Hi Liz, On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 7:51 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > > What is funny - as well as sad and frightening - is the number of people > here who apparently don't believe in democracy, even in principle. > Democracy is the idea that we can elect people to do things for everyone > else (the NHS, conservation, social security, infrastructure, regulations, > police, army science etc etc). >
All of the things you mention are run by unelected bureaucrats with long careers, who see politicians come and go. I highly recommend the British show "Yes, Prime Minister!" to learn about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXzGI0XP7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeF_o1Ss1NQ > Yet all I can see here is people saying that it doesn't work. I think the > truth is that it can be hijacked and THEN it doesn't work. The NHS (despite > everything) was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century, after > all. And it was introduced by a government because of its beliefs and > principles. > The NHS is the sort of thing that should worry an Ecologist, because it's based on infinite growth. Both the European system (based on infinite demographic growth) and the Anglo (based on infinite economic growth). I also feel that it serves mostly to fix a problem created by the government itself in a previous regulatory wave. The barriers to competition in the practice of healthcare are so high that it becomes unaffordable without insurance or subsidy. It's one of the several resource confiscation traps that have been emerging under crony capitalism. I know, I know. You're going to say that lots of deaths have been prevented by these regulations. This is true. But how many deaths have been caused by poor or inexistent access to healthcare? How many have been caused by the glaciar pace of innovation imposed by such regulations? By patents? People refuse to recognise that this trade-off exists. I dream of flat guaranteed income based on a real currency (not the current pyramid schemes that we call Dollars or Euros). Possibly a cryptocurrency with a smart algorithm that hopefully cannot fall under the control of the bandits. > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
