On 12/19/2014 11:33 AM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
*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]>
[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]
<mailto:[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]
<mailto:[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 they are not monopolies in the legal sense. All you are illustrating is that money is
a form of power and it can be used to get more money and more power. A free-market is
unstable against concentration of wealth. That's why there are laws against monopolies
and anti-competitive trade practices like price-fixing and selling below cost.
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.
Yes the system can be corrupted and has been in many cases. But that doesn't show that
the libertarian ideal of a completely unregulated market is either possible or desirable.
Markets can only exist within the context of a society that defines ownership and
contracts. For example "inalienable rights" is not just a catch phrase, it means there
are some rights you can't loose even by voluntarily contracting to do so.
Brent
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