From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 10:53 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: real A.I.
On 12/18/2014 10:44 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
From: meekerdb
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 11:06 AM.
On 12/18/2014 10:16 AM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jason Resch
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2014 12:25 AM
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 12/16/2014 10:15 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
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.
Health care isn't well regulated by competition because the consumer is ill
equipped to judge the necessity or the quality of service and the most
expensive service tends to a one-time event for the consumer.
Worse, the healthcare industry has gotten the US government to pass laws making
it exempt from monopolistic practices, price fixing, charging people different
amounts for the same service, forbidding reimportation of medicine, restricting
the number of MRI machines in a given area. It's what leads to people being
charged $60,000 for two bottles of anti-venom that cost $200, or be charged
$9,000 for a few stiches in a finger. (these are real life examples
<http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229605> and not exaggerations).
Experimental clinics like The Surgery Center of Oklahoma, which cut out
insurance companies, and publishes their prices are 5-10X cheaper
<http://reason.com/reasontv/2012/11/15/the-obamacare-revolt-oklahoma-doctors-fi>
than what other hospitals charge (and about equivalent to prices charged in
Japan and India). If medical costs were this cheap, many people wouldn't need
insurance to pay for all but the most catastrophic of illnesses.
If hospitals were required to adhere to the same anti-trust rules as any other
business, to publish their prices and charge the same amount to everyone, we
would see about 80% of the cost of healthcare evaporate overnight. It's a sad
state of affairs when for every doctor in the country there are two people
working in the medical insurance industry.
I agree with that statement. It is not just hospitals but the monopolies that
have also been established on the practice of medicine and dentistry. Why do
the American Medical Association (AMA), and American Dental Association (ADA) –
both private (government sanctioned and enforced) guilds or trade organizations
have such power and control over who can practice medicine; over how medicine
can be practiced?
>>Because when they didn't anybody could hang out a shingle and claim to be
>>doctor and there were quacks everywhere pushing patent medicine and bleeding
>>people (literally).
Sure… but how does that justify giving a guild – e.g. the AMA – a monopoly over
the issue of licenses to practice medicine? Why not a state body for example.
Why a monopoly private trade association?
?? Medical licenses in the U.S. are issued by states.
Technically true perhaps, but both the AAMC and ACGME (the agencies I believe
you refer to) act in the private interest of the AMA, and are only
quasi-governmental in that they seem to have enough influence to have
government regulations bent to their will. The members of these boards are
usually in the medical field, and also AMA members.
MDs in the US make on average twice as much money as MDs in other OECD
countries – such as Germany -- for example.
In Germany, as I understand it, insurance companies bid to insure classes of
workers and they then negotiate to control doctors fees. Most of the OECD
countries directly regulate or pay health care fees. Of all the OECD countries
the U.S. has the most free-market system, and the most expensive health care.
It shows the fallacy of the libertarian dream. When everyone pursues
self-interest the winners will be those who form coalitions whose objective is
to eliminate other coalitions.
The US system likes to bill itself as being free market, but it is in fact
rather more of a crony capitalist system run by and for the powerful vested
interests. Our health care system is a perfect example of just how inefficient
and expensive crony capitalism really is.
I think it falls between two stools by trying to be regulated capitalism. I
would have much preferred expanding Medicare to everyone, i.e. a single-payer
system like France, than Obamacare. But Obama had to have some powerful (i.e.
moneyed) ally and he settled on the health insurance industry.
Agreed a single payer system would have been much preferable and much cheaper
for the consumer in the end. But as you point out powerful vested interests
perverted the process and got the legislation they desired, a health care
system that seems designed to lock in a fat revenue stream for these powerful
private insurance interests.
Just because it is called free market doesn’t mean it actually bears any actual
resemblance to an actual free market. The US economy is an oligopoly where
access to the market is highly controlled and regulated – invariably to
protect, favor and benefit the vested interests. The Walton heirs net worth is
an example of the social fabric trickle down “free market” policies have
actually resulted in. Since 1983, their net worth has increased a staggering
6,700 percent; in 2013, the Walton family's net worth was $144.7 billion.
Your example though doesn't match your rhetoric. How was Walton's money not
obtained by using "the market"?
Describing what someone says as “rhetoric” is itself a form of rhetoric. The
market you cite is not in any way describable as a *free market*. There are
huge barriers to entry and monopoly power is brought to bear. The entire
edifice of the global trade system and the global race to the bottom in terms
of finding the lowest wage, least regulated labor markets to drive down costs
of the global multinationals that are able to harness and benefit from a
globally integrated trading systems (versus the smaller players that do not
have the reach and depth to be able to act in the same manner as the massive
monopoly powers – such as Walmart (or Costco, which last year had revenues of
90 billion dollars for example). When an organization has that much buying
power it can dictate terms and to a large extent prices as well to much smaller
suppliers, and there are many examples of businesses that have been squeezed to
death by these monopolistic mega-buyers, such as Walmart, Costco and the
world’s few other oligopolistic distributers.
But it is not just retail, in sector after sector we see a landscape of a very
few number of huge politically favored and connected national champions, big
huge multinationals dominate sector after sector. When one examines a lot of
legislation, and sees that what is becoming enacted into law is often almost
verbatim that which has been supplied to pliant corrupt politicians by the
various trade associations and lobbying groups, it is hard not to become
cynical about our alleged “free market”. Often legislation seems more designed
to impose onerous barriers on smaller players in a given space that tip the
balance in favor of the politically connected large oligopolies.
The “free market” has become thoroughly corrupted by money power enacting
legislation and regulations that favor the continued concentration of money
power in fewer and fewer hands. How is this a free market? Unless by free you
mean that the oligopolists are free to do whatever they please.
-Chris
Brent
-Chris
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