On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 07:45:10PM -0800, Bob La Quey wrote: > Why shouldn't grocery stores simply charge a flat rate for everyone > for a week's food then let er rip? This clearly has become popular > for phone services. What else might a flat rate work for?
Because my weeks' worth of food would be steak, lobster, champagne, a fifth of booze every night, a carton of smokes, and so on and so forth? ;-) This leads us back to health care. We cry for "universal health care". We believe that, in the richest nation on Earth, nobody should want for life-saving medical care. Right? Well, isn't food a basic human need? Shouldn't we all have a basic human right to eat? Why shouldn't we be able to walk in to the store and take what we need, because we'll die without food? Simple... the grocery stores would be stripped bare within minutes of opening. Those who provide food would cease to do so... they would have no incentive to raise food beyond what they needed for themselves. And the health care industry faces the *exact* same problem... we cannot force doctors to work for free, or electric companies to provide power to hospitals for free, or construction companies to build hospitals for free. Economics is not about "money". People get too tied up in the idea of money, and jealousy over those who have more of it than they do, and the idea that the world exists so that large corporations can bleed us of as much as possible. Economics is about the study of the allocation of scarce goods. Food is scarce... there is less of it than there is of potential demand. Same with medical care. What system could possibly work other than capitalism? My efforts are worth a certain amount of money. I then decide how to allocate that money to fulfill my needs and wants. I never have "enough", so I must prioritize and sacrifice. Yes, I may one day have a "need" that I cannot fulfill (say, an urgently necessary medical procedure that will cost $1,000,000 and that no insurance I have might cover). I might die because I don't have enough mnoney. Is that "fair"? Of course not. But it is "right", because any other way that we might allocate our health care will be fundamentally flawed and be doomed to failure. Doctors require years and years of education, hard work, sacrifice, etc. If they are not promised large six-figure salaries at the end of all of that, why not become a plumber instead? Sure, some people will be motivated enough to go through all of that to "serve humanity" and give their services away. But we know that "enough" will not... we have a difficult time getting more doctors now because of the massive burdens placed upon them in the form of taxes, inevitable malpractice suits and the coverage necessary to defend against it, etc. Canada and the UK have serious shortages of doctors... they come to the US to practice, retire, etc. and new people are not taking their place. They're recruiting medical students from the Third World to try to make up a little bit of lost ground. So, if doctors must be paid (or farmers), where does the money come from? Directly, from those who use their services? or, indirectly, from everyone, in the form of a crushing tax burden that lessens productivity and so the total amount of wealth available to everyone? Yes, I know... "all members of society should be happy to pay those taxes because they might someday need care". Well, we already have that. It's called insurance. I can opt to pay every month in case I need care, or I can keep that money and be responsible for any costs that arise. The same goes for food... the farmer raises a surplus of grain or cows because he sells it for a profit. That's where our food comes from. Money allows us to acquire goods and services that we could not get by direct barter. My skills would be of little use to a farmer, so he would not trade me a meal for some computer work, except maybe very occasionally. I could try to barter my labor to someone who then barters theirs to a blacksmith who then barters his to the farmer, but that gets messy. Money lets me exchange my labor for a commonly-accepted medium which I can then use for any good or service I desire. That's a fundamentally sound system. Like I said, it isn't "fair", and it sometimes does not work as quickly as we'd like or in the exact way we wish it would, but it *works*. The more we tamper with that system, to try to get more "fairness" or "equality", the worse off we are overall. > Why, for instance, should Puerto Ricans have no foreign policy or > currency being essentially a colony of the USA and at the same > time no right to vote for President and no representation in the > Congress of the USA? I couldn't agree more. Why should we continue to provide for their defense, etc.? Why can't we just sever all ties to Puerto Rico and stop spending US dollars there? All of a sudden, the "separatists" would scream bloody murder as loudly as they could. A perfect example of the coin having two sides. Puerto Rico could rise up and rebel. They could throw the US out. We did it with England 230 years ago. Would we fight to keep it? I don't know. I don't know that we care, or that Puerto Rico would be worth fighting to keep. Maybe those in Washington believe that it would be worth fighting for. Maybe we'd win and write history books that say we were right. maybe they'd win and write history books saying they were right. But Puerto Rico doesn't want independance nearly badly enough to try to get it, and we want to retain it enough to do so, so the current situation is "right". -- *********************************************************************** * John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ * * * *********************************************************************** -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
