Matthew, who came up with those criteria?
its also stupid, but i guess you can’t see why?
The free market and government both bring their set of problems to the table.
In the free market, the collective action/free rider/tragedy of the commons problems arise. But there is profit to be had if one can surmount them. Thus, the free market contains the incentives to overcome problems.
The state on the other hand has no incentive to solve its own problems. It is the judge in its own case. There can be no accountability.
No, it makes total sense to me.
J:
I hate to run just when this is getting interesting, but my girl is giving me the evil eye…
I’d love to continue this tomorrow if you’re up to it.
Later.
In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable
maybe you should have bailed at the point where you admitted you have no idea about ‘common goods’ and that your militarism is entirely your own psychological problem, not at all fleshed out by anything approaching scholarly understanding of economics… maybe… i’m just saying its a possibility…
Whatever my personal reasons for my “militarism” are, this conversation is pointless. You and I both know the military will never be privatized. It won’t happen. And I’m sure there’s a perfectly good refutation for what Matthew posted, I would just have to look for it, which I don’t feel like doing because convincing you people that we need the military is probably not going to happen and even if it did, it would make little difference. Therefore, I consider this matter to be closed.
Anyways, my interest is more in politics than economics, I just find that it’s hard to back up my personal political convictions with Keynesian economics. Austrian economics works better.
I think that if the plan which got through the house passes then the following will happen: Prices over the next few years will fall dramatically but within 4 years the quality will go to hell and the medical insurance buisness will collapse due to the fact that they can no longer deny coverage or effectivley price discriminate. Then healthcare will be nationalized and barley survive. This will add between 2-6 hundred billlion dollars to the deficit every year… If the USA is still around of course
Yeah, I think you might be right. I mean Social Security is going to be in the red by 2017 and the last I heard, Medicare is projected to be running deficits before that. It stands to reason that another entitlement program will have the same results.
What are you talking about? It was either social security or medicare that’s running at a deficite for the next two years now. I think we’ll see social security absolutley rape the deficit AT LATEST by 2015… Seriously, the baby boomers are going to be the thing that finally topples the first domino in this huge elaborate maze of the things that the satists have been carefully building for 80 years now (beggining with Roosevelt)
You might be right, the last numbers I saw suggested that Medicare had a couple years left before it was in the red, but those numbers could’ve been wrong. But you’re right, the shifting demographics are putting enormous pressure on the budget and it doesn’t seem like it will be long now before the government is borrowing and printing money just to be able to make social security and medicare outlays. In my mind, another (not to mention much larger) entitlement program is the last thing we need.
Never trust sttist data unless it is negative… And if it is just make it proportionally worse and you’ll probably come out close to true.