If we consider healthcare to be a right, where do we draw the line? Should food and water also be rights? Does the water have to be purified and chilled? Does the food have to be nutritious and not fast food tier shit? Would electricity also be a right? Heating and air conditioning? How about cellphones and internet? People need to talk to each other and all the job applications are online now. We have a right to privacy don't we? So we should all have fenced off property and blinds for our windows as well.
This really cuts to the heart of it. By left wing logic, if we consider healthcare to be an inalienable right, surely access to food and shelter must be even more of a right. After all, you'll die much quicker without food and shelter than you will without healthcare. One of the biggest problems with making a commodity free for the actual consumer of said commodity is you remove all incentive to economize about your consumption of it. You see this a lot here in Canada, ERs are constantly packed and there's a consistent hours long wait time because people go there for every little thing. Even a modest fee would probably cut down wait times significantly without deterring people who genuinely need immediate medical attention. This is easy to see with food consumption. Would your purchasing decisions at the supermarket be different if you didn't have to directly pay for anything? Of course they would. The prices force you to decide what you really need and really want, whereas a lack of any price would have you loading up your cart to maximum capacity because why not?
Food and water are better served by the private market for several pretty obvious economic reasons. Most major healthcare purchases come when a person is incapicitted especially as people get older. How can a person reasonable decide on things like pricing and treatment options when they are incapacitated. This allows companies like ambulances for example to take advantage of individuals. Secondly, most people have no idea what medical treatments they ought to get or how much roughly they should cost. The average person has a much better idea of how much things like water, bread, meat, etc should cost. This means that if prices are unreasonable the consumer will not purchase the product. Additionally the economies of scale for producing food products like bread is much lower than the technology or expertise required to do medicinal treatment. As a result there is a lot more competition naturally in an easy market like bread than a much tougher market like medicinal care. On top of that healthcare is an extremely inelastic good often with very little substitutions. Things like bread can be substituted for things like bagels, English muffins, etc. meaning if bread prices go too high for the consumer they can easily substitute the overpriced bread with cheaper options that are similar. This leads to s lot more competition. For many medical treatments there are very few options available. Meaning the consumer is willing to pay almost any price point even if it's unreasonable because there is deficient consumer information, not a lot of competition, and no reasonable substitute for a lot of healthcare services. This is why healthcare might potentially be better off in public sector while food and water would not be well handled by govenrment.
I do have a question for you, jman. And feel free for others to join in too. This is my final question, and a huge reason I hold onto the idea of a socialist government style. So convince me on this, and you've got me sold. If you could impact the world, and everybody within it, in a positive way, would you say that is better and something we should absolutely all - collectively - work together for? Like, for example, if having a publicly funded mental health institution helped to significantly lower mass shootings, school shootings, and lowering homelessness, would you choose that option? Or would you rather say "let them be somebody elses' problem, until it becomes my problem, which I will deal with when it comes my way." You may not believe it, but my mindset may be quite similar to your own. I believe in working and putting in effort and wanting to make a change to advance yourself. I believe most people are capable of doing this, though some truly are unable to do this. Some people suffer mental illness. What do we do with them in a no-government environment? Only people with money could ever dream of affording treatments, yet poor families are a huge percentage of people with mental illness. A majority of homeless people also have mental illness. A majority of school shooters have mental illnesses, as well as mass shooters. Clearly, some mentally ill people are naturally prone to problems. So we just ignore them because a family can't afford it? That's how I look at it. In the end, we are helping ensure poor families with a member suffering a mental illness to the point it's dangerous, are able to treat this so the rest of the world can move on. Otherwise, they'll end up on the streets as your and my problem. Also, public education ensures technological advancement for all of us, which we all reap the benefits of. Why hinder someone who WANTS to better themself?? A high school diploma sometimes doesn't cut it - especially to obtain certain jobs like doctor's, dentists, scientists of any kind, researchers, wouldn't you want to be sure there's plenty of those kinds of people around? Well a lot of them start off poor..... Nothing wrong with gaining smarts for our nation! So big question of all of this is, if it benefits the entirety of the world, and let's say (even if false, for the sake of the what-if question) it truly does help people and encourage healthy growth both technologically and socially, would you still oppose it and rather live in a lesser quality world simply so that you are not taxed?
I certainly would believe that our mindset may be similar! afterall we are just talking about politics lol! As far as what I would strive for? What I would strive for would be the people being able to make their own choice. We should be free as a people to make our own choices regarding, well, pretty much everything. Obviously we need law and order, I'm not advocating for all out anarchy or anything of the sort. However I do believe that healthcare for instance should be in the hands of the states. We allow the states the ability to make many laws and do many things, why isn't healthcare one of them? If you want socialized medicine, move to california and you will be happy. The biggest thing, as far as globally speaking, is that there will always be inherent differences between countries. I do not believe a world government is a good thing, I believe it is a horrible thing. I believe we should have less government intervention in our lives and I believe as adults we have the capability to decide what we want to put in our body. Who we want to marry, what we want to smoke. Ect. The laws that were created, such as prohibition, are what directly drive a black market, and obviously that in turn drives the law enforcement. Its a big vicious circle and its totally bullshit. I believe I would strive for what I deemed right for my family, and I believe I would strive for your right to do so as well.
^^^ You aren't framing your thoughts about this matter in the correct context. Your thesis here is pretty much "if it does any amount of good, it's worth it", correct? But that's not how to frame a discussion about economics, which is basically what we're having here. Economics is concerned with trade offs, with the best way to allocate our scarce amount of resources, and the best way to channel human productivity through incentives. You say "if it helps anybody it must be right", whereas I ask "Does it help the people it's intended to help more than it costs the rest of society to do so?". And my answer for most socialist systems is no, it almost never does. You're looking at it from the point of view of "I see a problem, where's the solution that will get rid of this problem?", when the reality is that you can only make trade offs in economics, there's no magic correct solution to the issue of human suffering. By solving one problem you create another. You should read or listen to a brilliant economist named Thomas Sowell, he breaks down this idea of trade offs and economic choices in a much more eloquent and concise manner than I can. Here
I think this concept of trade offs vs solutions also debunks some of the moral arguments that get made against the conservative position. This whole "you don't care about people!" or "you just want people to suffer!". It's like, no, nobody wants anyone to suffer, we all want everyone to have the best life they can. The disagreement is over the best way to accomplish that.
I'll reply to the majority of your post later when I have time but; I work for a private ambulance company that is run like a socialist program. Anybody and everybody gets treated no matter if it's vague "arm pain" or tooth ache, all the way to CVA and heart attacks. One thing I do not agree with is some of the protocols. Say you pick someone up and you get an IV in there but you don't hook them up to a bag of saline. There are many legitimate reasons to not do that. But if you get an IV, you also get billed for a bag of saline. That's wrong in my opinion. Same with O2. We could put a patient on O2 who doesn't need it at all, but per some protocols, we have to and they get billed for it as well. But to be honest, ambulance companies are much more fair than hospitals and rather than take advantage of patients it's more often patient take advantage of us.
One thing I will agree with you on in the need for some type of state-by-state mental health system. Sometimes these people don't have families that are able to take care of them yet they still need care. I'm talking people with severe problems like schizophrenia or mentally disabled people. Things like depression and anxiety aren't really included in this. I'm not saying those people don't need help, they just don't need the level of care that the others need. I would rather it not be another tax added, but more community based funded by donations. The argument there will be, "well what if people wake up and decide to stop donating, then what?"
Don't speak too soon about depression. It can be debilitating to the point where sufferers psychomotor skills are gravely reduced and they no longer move, thus rendering themselves needing intensive care.
For me, the ends will never justify the means. I would rather live in a worse world (which I don't believe for a second would be the case) than to violate individual basic human and property rights. I ardently believe in the rights of the individual over the good of society. Life isn't fare and even though I believe life for everyone would get better with no government, if it didn't then tough shit. You do not have a right to something supplied by someone else. For me, that is the end of the discussion.
I have long thought of this principle myself, however, I've always been torn about whether money trumps the greater good of a better society. This may be more farther into the future, but things like NASA which is publicly funded - if we never ever had any publicly funded space programs, imagine where we would be right now??? Would we even have internet, or satellites??? And if we didn't, you may say we would eventually, but why let the progress slow down when you can speed progress up? Beyond this, if life exists elsewhere, I feel it would absolutely change everything. What's your opinion??? If nothing else, you have moderated my position much more and opened my views up to a new perspective. Just curious, how many people do you get who are socialist like myself, or at least very pro-socialist with certain things, who are this open minded and willing to legitimately hear out the other side? Is it common or is it rare?
When I'm feeling depressed I know it's time get out and do something. It's the last thing you want to do when you're feeling that way, but it's still the best way to ward it off in my experience. I definitely don't accept the idea that depression can be so bad that it makes you physically unable to act. That kind of thinking is an abdication of responsibility and will just make things worse.
As far as NASA and space exploration goes I think it would have happened anyway considering how important satellites are to modern communications tech. Same with the internet, the initial work was done by military researchers, but it was private enterprise that took that and made it a part of everyday life. You see this with many military technologies, from the refrigerator to even tampons (yeah they were originally developed to staunch gunshots wounds, but the trauma nurses figured out they were pretty useful for something else too). As for persuading others to my viewpoint, socialists in particular, it depends where you look. Some people are just looking to shoot me down and have no interest in actually understanding the opposing viewpoint. It's still worth it to talk to those people so long as they are civil and make somewhat rational arguments (it's important to speak with enemies sometimes, they tell you things others don't) but the point of a discussion is all about testing ideas and changing people's minds. A lot of people support socialist positions out of good intentions, in fact I'd say the vast majority are like that. You'll never catch me calling the opposition evil. It's just that socialist policies have very real downsides that many people don't consider. I suggest reading more Sowell if you're interested in economics, the man is brilliant and great at explaining economic nuance. The guy used to be a Marxist(in his 20's) and now has done a complete 180 flip, so he's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.