On Friday 2004-01-16 13:16, Damon Agretto wrote: > --- Trent Shipley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Nope. If you are insolvent you should not be > > treated. > > > > Open access to emergency medicine is the back door > > is basically a disguised > > form of socialized medicine. It forces solvent > > people to take on your > > charity case whether they want to or not. > > Well Trent then I guess I won't depend on you should > my life ever be threatened. While we're at it, lets > get rid of unemployment support, wellfare, and any > other government "charities" since we're being forced > to provide for those leeches too... > > Damon.
Yep. If the space-cadets must justify their pet project in objective terms, so must bleeding hearts. The main reason to keep welfare programs is the sentimental belief that we (meaning those lucky -- or moral -- enough to be taxpayers) are morally obliged to take care of all our fellow citizens, or even human beings. I can think of only a few objective reasons why the commonwealth should provide subsidies to ne'er do wells like myself. 1) Public stability requires providing the lumpen with bread and circuses. TV provides cheap circus. The question remains what is the optimally expedient expenditure on "bread" to maintain political stability and confidence in the status quo. (It also begs the question of what constitutes "bread". Americans seem to think that food is "bread" but housing and medical care dont. In behavioral science terms it is a question of moral economy. There is also related issues like the economic value of keeping homeless folk out of mercantile and 'respectable' neighborhoods.) 2) The economic stabilization that is a side-effect of entitlement programs. 3) Accounting that proves the program is counter-intuitively cost-effective. (Note that in the face of this kind of accounting, eg that providing treatment in prision for alchol and drug addiction is cost effective, conservatives raise moral objections [that we dismiss under this theory of amoral legislation] while libertarians say that surely there are unaddressed strategic costs of "codling" that result in expensive "dependency".) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
