What is best for me?” That’s human nature, selfishness. We assume that voluntary choices more clearly reflect self optimization and that coerced choices usually reflect the interests of not all parties but instead one or a few (the ones with the guns.)
Now, what you and I have said about freeing markets up is based on the idea that if humans are allowed to make truly self optimizing decisions then this will not just be better for that particular individual; but for everyone, because ultimately consumers are best off just being able to buy whatever they think is best for them and producers will produce whatever is going to make them the most money, which incidentally, is usually the products people want most.
The problem with government health care is that it assumes that humans are altruistic creatures and that the people consuming health care and the people providing it are doing so out of a concern for the opposite side (consumers for producers, producers for consumers) You and I know this is not so. Producers produce to make money, consumers consume to stay alive. If we try to insert altruism into this, the whole system falls apart.
Natural law is too complicated a system to reflect the simplicity of human nature, in my opinion. Instead of looking at every choice as an example of human nature, let’s instead let at the cause for each choice. That cause is selfishness.
I think, “What is best for me?” isn’t a terrible way of putting this. The way you put it here is agreeable. But this is also what the pursuit of happiness is about, it is about doing what is best. It has only been recently, the 1800’s, that happiness for some people philosophically became a base drive only. But happiness involves not only base appetites (food, sex, etc…), but happiness also involves intellectual and social desires. In the pursuit of happiness is how we as individuals can flourish and achieve what is best. This used to be more commonly understood so complications are sometimes due what is common knowledge and what is not during any period of time, historically speaking.
And that’s what liberty is.[:)]
I agree. Somebody could be compassionate, but to physically coerce somebody’s own idea of what is moral or not ultimately creates a bias on how a society will develop. It’s social engineering according to some central planners own agenda thereby ignoring the diverse individuals own peaceful attempts to freely choose. Liberty and thus natural rights don’t create a bias, liberty is open to the full human potential. Liberty is about producers producing and consumers consuming for that’s what people want.
That’s the pursuit of happiness (selfishness in this context). It is simple. Natural rights are outlined to make distinctions between those who would diminish choice to brute force and those who flourish choice in accord with the NAP (thus the free market activities).
Given that you and I basically see eye to eye on this, it becomes clear to me that a natural law argument against nationalized health care isn’t the way to go. It would be better to just say that programs based on altruism will not work for humans because humans are not altruistic. In other words, right and wrong (in a moral sense) and ethics are not needed here to make an argument against market interventionist government programs. We can just say they are are based on a concept of humanity that is incorrect. Socialized medicine will fail because it will ask humans to make decisions based on a question which isn’t aligned with our nature: “What’s best for someone else first and then me?”
Incorrect, right or wrong, pick your words but philosophically you agree with natural law since we do see eye to eye. Natural law and natural rights have more explanatory power, so, the issue might not be who’s more correct by using this or that concept. I like the explanatory power of natural law of human nature. It’s more insightful and applicable in large spectrums of human life that I have yet to see it’s full potential. But I’m not here at the moment to argue who’s concepts are better. As I pointed out natural rights are based on the individual. So forced altruism isn’t, thus, is counter to the applicability of natural rights. You use one word, I use another word, but we are talking about the same thing. I’m thinkin’ it’s not that big of a deal.
I think it’s easier to say it won’t work cause it initiates coercion upon the free market. But we both agree. It won’t work in the sense it will make life harder and then inevitably it will fail and we’ll have to pick up the pieces and start over again depending on how far back this health care plan demolishes all the diverse achievements that humans have been able to make thus far. It’s analogous to dropping a bomb. It’s destructive.
The only real issue I have with you is that this is not an isolated case, this is a blanket endeavour for governemnt, it creates the notion of its own usefulness that does not really exist…
yeah, this bill is terrible. I watched a youtube of a Republican from Florida linked at Campaign for Liberty and she estimates this bill will cause about 10,000 jobs to be lost in her district alone. Prices are going to go up. There were surprisingly a lot of Democrats that didn’t vote for this. All the targeted Democrats voted “no” and eight Republicans switched over and voted “yes” when it became crunch time. My wife and I have been making long term plans on preparing to survive in our house (cutting wood for winter, 6 gardens going now to can lots of food) if the pressure becomes greater on our ability to pay the bills. We have a little room left before our money becomes even par with sustaining our ability to live in this house. So we are not yet merely at basic necessities only, but with this huge tax possibly coming we might soon be there. Our neighborhood here is full of friendly people and we are a bit tight knit bunch. It might get even tighter for there’s lot’s coming down the pipe from D.C. that are projected to bring this bubble to the surface of most people’s minds very soon. The bubble hasn’t gone away, it’s slowly getting worse.
I’ve always loved gardening and this year we have the most I’ve ever attempted. Everything is growing very well so far. I have fences up to keep out the animals so we went the whole nine yards on this years gardening. Next year after we see how much we get in harvest we are planning to do even more since we did most of the hard work this year (putting up fencing, digging up new garden area where there was only grass which both take a lot of time). But next year we could easily expand and I’m thinking about investing in wheat. You can get a lot of wheat out of a very small plot of land. I’ve been into this stuff coming from a family of farmers and I basically see myself doing something that I love to do anyways. Who knows this might turn into a profitable business down the road.
I think I’m sovereign and if the State falls apart around me then so be it. I think if the State collapses around me, then I’ll become even more sovereign. It might make it easier to find liberty that way. I won’t need to do much to force the issue as long as I prepare like any farmer might on any given year. Cause winter might be long as it was this past year. So we’re getting a lot of wood together. That will be our only source of heat, but that’s the direction we’ve been going anyways since wood is near inexpensive (gas and oil for chainsaw) and paying for electric or oil heat become kind of a dumb choice in our eyes since we have plenty of wood and the whole set-up in the house to use this for a heat source instead.
But the government is just a group of people acting out a philosophy that altruism is part of human nature. If we shift the dominant philosophy, government, in my opinion will be perfectly acceptable as long as it sticks to what it’s good at. And I argue that those things are infrastructure and the military. Now, I know you don’t agree with me on this, but i cannot imagine selling people on anarchy. It won’t happen. There has to be a solution approaching the middle. I’m a mixed martial artist. I know that sometimes a fusion of disciplines is better than one discipline by itself.
Is this about you or about other people? Cause if you’re thinking about other people, then you are therefore becoming altruistic which is bad according to your philosophy. Are you contradicting yourself here?