Peter, when I hear someone point out all the problems with healthcare and say “See, the free market has failed”, I will respond (legitimately, I think) that for decades, going back to employers using heath benefits to get around WWII wage controls, healthcare has been subject to all kinds on market distorting government interference.
But when I do this, am I employing a “libertarianism hasn’t been tried properly argument”?
No, because you are refuting a specific misattribution of blame. Rejecting a "market failure" argument when the source of a problem was *not* market forces is not a "never been tried" position.
I blogged a lot about healthcare around the time of ACA's debate, and I started with the post you make. Here, I just imported it into Substack for you :).
But, some items are not fully subject to the workings of the market. When you are in need of serious medical treatment, you don't have the time to do comparison shopping and you may not even have much of a choice of providers espeically in rural locations. In the good old days, insurers could also reject you for a number of pre-existing conditions or you might not be able to afford insurance due to being poor. Emergency rooms might be required to stabilize you but that was no help for those with chronic conditions. I warned for a long time that if private enterprise could not effectively address pre-existing conditions and those who could not afford private health insurance then the government would step in. Unfortunately, this time I was right.
Once again, incrementalism. And, if you want to find the root cause of the pre-existing condition problem, look at eight decades of government distorting the market.
If you want my remedy for health care, read this, from 2016.
Ah, but they would. My way would significantly lower costs, in countless ways. As for pre-existing conditions, this is a problem that emerged over many years, and would require years of transition to address. Mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions is such a massive moral hazard that even Obama tried to address it by mandating either insurance or fine. To get away from the problem, there'd have to be a transition period and a deadline. Get basic, bare-bones catastrophic policies on the market, get young people to sign up so they don't have to worry about pre-existing downstream, and in time the problem gets largely curtailed.
Yes, this requires some degree of personal responsibility, but the alternative is the broken system we have now, which *will* collapse at some point.
My way won't be perfect, but nothing ever is. It *will* be better in time, and that's how it must be judged. Please don't put forth another argument from perfection fallacy.
Your argument falls apart because healthcare like any industry is incentivized to reward the stockholders. They can do quite well by not treating people who don't have the insurance or financial resources to pay for care on their own. I'm in the healthcare field and unfortunately the market is not geared to deal with issues which will never generate a profit.
“All the habitable lands of the earth are already claimed by nations, and overwhelmingly those nations staked those lands out by force. Nations are persistent, borders rarely move without some sort of violence, and power, once acquired and established, is rarely ceded freely. New political systems are usually imposed from within, either incrementally or via violent revolution. Given the difficulty that’s involved in those impositions, they invariably involve some compromises, some failure to achieve the ideal.
Consider communism, both as a political system and as a historical example. Communism didn’t exist as an operating political system a century ago. It was implemented in various forms in the 20th century, with universally disastrous results. Tens of millions dead, billions impoverished, terrible oppression, individual freedom crushed like a bug. The various forms of communism have done enormous harm to humanity.”
I went to my wife’s family reunion yesterday. Her first cousin married a wonderful lady who was born in Kursk, Russia - and is Ukrainian. She told me about being a Pioneer, and how awful the Soviet Union was. I always enjoy talking to her!
Liberty is not a synonym for libertarianism. The ability to live our lives as desired depends upon the ability to prevent others from making us live our lives the way they want for their benefit. Libertarianism doesn't supply a mechanism to do that.
Sure it does. Don't conflate libertarianism with anarchy. Even a minarchist state provides that the government be empowered to protect individual and property rights from others' transgressions.
But, to go back to one of your earlier assertions, isn't taxation for the purpose of funding others' lives "making us live our lives the way they want for their benefit?"
No. I can through my representatives have some say in how my taxes are used. What are the individual and property rights which would be protected in a libertarian state? How are conflicts which arise between individual and property rights resolved?
Are you serious right now? Libertarianism is not anarchy. Even the most minarchist state provides for laws and courts to enforce individual and property rights.
As for taxes, you have still not made any moral case for redistributive taxation. Sure, redistribution is what goes on now, but it's immoral, and different only in degree from serfdom or slavery.
When you define taxation as immoral by definition then it's not surprising that anything I say is disregarded. All taxation is redistributive. The moral case is that there are things which can only be effectively be done by working together and that includes government and without taxes governments cannot effectively function.
David, I've written this countless times - I regard *redistributive* taxation as immoral. Please don't accuse me of disregarding when you appear to be doing exactly that. As I not only wrote in our exchanges, but blogged about on multiple occasions, I consider fee-for-service taxation as legitimate, subject to debates about how to fund those services more efficiently and directly. This includes such things as national defense, the courts, policing and emergency services, and myriad other things that qualify as "services" to the citizens.
So, again, I will ask you to defend the morality of redistributive taxation, as in "take some of what I earn, simply to give to someone else."
To that, I will add another question. Is there an upper limit as to the percentage of my income you feel can acceptably be taken by the government?
I don't receive any direct benefit for more than a few things the government provides and yet I still pay my taxes. Yes. I will defend redistributive taxation because there are things that only government can do which I want to see in our society. The upper limit is determined by our representatives in Congress but I recall how things were better when taxes were more progressive and higher on corporations. You didn't have the incentive to reward the stockholders that you do today with the resulting wealth gap. Jefferson warned us of the dangers to the Republic from an aristocracy of inherited wealth. You see today how those with the big bucks on the right and left warp our politics with their money. It's no surprise, then, that so many of them are libertarians.
Much of liberty's value becomes its unintended vice - and healthcare is a perfect example. "We already have all the healthcare we need - we just need to distribute it better!" Instead of allowing the quality healthcare that only "the rich" enjoy today to trickle down and become standard for everyone - the impulse to "freeze" what we have now and redistribute it so everybody has "the same" becomes the motivating force. Do this with healthcare, food, housing, transportation, education - any and every economic good. We COULD just keep expanding the pie and letting the benefits of pioneers and risk takers trickle down to everyone - or we can snap the system shut and redistribute forcibly what we have. That's the stake - it's always been the stake. I have said for decades now that we'd be living among the stars in perfect health for basically forever (if we chose), but we can't have that - because we're stuck with those whose aim is to control what's already been produced - by others.
Peter, when I hear someone point out all the problems with healthcare and say “See, the free market has failed”, I will respond (legitimately, I think) that for decades, going back to employers using heath benefits to get around WWII wage controls, healthcare has been subject to all kinds on market distorting government interference.
But when I do this, am I employing a “libertarianism hasn’t been tried properly argument”?
No, because you are refuting a specific misattribution of blame. Rejecting a "market failure" argument when the source of a problem was *not* market forces is not a "never been tried" position.
I blogged a lot about healthcare around the time of ACA's debate, and I started with the post you make. Here, I just imported it into Substack for you :).
https://therootsofliberty.substack.com/p/health-cares-unhealed-wound
But, some items are not fully subject to the workings of the market. When you are in need of serious medical treatment, you don't have the time to do comparison shopping and you may not even have much of a choice of providers espeically in rural locations. In the good old days, insurers could also reject you for a number of pre-existing conditions or you might not be able to afford insurance due to being poor. Emergency rooms might be required to stabilize you but that was no help for those with chronic conditions. I warned for a long time that if private enterprise could not effectively address pre-existing conditions and those who could not afford private health insurance then the government would step in. Unfortunately, this time I was right.
Once again, incrementalism. And, if you want to find the root cause of the pre-existing condition problem, look at eight decades of government distorting the market.
If you want my remedy for health care, read this, from 2016.
https://www.therootsofliberty.com/fixing-health-insurance-in-america/
None of your reforms would do anything to help those priced out due to the lack of money (i.e., the poor) and those with pre-existing conditions.
Ah, but they would. My way would significantly lower costs, in countless ways. As for pre-existing conditions, this is a problem that emerged over many years, and would require years of transition to address. Mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions is such a massive moral hazard that even Obama tried to address it by mandating either insurance or fine. To get away from the problem, there'd have to be a transition period and a deadline. Get basic, bare-bones catastrophic policies on the market, get young people to sign up so they don't have to worry about pre-existing downstream, and in time the problem gets largely curtailed.
Yes, this requires some degree of personal responsibility, but the alternative is the broken system we have now, which *will* collapse at some point.
My way won't be perfect, but nothing ever is. It *will* be better in time, and that's how it must be judged. Please don't put forth another argument from perfection fallacy.
Your argument falls apart because healthcare like any industry is incentivized to reward the stockholders. They can do quite well by not treating people who don't have the insurance or financial resources to pay for care on their own. I'm in the healthcare field and unfortunately the market is not geared to deal with issues which will never generate a profit.
“All the habitable lands of the earth are already claimed by nations, and overwhelmingly those nations staked those lands out by force. Nations are persistent, borders rarely move without some sort of violence, and power, once acquired and established, is rarely ceded freely. New political systems are usually imposed from within, either incrementally or via violent revolution. Given the difficulty that’s involved in those impositions, they invariably involve some compromises, some failure to achieve the ideal.
Consider communism, both as a political system and as a historical example. Communism didn’t exist as an operating political system a century ago. It was implemented in various forms in the 20th century, with universally disastrous results. Tens of millions dead, billions impoverished, terrible oppression, individual freedom crushed like a bug. The various forms of communism have done enormous harm to humanity.”
I went to my wife’s family reunion yesterday. Her first cousin married a wonderful lady who was born in Kursk, Russia - and is Ukrainian. She told me about being a Pioneer, and how awful the Soviet Union was. I always enjoy talking to her!
People who lived under socialism or communism, and weren't part of the State apparatus, are near-universal in their condemnation.
You'd be surprised. A lot of "Osties" from East Germany and Putin's supporters look back fondly on the days when the Commies ruled.
Were they part of the State apparatus, benefiting disproportionately at the expense of others?
Not. necessarily. Osties are looked down upon by their western cousins as bumpkins.
Liberty is not a synonym for libertarianism. The ability to live our lives as desired depends upon the ability to prevent others from making us live our lives the way they want for their benefit. Libertarianism doesn't supply a mechanism to do that.
Sure it does. Don't conflate libertarianism with anarchy. Even a minarchist state provides that the government be empowered to protect individual and property rights from others' transgressions.
But, to go back to one of your earlier assertions, isn't taxation for the purpose of funding others' lives "making us live our lives the way they want for their benefit?"
No. I can through my representatives have some say in how my taxes are used. What are the individual and property rights which would be protected in a libertarian state? How are conflicts which arise between individual and property rights resolved?
Are you serious right now? Libertarianism is not anarchy. Even the most minarchist state provides for laws and courts to enforce individual and property rights.
As for taxes, you have still not made any moral case for redistributive taxation. Sure, redistribution is what goes on now, but it's immoral, and different only in degree from serfdom or slavery.
When you define taxation as immoral by definition then it's not surprising that anything I say is disregarded. All taxation is redistributive. The moral case is that there are things which can only be effectively be done by working together and that includes government and without taxes governments cannot effectively function.
David, I've written this countless times - I regard *redistributive* taxation as immoral. Please don't accuse me of disregarding when you appear to be doing exactly that. As I not only wrote in our exchanges, but blogged about on multiple occasions, I consider fee-for-service taxation as legitimate, subject to debates about how to fund those services more efficiently and directly. This includes such things as national defense, the courts, policing and emergency services, and myriad other things that qualify as "services" to the citizens.
So, again, I will ask you to defend the morality of redistributive taxation, as in "take some of what I earn, simply to give to someone else."
To that, I will add another question. Is there an upper limit as to the percentage of my income you feel can acceptably be taken by the government?
I don't receive any direct benefit for more than a few things the government provides and yet I still pay my taxes. Yes. I will defend redistributive taxation because there are things that only government can do which I want to see in our society. The upper limit is determined by our representatives in Congress but I recall how things were better when taxes were more progressive and higher on corporations. You didn't have the incentive to reward the stockholders that you do today with the resulting wealth gap. Jefferson warned us of the dangers to the Republic from an aristocracy of inherited wealth. You see today how those with the big bucks on the right and left warp our politics with their money. It's no surprise, then, that so many of them are libertarians.
Much of liberty's value becomes its unintended vice - and healthcare is a perfect example. "We already have all the healthcare we need - we just need to distribute it better!" Instead of allowing the quality healthcare that only "the rich" enjoy today to trickle down and become standard for everyone - the impulse to "freeze" what we have now and redistribute it so everybody has "the same" becomes the motivating force. Do this with healthcare, food, housing, transportation, education - any and every economic good. We COULD just keep expanding the pie and letting the benefits of pioneers and risk takers trickle down to everyone - or we can snap the system shut and redistribute forcibly what we have. That's the stake - it's always been the stake. I have said for decades now that we'd be living among the stars in perfect health for basically forever (if we chose), but we can't have that - because we're stuck with those whose aim is to control what's already been produced - by others.