Libertarians, Government and Choice
by Mike Kimel
It has been a very long time since I looked at the National Review. Apparently it is still there.
Jonah Goldberg (apparently also still there) had a post that begins like this:
And now let us recall the “Fable of the Shoes.”
In his 1973 Libertarian Manifesto, the late Murray Rothbard argued that the biggest obstacle in the road out of serfdom was “status quo bias.” In society, we’re accustomed to rapid change. “New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly.” Not so with government. When it comes to police or firefighting or sanitation, government must do those things because that’s what government has (allegedly) always done.
“So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services,” Rothbard laments, “that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself.” The libertarian who wants to get the government out of a certain business is “treated in the same way as he would be if the government had, for various reasons, been supplying shoes as a tax-financed monopoly from time immemorial.”
If everyone had always gotten their shoes from the government, writes Rothbard, the proponent of shoe privatization would be greeted as a kind of lunatic. “How could you?” defenders of the status quo would squeal. “You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes . . . if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It’s easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? . . . What material would they use? . . . Suppose a poor person didn’t have the money to buy a pair?”
All that is true. But what Rothbard apparently didn’t get, and no doubt Goldberg doesn’t either, is that it goes the other way too. If people always got their shoes from the private sector, it would never occur to anyone that the government might provide shoes. Now it might seem stupid for the government to be in the business of footwear distribution, and in general, outside of the military, my guess is that it is.
But sometimes a different approach is what works. Sometimes when the government is doing things, it is doing them inefficiently and the private sector can do better. But sometimes it goes the other way. Sometimes when the private sector is doing things, it is doing them inefficiently and the government can do better. And sometimes, sometimes its a good idea for things to be done worse, and in a way that only the government can.
I’ll give you an example. I’ve noted a few times that you can stroll into most car dealerships in Brazil today and buy a tri-flex car. That is, the same car can run on any mix of gasoline, ethanol and natural gas. (There are two fuel tanks – one for ethanol and/or gasoline and one for natural gas.) You can then drive that vehicle into any number of fueling stations and fill up with whatever fuel is going to get you the most miles (er, kilometers) for your dollar (er, real). The technology to run cars on a number of different fuels, which you won’t see in the US for a very long time, is marketed under such exotic brand names as GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen and Fiat to name a few. (Look ’em up if you haven’t heard of ’em.)
I’ve posted on how it came to be that Brazilians have choices that Americans do not, namely to buy a tri-flex vehicle. The Brazilian government wanted to reduce the country’s dependence on gasoline, but it realized that nobody would buy a car that ran on a fuel other than gasoline if there was no place to buy that fuel, and hence no manufacturer would make such cars. The government also realized that Shell and Esso and Texaco (remember them?) weren’t going to start selling other types of fuel because there weren’t enough cars on the road that could use those fuels. But the Brazilian government owned an oil company that had a chain of gas stations. One fine day, that chain of gas stations started selling ethanol even though there was no market for it. It wasn’t profitable. It was insane. No private company would have done something that stupid. But the result, a few decades later, is that about 80% of cars sold in Brazil in 2010 were flex-fuel. Guess what percentage of cars sold in the US in 2010 were tri-flex?
Rothbard would never approve of what the Brazilian government did. Neither would Goldberg. Personally, I like having choices. I wish I could pick among three different fuels for my car and go with whichever is cheapest. I suspect that in a few decades, when that technology finally arrives in the US, Goldberg might like having those choices too.
On a quick check, my favorite Ford Tri-Flex: http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/ford-superchief-f250-pickup.htm
My seventh-grade history teacher–we’re talking before the current round of pundits (Yglesias, Eza Klein, McMegan) was born–told tales about IN counties that were burning natural gas freely because they didn’t know what it was good for. I don’t know how he would explain 2011 North Dakota: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/09/27/Firms-burning-natural-gas-to-extract-oil/UPI-23961317135998/.
Ken H,
Can’t help with you with the Superchief – cars on the road in Brazil tend to be smaller. But they do have a number of features that are harder to come by in the US.
In 2005 Volkswagen started selling triflex armored passenger vehicles… http://autoforum.com.br/index.php?showtopic=54166)
I think one of those would put a serious dent into the Superchief.
they have no way to store, use, or transport the bakken gas…even dakota sweet at the wellhead sells at a big discount to WTI (over $20) cause of transport issues; and WTI itself is at a discount to brent cause it’s bottled up in cushing, since the pipeline to the gulf coast refineries is two years away…
rjs,
Ironically, the Dakota wind has the same problem as the Dakota sweet.
We did have our version of the triflex in the form of the computer industry. As much as we would like to imagine computers were developed in someone’s garage, it was the goverment orders to IBM, CDC, Burrough, Univac, Remington, etc. that made it economical for the private sector to buy a few machines.
Those evil regulators even forced federally insured institutions to computerize back in the 1950s further creating demand.
The space programs spawned many of the innovations we use today.
The National Review throughout the 1950s and 1960s opposed voting rights for non-whites. The National Review argued that private enterprises had perfect right to deny seating at lunch counters to Jews, African Americans, Native Americans, etc.
And they would have opposed a government role in the computer industry.
We can be grateful they were ignored back then
The government supplying you goods? After you have explained the efficiency of the postal service and Amtrak, and their proven ability to take taxpayer funds and convert them into efficient products which are not a drain on the popular, you will still not make any thinking human believe that the government is an efficient provider of goods. How are GM and AIG working out? Social Security? How about government backed green companies?
Yep, government shoes will never, ever be better than what you and I as private citizens can provide.
You might want to read the post. He didn’t say anything about government supplying goods; it was all about good capitalists responding well to government regulation. Try again with your reflexive anti-government hysteria.
GM and AIG are government agencies, really? I thought they were poorly run private companies that ended up begging the taxpayers for a bailout, thanks to their lousy management.
Amtrack may suck, but what do you have against Social Security and the Post Office? Aside from being villified and chronically targeted by right wingers for defunding, they seem to be doing quite well, thank you.
Mises, Von Hayek, Hitler; the Hunnic culture which brought Europe two World Wars.
The Libertarians Bunde.
In the 70’s oil wells off Ca and Ak burned the gases because there was no profitable way to accumulate, store and market it.
smucket,
Sometimes there is a here and a more desirable there, but no way to get from here to there with the private sector left to its own devices.
As an example, a hundred years ago someone might have thought: it would be nice if much of the South was as livable as most of the rest of the country. It might lead to a lot of benefits, many of them noneconomic. The private sector in theory, could have built the TVA. It didn’t, and had the Federal government not done it, imagine what the South would look like today.
Another example… maybe someone might have thought – well, that dastardly Empire of Japan, attacking Pearl Harbor like that. Someone should do something about that. But without the Federal government, what would have happened. (Hint – try answering in Japanese.)
In the post, I mentioned another example – the Brazilian government wanted to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil. A private company might have said – you know, we have all this sugarcane that we use to produce cachaca, and that stuff could probably run a car. But how do you get from that vision to millions of cars on the road that run on alcohol? You have to produce the cars and create the fueling stations. Any private company goes out of business in the process. The government can afford to do it though.
As to the Post Office… it was necessary at one point. It may still be necessary today. You can talk about UPS and FedEx, but they came in later, and only cherry picked off the most profitable pieces of it. How would the country look different without the USPS in our history.
Now, there are failures, of course. But you choose not to remember the successes.
Ask yourself… which country today is the best at figuring out what sectors the private sector won’t do and stepping in to fill the void. I’d say its Singapore. Sure, the new Temasek charter reflects the fact that the country is now developed enough that the government’s role in key industries isn’t as necessary now, but without the government’s stepping in for the past five decades, where would Singapore be today?
Gee, Rothbard knew a lot of history. All the services he mentioned were once provided privately – and the government stepped in (often very reluctantly) when it became clear that public provision was much more efficient. Police- never heard of the Bow Street Runners? Water – heard about the great cholera epidemics and the work that traced the cause to private water companies? Fire – never heard of Crassus (fire, insurance and “redevelopment” of burnt properties all from the one agent? Some people seem to think you can figure out all you need to know without ever picking up a book.
Peter T,
Ah…. I had to look up the Bow Street Runners… on Wikipedia it led me eventually to one Jonathan Wild (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild). I imagine Jonathan Wild is exactly the sort of enterprising person who Rothbard would have approved of, and who Goldberg would like to see running for as a Republican candidate for anything.
I get your point Mike and I certainly agree with it. The latest incantation in my newspaper is the idea that food stamps should be usable for fast food. The letters to the editors go back and forth about “dignity” and “healthy” with no one–including those who should know better–that it is all about fast food companies wanting to suckle at the government teat. Personally, I am trying to free myself from the whole concept of capitalism. My sense is that its run has about come to an end. FDR saved it in the 30’s but Obama has not done it in the last 3 years and it looks like we are in for a much worse version of Japan’s lost decade. At the same time that social programs get cut in the interest of deficit reduction (whichIMHO is counterproductive to reduce deficits quite apart from the moral implications) there are going to be a generation who see no benefits to capitalism, who see the relative success of countries like Brazil and China and who have no memory of the USSR’s disasters. It may take a 100 years, but if democracy survives, capitalism won’t.
Well, guys, my post office is fast, efficient, and provides cheap services. And, the mail carrier is very nice. Compare the price of next day delivery versus FedEx and the PO delivers on Saturday.
One thing I think is left out of figuring the cost of discontinuing Saturday delivery is the cost to individual tax payers from adding maybe two or three days mail time to checks sent to pay credit cards, mortgages, utilities bills and the like. Not just the late fees but the increased interest on late credit card payments.
What are the chances credit card companies are going to extend their payment due dates to accomodate those who prefer not to send payments via electronic means? Or those who don’t have computers or bank accounts? You know, poor people of whom we have an ever increasing number. Remember that a lot of formerly middle class people are looking poverty in the face. I think I’d keep on delivering mail via the PO if I were the pols in DC. Pays to keep the good will of the majority of voters, IMO. 😉 NancyO
Terry
I think I understand your point, but as the local slightly right of center designated hitter I would say that we are always going to need some kind of capitalism for innovation and enterprise. You really wouldn’t like state control of everything any better than you like the current brand of capitalist control of government.
The trick is to find a way for government to regulate capitalism without going too far, and to get the people to pay the taxes for what they need government to do.
Terry,
Capitalism is a continuum that seems to get stretched further and further. The continuum has, for a while now, been stretched to encompass a few things that flat out contradict what Adam Smith wrote. That said, even the Wealth of Nations shouldn’t be a viewed as a Bible… there should be no holy books in economics.
What I mean is that we should strive for the stiaution that works best – produces the most growth and makes as many of us as possible as well off as possible.
Clearly, in a lot of cases, you aren’t going to get people to act if there is no profit motive so it would be naive to try to come up with a system that doesn’t incorporate the profit motive. But it is also naive to imagine the profit motive won’t lead to perverse outcomes sometimes. Thus, there is a role for government in correcting those perverse outcomes. That includes, at times, getting society off of one dead end path and onto another more productive path (as the Brazilian gov’t did, with many fits and starts I glossed over in the post above, or as the Singaporean gov’t ha done numerous times, as I noted upthread).
The capitalism of Rothbard would produce nightmare results. The capitalism of Singapore seems to work fairly well for its citizens, so much so that so many folks are so desparate to claim that bastion of government intervention as a libertarian paradise. The trick with picking a system… get closer to Singapore and farther away from Rothbard.
“Sometimes when the private sector is doing things, it is doing them inefficiently and the government can do better.”
See “calculation problem.”
smucket
you are a sad story. not having any ability to actually think, you content yourself with reading libertarian pornography and believing every word of it.
others here have answered you well enough, but i guess it is my job to point out that there is not a damn thing wrong with Social Security. It is an insurance program against poverty in old age. It is not welfare. The workers have paid for every dime of their own benefits. It has not cost the government a penny. It has nothing to do with the deficit and never will. It can continue as it is with NO changes whatsoever for the forseeable future. If the workers of the next generation will want to keep up with their own standard of living in retirement, and retire at a decent age, they may choose to raise their own insurance premium (payroll “tax”) an extra forty cents per week each year while their wages go up an extra eight dollars per week each year.
But there is some excuse for you. You believe all the lies, because you don’t know any better. The real crime here is that the Democrats aren’t telling you the facts, either because they are too stupid to understand them themselves, or they are in on the scam. Of course there was a time when even the Republicans understood Social Security, but, well, they sold their souls and now they don’t understand anything.
Of course there will not be tri-fuel cars, becuase our governmnet only allows 2 fuels in the U.S. Gas, and ethanol from corn. Maybe that is the real problem? The better course would to just increase the gas tax so people use LESS fuel overall.
BTW – I got rid of my car, I am now car-less. Though I do have ZipCar for teh few times I need one.
“Personally, I like having choices.” Ken Houghton
When it comes to shoes and cars I’d agree that choice is good. A range of price points and a variety of styles and colors. When it comes to fire control, police protection, military services, stable pension provisions, health care, mail service etc. I much prefer one level of quality, the best that can be had. Sometimes that means cutting out the narrow focus on profitability. I suppose that private industry can choose to compete with the government in the provision of some of these services and products, but not instead of the government. Why shouold a libertarian assume that private industry should have a monopoly and that the government can’t have a role in the free market. Is the free market only open to freedom without competition”
Mike and Coberly, First I am definitely a capitalist. I grew up as a capitalist and have done all right with my life as a capitalist, but as Mike points out there should be no holy books when it comes to economics and the fact that capitalism has had a good run for a few hundred years is no guarantee that it will contnue. The one thing we can count on is change and while there have been adaptations in this country in the past and in other countries currently, the liberterians–who I identify with on an emotional as opposed to intellectual level–have such a love affair with the private vs government model, that it is standing in the way of adaptation. I see the end result as the demise of capitalism or democracy.
Reports are that gas is being flared in ND due to no pipelines nearby, and the low price, so that it is not economic to build the pipeline. Actually then there is a tax on flared gas as an idea since it is a pure waste.
Bat,
Maybe you should read the post again.
“The government also realized that Shell and Esso and Texaco (remember them?) weren’t going to start selling other types of fuel because there weren’t enough cars on the road that could use those fuels. But the Brazilian government owned an oil company that had a chain of gas stations. One fine day, that chain of gas stations started selling ethanol even though there was no market for it. It wasn’t profitable.”
Harm,
“ended up begging the taxpayers for a bailout, thanks to their lousy management.”
Maybe you could explain what role Union contracts and Pensioners played in that senerio?
“but what do you have against Social Security and the Post Office?”
Aside from slipping deeper and deeper into the financial abyss….Nothing!
It is funny seeing everyone getting sidetracked over flexfuel.
The point most are missing is that govt should be (and needs to be ) there for BASIC SERVICES WITHOUT THE PROFIT MOTIVE.
I have a hard time in seeing an argument against non-profits being involved in providing basic services such as police, fire, courts and sanitation services. Further, I have a very difficult time with for-profit basic health care as it seems we as civilization can say that basic care is a human right…..and basic human rights should be provided by non-profit systems.
But then again, maybe I am just a wide-eyed, naive, utopian-optimist….
I prefer less than “the best that can be had” in health care when I simply have the sniffles and also have a looming rent payment. Would you deny me my preference by violence?
Also, I’d be ecstatic to see the government allow for competition in the services they monopolize. Let them have a role, just refund prorated taxes/fees/charges/monetary inflation when voluntary alternatives are chosen. Sounds great!
Social Security isn’t in nearly as bad a condition as conservatives claim, which several writers here have shown in the past. Th problems of the post office have many sources, few of which relate directly to incompetence. Unless you want to eliminate standard mail service to rural America, or at least cut it back to a part time service it will have this problem. The private sector can’t make enough money on it to be interested. The rest of your rant is even more out of touch with reality and not worth addressing.
Union contracts and pension plans were still things management agreed to. They also played a much smaller part than management ineptitude and bad decisions in the face of new competition.
Actually it was governmnet regualtion that hurt the transmission of Nat Gas, so it was burned off becuase it was not profitable. It started with the Natural Gas Act of 1938, then the phillips decision. The wellhead price controls kept the Nat Gas insdutry at bay for decades, and was later fixed in 1978 with teh Nat Gas Policy act.
Non-Profit health care providers…….are slaves?
Either you have absolutely no concept of what a non-profit organization is…or you are just to blinded by political ideology to understand.
And yes, state provided services are an equivalent to non-profits, they share the same definition of
“an organization that does not issue stock shares or distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses the funds to help achieve its goals”
Jim,
“than management ineptitude and bad decisions in the face of new competition.”
O.K. then why were they not allowed to fail like any other business?
GT,
State provided service and NGO’s are not equivilent to Non-Profits. The government does not provide the finance and protection to non-profits, and they can fail while the others will not fail but consistantly grow.
Darren
you are an idiot. SS has 3 trillion dollars in the bank. put there to pay for just such an emergency as it faces today.
the forty cents per week per year grows and over time it pays exactly the amount that SS will be short. i realize the arithmetic is too difficult for you, but CBO came to the same result I did.
just imagine, people paying 6.2% of gdp on food and shelter for 75 million people too old to work. oh, the burden. when you think that 6.2% could go for new cars or trips to las vegas. and what makes it really hurt is that those old people paid for it themselves.
but like i said, you are an idiot.
Well, I find it interesting that Rothbard decided to talk about shoes. He couldn’t make a case for police or fire or water … so he trots in a straw man and ridicules the left for wanting the government to provide shoes…. but waitaminit. where are these lefties who are squealing for government supplied shoes?
never mind, he can get poppies and darren to think he has said something profound.
poppies
you are (another) idiot. i don’t know of any doctors or even insurance company executives who are being driven to work at the point of a gun.
i remember Spiro Agnew who talked about kneejerk liberals. But it seems that it’s Libertarians who have no interneurons. How you go from “health care is a basic human right” to “health care providers are slaves” is one of those Mysteries of Logic that could only occur to the mind of someone who read ten pages of Ayn Rand every night before going to bed, and was kicked in the head by a horse.
Well ,we’d agree I think that publicly funded poice departments are a legitimate function of government. So are people who take the police exam applying to be slaves? If you’re not sure, let me add that police officers are paid, allowed to quit and can even join a union (for shame!).
coberly, while I appreciate your succinct summation of my intellectual ability to discuss this subject, allow me to nonetheless point out that doctors and insurance company execs aren’t enslaved currently precisely because most people don’t yet fully and thoroughly believe that health care is a basic human right. One person’s right is another person’s obligation. Perhaps you have a differing definition of rights which doesn’t entail such a truism.
FedEx and UPS are good examples of private investment in an otherwise primarily quasi (at this time) governmental provided postal services. Both of those corporations, and others like them, have chosen to compete in those areas of parcel delivery services that offer the best profit potential. Why don’t they deliver mail? Oh FedEx will happily deliver an envelope from NY to Calif. for $11.32, but take up to 5 days to get it there. The Post Office does it for 44 cents and it will likely arrive in two or three days. I can’t wait for private industry to completely take over mail delivery services.
No poppie you don’t need to go to a doctor for the sniffles, but if the time comes that you find you’ve developed a cancer in your (fill in the blank) I suppose you’ll want someone else to cover the cost of your care and treatment. I’ll be happy to send the cost of the casket to your family if you’ll agree to disregard the early signs of serious illness. That’ll save the rest of us libertarians when your sorry ass is toast for lack of health care that you can afford. No back door ER for care and treatment allowed. It’s inefficient and costs too much to the rest of us.
Darren, I suggest that you contact Erik Prince about a military start up to replace the inefficient government run bureau of military waste and contracts distribution which we call the Pentagon. Of course having a family fortune and excellent contacts in the White House will help to provide those government contracts to run your private for profit army, air force and navy. You may soon find that you need to cut the rest of the militray-industrial a piece of your pie. You’ve got to get your equippment from wome place.
And when charter schools take over all of our education who is going to educate the more difficult student subjects? No, the government isn’t allowed to deny education to the physically, mentally or emotionally impaired even though its difficult to justify those services on a cost effectiveness basis. What’s to be the model of our new private for profit educational system? How about Texas and its eastern neighbors like Louisianna and Georgia? Worst education systems in the country ans they’re not even hampered by those lazy unionized teachers. That way the staff comes cheap. Poorly educated and cheap, but what can you ask for when you need to reduce a budget deficiency brought on by low tax revenues.
We’ve got a two tiered economic system now so why not have a two tiered social system, the haves and the have nots. We’ll all be libertarians then because we’ll all be equally stupid enough to vote for real small government and real big and real rich private industry.
poppies,
To add to beowulf’s point, until someone is forced into a given business and not allowed to leave it by the government, they aren’t enslaved just because the government has regulations that affect that business.
Think of it this way… assume that the government required that anyone who made and marketed hummus had to sign away all their wealth to some dude named Bob (any Bob would do, it didn’t have to be a specific one) and for some reason the Supreme Court went along with it. If hummus makers were enslaved, they’d do it. If not, they’d quit making hummus. That might be a crying shame (I like hummus!), incredibly heavy handed, and a very stupid regulation to boot. But slavery it isn’t.
Darren, your statement is beyond obtuse.
Govts DO fail financially, so this as a measure of whether a non-profit is an equivalent to govt fails.
I think you’d find the state incentivized to use very persuasive means of keeping health care providers in the business of providing care if most people rigorously believed that health care is a basic right. The fact that the state doesn’t currently aggress in this manner (at least not explicitly) belies claims that there is a thought-out consensus on the idea of health care “rights.”
Again, let me be clear, I don’t think we currently have such a consensus, therefore current regulations and current conditions are not directly akin to slavery.
But the point is they are doing it today. I say here is a good thing to tax, flaring nat gas ought to get a tax.
Of course the problems of the postal service stem with the move to online bill pay. I suspect that where electronic payments are made bill pay costs the banks less than a physical check, since its all computer to computer. If we go to 5 days one could envision a bill pay service that charged 20 cents per bill pay compared to 44 cents for the post office. I know that I have cost the postal service 5 to 6 dollars a month with bill pay.
Actually if we just moved the fleets it would have a big impact. Consider that Pickens plan involves moving 18 wheelers to natural gas. Combine this with Fed Ex and UPS and major trash companies at least and its a big impact.
Coberly,
And your calculation starts in what year? Because as of right now the economic projection for that calculation to work is nowhere near the reality.
It will be (5) years before there will be solid growth and revenue to deal with the situation, in the meantime while no fix is put into place, it slides deeper.
What part of this is inaccurate?
“After 2022, trust fund assets will be redeemed in amounts that exceed interest earnings until trust fund reserves are exhausted in 2036, one year earlier than was projected last year. Thereafter, tax income would be sufficient to pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2085.”
There are a number of things that private enterprise won’t do (because it’s not profitable) or may do but probably shouldn’t (because the profit-motive results in the activity being carried out in a more damaging way) or can’t do (because they simply don’t–and shouldn’t– have power over the other actors needed to do it). Most of those things should be done by government exclusively or at least in part.
The comment threads have named a number of examples of the first and more can easily be set forth–charter schools for the poor that are handicapped and least capable; postal deliveries in short times in hard-to-access places; disaster aid wherever and whenever needed; disease prevention/cure development for diseases that are commonly incurred by the poor, etc. The second include services like mercenary warmongering (private agencies like the reviled Blackwater will do it and make money off it, but ordinarily such activities relate to corrupting influences and distorting economics–Blackwater had no expertise when it started and got no-bid contracts based on connections; Blackwater ignored common ethical guidelines, yet Blackwater employees made many times what similarly serving soldiers made, etc.);preserving natural places and natural resources (wilderness/parks–for-profit parks will tend to be too exclusive or too destructive of the environment; oil and gas will be exploited to the hilt, even if there is a strong argument for preserving reserves for future generations, etc.); carrying out basic research to expand human knowledge (corporate interests will tend to focus on immediate profits and forego the long-term research); development of different models of products to meet societal needs rather than the needs of a customer (the tri-flex car a good example). The third includes things like enacting and enforcing minimum wage laws, civil rights laws, pollution control and other environmental protection laws, product-consumer-financial safety regulations and similar protections.
Coberly,
Talk about the Pot calling the Kettle Black! You missed the entire point. If Insurance companies are forced to operate on a non competitive basis against non-profits and government sponsorship then they go out of business and the system defaults to the Single-Payer System. The Single Payer System will only grow in size and costs and eventually crowd out the ability for high quality care at a reasonable price, and the result ends up with inadequate but expensive health care. (See Canada and the U.K)
ObamaCare was designed specifically to be the Trojan Horse to implement this senerio.
You can argue that Americans deserve adequate health care at a reasonable price, but not recognizing the that the Single Payer System end result, after it has knocked off the private sectors abillity to handle it is not only “idiotic,” it is down right stupid.
poppies,
“I think you’d find the state incentivized to use very persuasive means of keeping health care providers in the business of providing care if most people rigorously believed that health care is a basic right.”
The problem with this statement is that we do view “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as a basic right. And we aren’t imprisoning or drafting doctors to ensure that someone is there to ensure that everything possible is done give people a chance at life. Heck, if someone runs out of money to keep themselves alive, as a society we don’t seem to have a problem with that.
beowulf,
And there are private security companies that provide much better service than your publically funded police departments. So you would have no problems with the best and brightest doctors selling there much more expensive service (and better capabilities) as the market warrents? And ignoring the public market since it doesn’t pay enough? A two-tier system where the public gets whatever the government considers ‘adequate’ healthcare, while those who can pay get the top notch healthcare. No problems with that? Becuase that’s exactly how public/private security works today. No problems with the upper class living longer becuase they can afford the best doctors and treatments?
We have it now in many respects. Try getting any of the top-notch doctors in DC to take a Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare patient today. They won’t. Period. Becuase these government programs don’t pay enough. You see it in the Nationalized health-care programs in Canada and the UK. The rich just fly down to Florida and get the hip replacement. The Poor wait months/years for the same. And the cost to doctors of their education is climbing astronomically every year.
My BIL’s partner paid big bucks to get a treatment not available in the US. He’s still alive 5 years later. If he had stayed in the US he would be dead. What you want is for the rich to die with the poor – not going to happen (and it would be very bad if it did).
So what poppies has pointed out is the way most people here seem to want, coberly has advocated this on many occaisions BTW, is to force doctors to take government health-care. Which is slavery. There has been at least one occaision where police have rounded up doctors and forced them back to work in the US. Again slavery.
So as long as your OK with a two (or more) tier health-care system, where doctors can choose who they wish to choose as patients, then we have no problem. You can have those doctors sign-up to be government health-care workers just like the police departments. Fine by me. As long as its voluntary.
BUt right now all I see from the left is the nationalization of health-care and forcing doctors to takle whomever the government says they have to take. That’s slavery…. Better to nationalize the lawyers, just like the public police!
Islam will change
Laslty,, by making health-care a right, someone has to provide that healthcare. So who do you plan on forcing to give people healthcare? At the point of a gun.
The best don’t take government healthcare now. How do you expect to make them in the future?
The state over all. Do you guys have even the minimum understanding that the state’s only purpose is to preserve individual liberty and property? It serves the people, the people don’t serve it?
Islam will change
Mike, there are very important distictions between a negative and a positive right to life. Almost everyone believes actively taking a life is wrong. Not everyone believes that being born creates a positive claim on food, shelter, medical attention, etc.
In short we have government inorder to prevent, to the extent possible, any group or individual from interfering with the quality of life of the citizenry, the population at large. It is the very reason for forming a community, a state or a country to begin with. We know from the historical record that there are have been, and will always be, those who will try to cheat, steal, hinder, hamper, murder and rampage. We organize to protect all against the few. We organize inorder to enhance the quality of life for the many. We want roads, safe water, education for the children, etc. etc. If you don’t like your government vote for an alternative or get the ______ out of the country. Because to talk about shrinking the government is an act of impudence bordering on treason. The government has a job to do and our job is to assure that we choose the best people to assure that the government makes a best effort to put the needs of the people before the needs of wealth accumulation.
buff,
When was this that doctors were rounded up? And was it a one time event or is this something that is happening all the time? What happened to the cop who did the rounding up? Because it seems very odd to me.
Those with money will always pay more for additional service. The food is always better in first class than in steerage. That will always be the case. Now, you seem to be under the impression that the government is going to ensure, at gunpoint, that everyone gets the same amount of foie gras. With all due respect, it sounds like “black helicopter” talk to me.
As I noted upthread, this country was literally founded on the principle that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We don’t see doctors rounded up at gunpoint to make sure some poor schlob is getting the heart transplant he needs to stay alive. No money and no insurance, no heart transplant, and no life. We don’t see restaurants forced at gunpoint to serve some indigent guy who can’t afford food. No money, no food. So why exactly will a lesser right – assuming healthcare does end up being viewed as a right – be viewed as so much more of a reason to act than the founding principles of the nation?
Darren:
Why??? Because millions of workers would have been tossed out on the street jobless not only from the OEMs; but, this would have impacted tier 1, 2, and 3s besides the business supported by these workers who spend money at them.
Pensions? Hmmm, the pensions did not cause the issue as much as the over forcasting of returns to the funds by corporations so they would not have to fund them. Corporations also looted the pensions to increase profits by decreasing future benefits which decreases a liability. At the same time, corporations were using pensions funds to pay executive retirement benefits (which are unfunded) and to pay deferred compension. Companies did not need to cancel pensions to remain competitive.
UAW the issue? Not likely unless you believe Delphi’s Miller. The OEMs lost the edge with poor designs not meeting the needs of the economy . . . “small cars.”
Darren:
What is the issue with this statement:
“continues to grow at a substantially faster rate than the number of covered workers” and its basis is this:
It completely ignores productivity gains and the passage of the gains to Labor in the form of higher wages which in turn means more income to Social Security and tax revenues unless the productivity gains are skewed strictly to capital. Fewer works paying in is displaced by higher wages. You do not need more workers working to support one retiree. You need higher wages.
What you do need is more workers working to pay into the fund to negate the payouts and again generate a surplus. We have lived a decade of a decreasing Participation Rate or that portion of the Non-Institutional Population as a part of the Civilian Labor Force. If you truly wish tax revenues to increase than you would support more people working in meaningful jobs. This is not accomplished through deficit cuts but by providing the correct stimulus to labor intensive investments. Anything other than this is a race to the bottom as cuts of this nature will not produce the necessay jobs.
As Cberly says, you can negate the need for a TF by small increases in the Payroll Wihholding Tax which would raise the revenue to what is projected in 2035. Here is another alert for you, kill Medicaid or decrease it overall and you kill long term care for much of the population. Medicaid finances 50% of all lng term care in the US today.
Marcus Licinius Crassus ran fire brigades in Rome around 70 BC or so.
Was richest man around, we got the word crass………………………….
Used to buy the burning houses before the slaves in his fire brigade put them out. He became richest man in Rome, then went off to out-Caesar Caesar against the Parthians around present day Iran/Iraq and lost his head along with a few legions.
My experience with military industry congress complex privatized arsenals: for profit welfare and socialized technical ineptitude.
Bruce:
Thanks and very true
NG pipelines at wholesale level are nearly as widespread as liquid pipelines. Barges are cheaper than pipelines for liquid fuels, if you have rivers. Thermoses for NG are needed for barges.
The wholesale and retail NG/Hydrogen/methane distro system is an investment, but at certain economies well within reach.
Darren
no part of that statement is inaccurate. it’s your failure to understand it that is causing you problems with it.
Here we go again: the Trust Fund is NOT Social Security. in it’s present form it was DESIGNED to run out (pace bruce on non relevant detail), having done what it was designed to do… pay for the boomer retirement.. with the boomers own money. As a matter of COINCIDENCE, while it is paying for the boomers, the life expectancy of retirees is increasing. it will have increased to the point where when the Trust Fund runs out in 2036 or so the tax would need to be increased about 2% if the retirees of that generation will want the same replacement rate at the same retirement age as the current generation… this is actually an INCREASE in benefits… but those people will want it anyway when they understand what it’s for. Those people should start raising their own tax now, gradually, it would take about a tenth of a percent increase per year to have the tax needed to pay for those increased benefits by 2031. But, as CBO points out, over the next seventy five years an increase that averages only one half of one tenth of one percent per year will cover the increases that will be needed. since the people paying the tax will also be getting more pay (about ten times as much as the tax increase) and will get their money back when they retire, with interest, it is not a “burden” but merely a sensible choice to spend a small part of their own increased wealth on a longer, richer, more secure retirement.
you Darren show no ability to understand what you copy.
jack
worth adding that there is no conflict between good government and wealth building.
there is a conflict between good government and mugging your neighbors, which is what wealth “accumulation” means to the people who have taught the libertarians to chant their chants.
Historically, the government has taken over lots of businesses that just can’t operate effectively, usually because of system effects. No transportation system has ever been long run profitable as a business, not mules, not ships, not airlines, not cars. They all require massive government operating subsidies and/or heavy regulation. Food production can’t work as a business. There’s a reason farmers are never happy, either the crop is doing poorly or it’s doing too well. Criminal justice used to be private sector, but it works much better when handled by some kind of government. Scientific research cannot be justified at all as a business, but is vital for any government seeking to remain competitive in a modern society. Manufacturing can work short run as a business, but developing and maintaining a manufacturing sector requires heavy government management, cross subsidies and intervention as the US learned in the 19th century and China is learning in this one.
If you believe the right wing, the private sector is some kind of fragile flower that needs to be watered with aged Scotch, fertilized with caviar and sung to by symphonic orchestras. The left wing tends to think it is tougher. It needs nurturing, but if you aren’t getting what you want out of it, maybe it’s time to change the cultivar.
Unfortunately, our government sees fits to slap a heavy tariff on both sugar cane and on ethanol made from sugar cane. And in 2008 we elected the President who vowed in the debates to protect that tariff, instead of the candidate who in the debates said we should eliminate that tariff. So it’s kind of a weird example to pick, since at least in our case we’d have a better chance of getting sugar cane ethanol if we had less government, not more. Our government has decided to put its power behind (currently) less efficient corn ethanol.
Sure, the government can hypothetically subsidize things that are temporarily less efficient and make them into winners. But it can also permanently subsidize things that remain less efficient. I don’t think we really gain from having the “more choices” of corn ethanol.
“No, the government isn’t allowed to deny education to the physically, mentally emotionally impaired even though its difficult to justify those services on a cost effectiveness basis. What’s to be the model of our new private for profit educational system? How about Texas and its eastern neighbors like Louisianna and Georgia? Worst education systems in the country ans they’re not even hampered by those lazy unionized teachers.”
Odd back-to-back arguments, considering that Texas and Georgia both have highly effective educational systems if you normalize for demographic characteristics like the percentage of people in poverty or the percentage of recent immigrants.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
“To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin.”
So just as it wouldn’t be fair to call a public school worse than a private school when a public school had to take all comers and had more people in poverty, it isn’t fair to claim that Texas has worse schools.
I’m not unsympathetic to your point but there’s more to the private companies’ negative stance than “Shell and Esso and Texaco (remember them?) weren’t going to start selling other types of fuel because there weren’t enough cars on the road that could use those fuels.” Brazil had a lot of political risk for businesses that deterred investors – especially foreign headquartered investors – from risky capital outlays.
Lyle, it is happening today in large part becuase it is near impossible to get the governmnet to let you quickly build a pipeline. So shoudl the governmnet tax it, maybe, but they should not be able to collect the tax until the necessary pipeline is approved.
mark,
I mentioned Shell and Esso and Texaco because Shell and Esso and Texaco all operated chains of gasoline service stations in Brazil at the time. Thus, the added investment would have been that required to start selling alcohol. A few years later, they made that investment. But as memory serves (I was just a kid at the time so I wasn’t taking notes), they waited until there was a critical mass of alcohol consuming vehicles on the road before making that investment.
Incidentally, as I recall, the first vehicles to run on ethanol ran only on ethanol, not on gasoline. The bi-flex cars came later, and of course, tri-flex officially came much later. Taxi drivers were jury-rigging vehicles to run on propane tanks even when I lived in Brazil in the 70s and 80s, and every so often you’d read about one exploding. As I recall, by the late 1990s you could buy aftermarket conversion kits that allowed cars to run on nat gas that were street legalgov’t approved. I think it was VW that offered the first road ready car that could run on three fuels. In that case, the nat gas option was put in after the fact by Praxair / White Martins, but the car was designed to accept that equipment and it came with an official VW warranty.
Note that most companies involved in this whole story (the car companies, Praxair, Shell, Esso and Texaco) are private and foreign. But none of this would be possible if the Ipiranga stations, owned by Petrobras which at the time was owned by the government, hadn’t started selling alcohol in the first place – that was the risky capital outlay right there.
poppies
not really. i have a different idea of logic that makes me think you don’t know what a “truism” is.
i have no idea what your intellectual capacity is. you could be an idiot savant for all i know. but your
“logical connections” look to me more like leaps of libertarian faith. typically you present an arguable “fact” and then jump to a conclusion that is supported by nothing other than the accidental synapses in you brain. not really any different from the rest of us, but your accidental synapses are “special.”
poppies, i suspect that europeans would approach more closely your required “consensus.” nevertheless i do not hear reports of doctors being herded to work with a lash and, as mike points out, prevented from leaving.
you are straining too hard to justify your Ayn Randian idea of “slavery.” self induced idiocy is idiocy nonetheless.
Darren
I have no doubt it looks stupid to you. Having convinced yourself that one and one and one is infinity, you must be very perplexed that the rest of us aren’t running around screaming the sky is falling the sky is falling, and cutting our heads off to save ourselves from the high cost of living.
beowulf
but you see, having a right to police protection is not the same as having a right to medical care. it’s, it’s, it’s like having the government supply shoes for everyone
or, what is the same thing, trying to make the economy work so all god’s chillun got shoes.
buff
again with accusing me of Stalinist plots against your pfreedom. as a person who chose a career in which he had no freedom, i would think you’d be ashamed.
as it happens i am fine with the two tier system you envisage. in my own experience the “best and brightest” doctors aren’t in it for the money. but those who are clever about money do a pretty good job of convincing their rich patients that they are the best.
buff
does this state preserve liberty and property… at the point of a gun?
Thacker
i think your “normalizing” is bogus.
the purpose of public education is to raise people out of poverty.. whatever their race.
and, if “true” i suspect that poor kids in texas may do better than poor kids in wisconsin, because in texas you are more likely to be poor because of your race, whatever your intelligence, while in wisconsin it is more likely that the smarter kids… whatever their race… escape poverty.
thacker
tariff on sugar cane made at the request of rich sugar cane producers in Florida, who would otherwise agree most solemnly with you idea of limited government..
buff
as to my proposing a health care system that would destroy your pfreedom… you’d have to show me where i said something like that. as far as i recall the only health care system i have advocated has been one where the providers submitted bids to provide services that would be paid for by the government. kind of like the highway division, or the pentagon.
heck, i’d even be fine if the “tax” to pay for it were voluntary.
so if you keep having these bad dreams about me taking away your pfreedom, you may need to see your doctor. i’m sure i could find one who would charge you enough so you’d know he was the best and brightest.
Poppies
makes a “very important distinction between a negative and a positive right to life. Almost everyone believes actively take a life is wrong. Not everyone believes that being born creates a positive claim on food,shelter, medical attention, etc.”
and he is very satisfied with himself for this bit of wisdom. we can only hope for his sake that he doesn’t really believe it even as he recites the words in his catechism.
otherwise we might see poppies walking down the street and seeing a child hit by a car. as poppies does not believe that child has a positive claim to medical attention, he keeps on walking and does not call an ambulance. when word gets around about this, he is confronted by a crowd of people to whom he explains his theory of negative and positive right to life.
they then string him up on the nearest lamppost, telling him and us just how far you can trust everyone to believe that actively taking a life is wrong.
Bruce, as I understand it we are talking about 2 different cars NG, or liquid fuel. The governmnet has royally messed up the latter with their misguided corn ethanol policy. NG vehicles require someone to buy something entirely different, and I do not think those vehicles would necessarily be marketable in the US. Diesel was so promising, but again the governmnet killed that goose too by creating rules that make import of diesel vehicles to the US unpalatable. Then there are our different crash standards compared to countries that have roads full of fuel efficient vehicles. From start to finish the US has a horrible policy that encourages alternate fuels.
Thacker using race as a proxy variable only takes you so far. That data analysis to which you refer suggests that income inequalities and a lack of education spending are primary reasons for lower test scores overall in Texas. Texas is similar to Wisconsin in overall per capita income metrics but Texas ranks near the top in income inequality, Wisconsin near the bottom. Per pupil, Texas spends about 20 percent less than Wisconsin even though it has a far more serious education problem caused by inequality. I don’t know that education spending can fix this, unless perhaps it is directed specifically to do so, but Texas isn’t trying to address it’s education problem either through education spending or through policies to decrease inequalities.
Sorry Bruce, I am mistaken as I do believe the vehicles in Brazil run liqued and NG, unlike the buses here that seem to be either/or. So I guess these vehicles will come down to marketability to american consumers. Does not seem hard for any gas station to add a NG hookup. But I still stand by my assertion that our governmnet has disjointed fuel efficient vehicle policies.
Thacker, What do you mean, “…if you normalize for demographic characteristics like the percentage of people in poverty or the percentage of recent immigrants.” Doesn’t that mean that a public school system’s poor performance is justified if its student body is poor or recently immigrated? “Oh, we know our public schools don’t perform well, but you have to understand that it’s because we have bad students a lot of whom don’t even speak English! You don’t expect us to do a good job for people like that, do you?”
Now, maybe my characterization is exaggerated. But, a good public school system has to serve the public, not a selected group of middle or higher income kids whose parents will provide all kinds of help and enrichment, should the school somehow fail to do so. Also, in Texas, don’t forget that a very high number of poor, immigrant and minority kids simply drop out and are not counted in test score averages as the age of the student increases. I think that to put Texas and WI in the same bowl is to confuse apples and oranges. NancyO
mcwop
as long as you recognize it is an assertion and not an actual argument.
your problem is that you recognize that government regulations cause some problems with what you want to do. you do not recognize that those government regulations ease some of the problems that what you want to do would cause.
As I understand it, the Post Office would have shown a profit in the last few of years if not for the requirement that they pre-fund 75 years of retirement funding in 10 years. This was mandated by Congress and is a burden shared with no other organization. It’s almost as if the Republican-dominated Congress that passed that mandate didn’t want the PO to survive. Surprise! They won’t.
I think this assertion is very simple. I think we agree that the stated goal (mainly of Democrats, or those that care about the environment) is to use less carbon based fuels. The policies our governmnet has implemented overall has slowed this, not sped it up. There is a loooong list of policy mistakes by both parties. But then we are ruled by lawyers, not engineers.
mcwop
i agree about the mistakes of government by both parties. but i worked with engineers and i guarantee they would not be any better at government.
i am fairly sure what has slowed the progress on using less carbon based fuels has been the lobbying of the carbon based fuel industry, and the politicians they pay to lie to us.
okay with me as long as the “competition” pays for the infrastructure created by the government.
cherry picking off the government planted and nurtured tree would have to be addressed by some kind of a use fee.
In the end, policy won’t stop the secular increase in fuel prices. In 5 years gas will force changes on the entire USA. So in the meantime, I am enjoying being a non-carowner. And companies will roll out products to meet consumer demands for fuel efficiency – they won;t have a choice.
mcwop
suits me. but imagine if we had taxed gas up to, say three dollars a gallon 30 years ago and used the money for something useful, leaving the gas in the ground for our children who may also find out it has better uses than polluting our atmosphere. could have saved some on the war thing too.
mcwop,
Usually the problem with building a pipeline is that said pipeline goes across other people’s land. (Ditto powerlines, railroad tracks, and roads.)
What you mean to say, therefore, is that the government isn’t very quick to eminent domain a private party’s property to benefit another private party. (More info here: http://www.ferc.gov/for-citizens/citizen-guides/citz-guide-gas.pdf)
Another way to look at it: there are other ways to get gas to market. Its just that they’re more expensive than having the government seize someone else’s property rights on the behalf of the gas producers and wanna be pipeline operators. And while that hasn’t taken place, why not go with the second cheapest option, namely pollution?
I thank all of you above who have responded to Thacker’s citation of David Burge’s presentation and analysis of NAEP standardized test data. That Burge “cherry picked” those scaled scores to compare becomes readily apparent when one goes to the NAEP cite and looks at the multitude of data preented there. Some how (I’m guessing it has to do with the method of producing the “scaled score” data) the comparisons presented by Burge, racial group specific between states, Texas pupils score slightly higher. Yet the total state scores are higher for Wisconsin. As one looks more closely at the many different kinds of comparisons that can be culled from the NEAP tables it becomes readily apparent that Wisconsin scores are higher than those of Texas pupils. Burge managed to find the few score comparisons that implied that Texas pupils were scoring above those from Wisconsin. It’s bogus.
Duplication of reply to Thacker on Page 3:
I thank all of you above who have responded to Thacker’s citation of David Burge’s presentation and analysis of NAEP standardized test data. That Burge “cherry picked” those scaled scores to compare becomes readily apparent when one goes to the NAEP cite and looks at the multitude of data preented there. Some how (I’m guessing it has to do with the method of producing the “scaled score” data) the comparisons presented by Burge, racial group specific between states, Texas pupils score slightly higher. Yet the total state scores are higher for Wisconsin. As one looks more closely at the many different kinds of comparisons that can be culled from the NEAP tables it becomes readily apparent that Wisconsin scores are higher than those of Texas pupils. Burge managed to find the few score comparisons that implied that Texas pupils were scoring above those from Wisconsin. It’s bogus.
Thanks Jack
I would have missed the reply on Page 3. js-kit helpful way of reorganizing posts is hard on my eyes.
if we have learned anything in all these years it should be that there are folks out there with nothing better to do with their lives than examine the facts and rearrange them in ways that are misleading.
liars, damned liars, and statisticians.
What Brazilian government did could be very smart.I never saw a tri-flex car until I went to a warehouse searching for Saab car parts.
What Brazilian government did could be very smart.I never saw a tri-flex car until I went to a warehouse searching for Saab car parts.