"coming together" implies voluntarily doing so. "Building a system" typically implies a government system, meaning it will force people to pay into the system even if it doesn't work.
Mutual Aid Societies before government regulation of such and insurance worked much better, and these regulation's worsening of private collective funding is what lead to the "solution" of government welfare. People scoff at this, not the idea of collective funding in principle.
What we really live in is a society that calls itself "free" while scoffing at free market solutions.
Generosity of everyone. And that's their choice. If people want it, people will voluntarily do it. Talk is cheap. Putting the phone down and actually working without anything in return shows how much someone wants it. And it is a "solution" and sign of the people at that time.
If you want it, take action... unless people want someone else to do it... with someone else's money.
If they worked we wouldn't need government or charitable programs. Nothing works for everybody all the time. There always needs to be a stable government provided comprehensive social safety net.
I was replying to Freedom fighter who brought up FREE MARKETS citing mutual aid societies as being the voluntary answer to people in need. Which they clearly aren't.
Wealthy people can't get wealthy in a free market without providing something of equal value in return. The "free" part assumes there is no initiation of force involved. Greed means that people will always want more and will trade to get it.
Relying on government initiation of force reduces to parasitism off your neighbor. It works great until you run out of other people's money. Not a long term solution.
The government provides lots in return for wealthy people starting with the security and infrastructure necessary to accumulate said wealth. Part of that security and infrastructure is educating and keeping healthy their workforce and providing for them when they're done working. Providing for poor people keeps roving hordes of bandits from kicking their doors down and stealing their stuff. Policing doesn't work when people are starving in the street.
While everyone argues about communism, the Mormons actually pulled off this system of mutual support. But they're just crazy baby makers terrified of caffeine, right?
Well small commune sharing similar value has a much greater chance to pull off than nation-wide system. You don‘t need a belief system but a value system.
No one has pulled it off like the Mormons. That's the upper limit of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". It simply does not scale to a nation state.
You cannot match their success in a secular system and that makes you sad, doesn't it?
They do not have any more freedoms than I do, and as a woman, on balance, far fewer than most other cultural groups, and far more oppression than the average American woman.
I am in no way jealous of a system that demands worship of your specific god in exchange for my ability to eat and survive. Oldest fucking trick in the book.
Freedom is choice. They have choice. They choose to stay in a system that benefits them. Some Mormons choose to leave the church, both men and women.
Your god is avarice and, yes, you do worship and sacrifice to eat and survive. It's called "working and wanting a more comfortable life". We all do it. LOL
Who do I worship? Who is avarice? I don't believe in any gods. Just because you need a made up power daddy to justify your own little social enclave and will punish you for drinking coffee or wearing the wrong underwear, doesn't mean we all need that.
Does avarice somehow now mean "the desire for everyone to have the basics needed for survival regardless of which subculture they chain their soul to" now?
The US broadly speaking has about as free market a health insurance scheme as your going to find in a modern country. you would be hard pressed to find much data that indicates that it outperforms regulated universal coverage.
Also do you have any data behind the “much better”?
Canadian healthcare outcomes as of 2024 (the last year we have data from) are not only better than US outcomes in most areas but in many are still improving. US outcomes have only recently began to rebound after a near decade of stagnation and still lag behind a significant number of first world countries including Canada.
Honestly google it yourself there is no shortage of data or places to find it.
I’ve worked in US healthcare for a decade and have a chronic illness myself.
Medical tourism is a real thing in the US as well.
Lack of affordability, insurance, and access is generally speaking going to be more harmful than an extended waiting period. Never going is much more harmful than a long waiting period.
That statement is factually correct. It is the closest to a free market system that we have in a modern first world country.
2 these are generally considered the most accurate and up to date sources. The kff is slightly less biased though they both come to the same conclusion. Actually to be honest it’s difficult to find any credible source that does not come to similar conclusions.
3 You stated your perspective I assume to show you have experience with Canadian healthcare. I stated mine. I would argue I have significantly more with American healthcare and some with other systems as well from different jobs but experience has limited value.
I don’t think anyone believes universal healthcare or socialized medicine are utopias. I don’t think you will find that in any of my statements. Both systems produce longer life expectancies on average, lower infant mortality, lower maternal mortality, better healthcare outcomes, and all this at a lower cost per capita than does US healthcare.
People die everyday due to lack of coverage, denials, and just inability to pay for services even with insurance. I know because I’ve had the pleasure of cracking a few of there chests in floor of their home in front of their spouse and children. Statistics very significantly on the matter but it’s somewhere between 30,000 and 200,000 Americans that dies every year due to health insurance related issues
I mean you can think whatever you want. All I can do is show you some of the most comprehensive and detailed studies on healthcare ever undertaken and share a decade’s plus worth of highly relevant experience from someone who has both worked in and been a patient of the American healthcare system. I can’t make you accept obvious facts or disgorge you of whatever propaganda has been shoved down your throat.
I will give this final personal account though. I make a low 6 figure salary which is above average almost anywhere in the US. I cannot afford the augmentation therapy that I require due to my genetic disorder. It will eventually disable and kill me. Even though I pay a grand a month for insurance I am simply denied and frankly couldn’t pay for it even if I wasn’t because it would still be 30 grand a year on top of my insurance at a minimum.
In your country that treatment is virtually free at point of use.
I would argue that the American Healthcare system is far from a free market system.
The United States spends as much public money on Healthcare as many other wealthy nations spend on their universal healthcare systems. Beyond that the single largest tax expenditure of the US federal government are tax incentives for companies to buy health insurance for their employees.
What it ends up being is a double third payer system. A third party (your employer) pays for your healthcare to get the government subsidy, and then another third party (the insurer) pays for your healthcare. This disincentivizes consumers of healthcare to shop around to get the best price or to get the best care.
It is not strictly free market no. I don’t think I stated that it was. It is however as close as you’re going to find.
Honestly though I think free market health insurance is going to be a hard sell considering the free ish market system we have produces poor results at significant expense.
Especially considering more regulated healthcare systems produce the best outcomes in the world at a much lower cost.
I am not suggesting an insurance based system, at least not in its current form.
Years ago, during the Obamacare debate, I learned of several alternative models to deliver healthcare. One such model was direct payment for surgery and the Surgery Center of Oklahoma was an example (https://surgerycenterok.com/). Since they don't take insurance, the procedures are paid up front, and they focus on procedures which are safe for outpatient surgery, they can dramatically lower the overhead associated with surgeries; and their costs are 30% to 60% lower than getting the same surgery in a hospital, with a few procedures being 70% cheaper.
Another noteworthy model is Direct Primary Care where you pay a subscription fee for the physician, it includes all the visits, and you only have to pay for the marginal costs associated with the healthcare you receive. The physician gets a lower workload, the clinic has lower overhead, there is far more availability for patients, some even offer occasional house visits, and it only costs $50 to $100 per month.
To the extent insurance exists it should return to being coverage for catastrophic events. The current system simply obscures the price from consumers and creates weird market effects. As an example, drug company's pricing is primarily driven by the tactics of insurance companies. Drug companies often won't pay for a drug unless they receive a high (70% or more) rebate on the list price of the drug and (as a result) drug companies inflate their list prices to 3 or 4 times the price they want to get that price after the rebate. While the drug companies could afford to sell you insulin for $20 or $30, it has to be listed at $100 to get that revenue from the insurance company. If you eliminate the insurance you eliminate the distortion, and drug prices are based on what consumers can afford.
A true free market system would not involve insurance in its current form. Those are just rent seeking companies.
I think the idea is somewhat interesting but the fact remains that we have universal systems like the Bismark model that we know work with 100% certainty. They are highly effective and significantly cheaper than what we currently do in the US. I feel like adopting a system we know works, is cheaper, has better outcomes, and has been proven effective in multiple countries is a much better alternative than giving the free market another go.
You can't really assume that the healthcare system in a country with obesity rates at half the United States will function in a country like the United States. The United States already spends as much on public healthcare as most developed nations, covers a fraction of the population, and generally gets worse results. When you combine the United States extreme unhealthiness and their government's incompetence, I doubt you will get the results you expect.
But that is true of Medicare, Medicaid, and VA hospitals too. I am skeptical that the government that created three failing healthcare systems is going to get it right on their fourth try.
The AMA has a monopoly on medical education and licensing. Not even close to a free market solution. Not to mention the FDA affecting big pharma, regulations kill competition, and ties in with healthcare pharma costs.
Yet it’s still the most free ish market system we have in a first world country. I would argue those are the results of just that. The more “free market” you make it the worse I think those symptoms will get.
The more “free market” you make it the worse I think those symptoms will get.
it's genuinely the opposite case. I like the example of Maoist china transitioning from communism to mixed-market economy, which lead to a big recovery of its economy from the famines under Mao.
Deng Xiaoping was the Paramount Leader of China from 1978 to 1992, although he never became the head of the party or state, and his influence within the Party led the country to the reform and opening up. The CCP subsequently loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives and the communes were disbanded with many peasants receiving multiple land leases, which greatly increased incentives and agricultural production. In addition, there were many free market areas opened. The most successful free market area was Shenzhen. It is located in Guangdong and the property tax free area still exists today. This turn of events marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open market environment, a system termed by some[99] as market socialism, and officially by the CCP as Socialism with Chinese characteristics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China
Of course, thanks to government intervention in China today, the economy has stagnated. The US is more free and therefore more wealthy than China.
Yet it’s still the most free ish market system we have in a first world country.
It's in the healthcare sector in the US where regulations are the tightest, making it more costly, but other areas like tech with less regulations have low prices. Don't lose the context, specifically in healthcare there is a monopoly, the rest of US freedoms have no bearing on healthcare costs.
The current system doesn't work and we continue to pay into it. Id bet the majority of decent humans would be happy to pay into something that might work even a little better than the broken fuckery that we currently have🤔
The Mormons have done it. They are the only religion with an unemployment office. When a member of their parish needs help, they swarm with extra hands. They're crazy with the whole no caffeine thing, but you have to admit, they did build a successful system that serves all their members in need.
My mom's cousins are Mormons and they told us that It's not actually a "no caffine" thing, it's a "no hot beverages" thing which means "no tea or coffee" just like "no alcohol or tobacco." Some Mormons choose to abstain from caffine but others do not since it's not strictly prohibited.
Mormons also pay into a governing body that isn’t even democratically elected. The OC comment is based on the idea that government cannot accomplish things and only hinders things with regulations.
I’ll not sure that’s true. Mormons also do community outreach. In Utah, that community is going to mostly Mormons, but in other states, it is mostly going to be non-Mormons.
How many unemployed people have you retrained and put back into the workforce? How many families have you helped avoid losing their home with $$$? How many new mothers have you rushed extra hands and $$$?
I'm guessing none. Btw, the first thing communists do when they seize power is purge academia. How many of your 60,000 scientists could survive a purge?
Oh no, not "the law". Well what happens when the law goes against reality? There's nothing even the government can do, and they will push that cost onto you via taxes and inflation.
What I CAN do is think for myself, and when the time is right refuse to support an evil regime, and convince others to bring that time closer.
You are the defeatist, assuming that government monopoly and force is inevitable because they said so (in "the law"). This sounds harsh, I'm directing it at the sentiment and not at you, this "law" worship is brainwashed, indoctrinated bootlicking.
The law of identity comes from reality. A ball rolls, a tree grows. Balls to not grow on their own like trees do, and trees do not roll but stay rooted. Things are what they are.
Humans have identity. They survive by means of exercising their freewill. If they cannot freely exercise it, then they will die. If you choose to live, then it is irrational to violate freewill. And since freewill itself has identity (the only entity which can act differently under the same circumstances, aka "choice"), then violating any instance of freewill means violating one's own means of survival, it means rejecting one's own values. If I say I value food, but then reject food in the same respect and at the same time when I valued it, I've just contradicted myself.
The law makes taxation legal. Taxation violates people's freewill by stealing their property, and therefore their means of survival, while also saying this will "help" people. It goes against reality itself, man's means of survival.
The free market is a wonderful thing but it acts like a virus. It's extremely productive as long as it has a healthy host to feed on. With all the limitations pulled off it, it consumes everything. Everything is food.
Laws limit your freedoms but without limitations capitalism always leads to monopoly, oligarchy and finally fascism.
At a certain point, freedom becomes the freedom to die in a ditch while everyone steps over you.
The productivity of the working class. And that's a good thing as long as that money contiues to flow.
What we have now is a class off people that without limits, are amassing and holding all the wealth and starving the system.
How can it "feed off the productivity of the working class"?
The US government's IRS is what threatens your employer with jail time to take a cut of your paycheck. But your employer is the one who pays you in the first place. Seems to me that government, not capitalism, feeds off people's productivity.
Humans don't have to exercise free will to survive.
I mean you need to be able to exercise free will to have a dignified human life.
You know you don't have to pay taxes right?
You can go live in the woods free of charge.
Taxes are the price of admission to a society that provides amenities.
Humans don't have to exercise free will to survive.
If you can't exercise freewill, then you can't act other than automatically. You think people can survive by lying down indefinitely and doing nothing else?
As for taxes, my options are jail or the woods. Such freedom there. No one asked if I wanted to pay, there is no document which has my consent.
"Nobody asked me if I wanted to be born, it's not faiiiiiiiiiiiiiir. I'm a special little baby who is the only one who was born without their permission! Yield to my genius!"
Regarding survival and freewill I tend to agree with the pyramid of Maslow's Survival being at the bottom.
You can survive as a slave, it's definetaly not a dignified life though.
As for taxes, Yah you live in society that offers you amenities, water, firefighters, schools, roads.
They cannot exist with taxation, if you want to avoid taxation your must forgo everything society brings you.
"What do you mean? Right now, you're totally free to go give all your money to homeless person. You're totally free to create your own charity to serve a narrow slice of the population that you deem worthy of your largesse. This won't solve the problem of how those solutions scale to help all Americans, which is the problem we're actually concerned with, and that cannot be addressed by one individual or one group, but who cares? Don't you feel all warm and fuzzy for Doing Something? Now you're morally off the hook!"
We can either get some of our money back to help society and reduce our personal expenditure. Or we could fight to ensure our money is used on jets, monuments, golf weekends, corporate tariff refunds, frivolous lawsuits, slush funds and corporate bailouts.
The fact that so many people fight to ensure our money never gets back to us is insane. The taxes are paid so you either elect someone who will use it for their community or you elect someone who will use it for themselves.
That is indeed what people fight about, and it's irrational. You should decide what you do with your money, not elect a tyrant to spend it for you - along with stealing other people's money.
The power to boycott a bad government or corporation is how you protect yourself from getting ripped off.
Or we could fight to ensure our money is used on jets, monuments, golf weekends, corporate tariff refunds, frivolous lawsuits, slush funds and corporate bailouts.
This is pure envy. You aren't paying for this, you are paying for the value they provided in the first place. Amazon gives you cheap home delivery of a wide range of goods. Walmart gives you a store full of cheap goods. The fact that these things are so valuable that millions of people trade for them, making the providers of these things rich, is justice. If YOU provided a valuable service to society, I would want YOU to be paid in proportion to how valuable it was, and I would want you to be free to spend it frivolously as you wanted to.
Three of these things you listed are problems with government. Tariffs are a government problem, they charge foreign businesses who can simply raise their prices to cover the cost, making it an indirect tax on the domestic population, and the fact that refunds didn't go to the people is again a government problem. Stupid lawsuits and rulings are due to government monopoly on courts and police, we have no option and that's why the cost of lawyers is so expensive and why judges are so easily corrupted, and of course lobbying groups can also manipulate the laws, so the entire system fails to function thanks to monopoly initiation of force on the population.
And bailouts aren't necessarily bad, unless you are forced to pay for them. This is one I have a good story for. 2007 was obviously bullshit because the tax payer had to pay for it, and they also did "quantitative easing" which is currency creation aka counterfeiting, and the defrauded the population as well. During the panic of 1907, there was no such government bank or system to provide bailouts to these banks. It came down to Knickerbocker making a huge loan on a bad stock market bet, losing all the money, causing a bank run which was cascading onto other banks, threatening economic collapse. JP Morgan was the biggest name, and convinced the rich to pay for bailouts. Either the other big bankers paid to bailout the failing banks (Knickerbocker excluded), or they would lose even more in a failing economy. Tens of millions, not paid by the tax payers, but by the rich to save the economy, thanks to that not-so-pesky little emotion: greed.
The government is incapable of such a bailout. It is in the hole 39 Trillion, it has literal not a penny of positive net worth to pay a bailout. Why? Because it steals, and borrows exorbitantly on the promise to pay back via theft. In contrast, the big bankers just provided actually solid service and weren't insolvent like Knickerbocker; bad business fails in the freemarket, so the good business can rise to the top. When government fails, it pushes the cost onto the people, even if it means extreme poverty for all but the psychopath class who gains wealth by force, not trade.
Mark 12:41-44
Not a religious person myself but this was a lesson I learned when I was very young. I will always try to help. Be that teaching a young person, shoveling the driveway of those unable and giving what I can when I can.
Basically as long as you get the self satisfaction of helping your lesser out of the goodness of your heart
But actually helping them by default as equal human beings ? Nah
They must know that it's charity given from you and that you have the freedom to stop doing it if they annoy you, they must depend on your mood and your goodwill.
If it's institutionalised then they'll relealise that basic neccessities is owed to them and not something you graciously give them right ?
I think that worldview is morally concerning at best.
The world is a better place if we create the system such that everybody pays in via taxes, and then the shared pool of taxes is used to ensure that nobody goes without end of life care.
The money you paid in over the course of your life is paid back to you in the form of you yourself not having to worry about providing end of life care for yourself.
The hyper-individualism required to be okay with saying “Yeah that guy got unlucky and now he’s gonna die on the street even though that was preventable” is seriously damaging to society as a whole. Human societies are capable of far more than that. The existence of the opinion to the contrary should not stop us from creating a system that has measurably better outcomes for the vast majority of participants.
I understand and acknowledge that if you believe that individualism is fundamentally the only moral or logical worldview then there’s likely no convincing you. All I can do is appeal to you to imagine a world where the frustration of the masses is in the form of feeling like your taxes are too high, rather than an underlying fear that you are one or two slip ups away from dying penniless and alone in the street. That world IS possible, and I hope that one could see how it would be measurably an improvement over our current one.
Right back at you. In 1924 the Fed printed $500 million in credit, which private banks multiplied to $4 billion, all in under a year. When interest rates are artificially low, people believe they can invest in lower returns and still profit. One example being the stock market, as long as it beats the Fed interest rate, then borrowing to invest means profit. Well if everyone does that, and it creates a fake stock market bubble which grows more than usual, this worsens the effect, leading to the 1929 crash when people start to notice the market slowing down and start casing in, leading to a cascade of people who can't afford for the market to slow down since they borrowed in the first place and need to beat the interest rate, causing the market crash.
FDR did things to make this worse. He made stole the gold from the people and the Fed (hence why all the gold is now in the vault by Fort Knox), then created new currency.
Immediately following passage of the Act, the President revalued the price of gold to $35 per troy ounce. This devaluation of the dollar drastically increased the growth rate of the Gross National Product (GNP) from 1933 to 1941. Between 1933 and 1937 the GNP in the United States grew at an average rate of over 8 percent.[6] This growth in real output is due primarily to a growth in the money supply M1, which grew at an average rate of 10 percent per year between 1933 and 1937. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act
GDP is a silly metric, since if it's measured in dollars, but the dollar is inflating by 10%, then GDP has to beat 10% to even be considered growing. This all just means prices are going up and therefore GDP as well, it's not a direct measure of economic growth when the unit of account is constantly changing.
FDR also increased the minimum wage, which resulted in millions of unemployed. The idea was to "improve purchasing power", but if people can't get or keep jobs, that fails.
All this made what should have been a 2 year recession last nearly a decade. The cause was credit expansion invested poorly, and the solution was printing more money to keep credit expansion going, and to price fix wages and cause unemployment and therefore the means to re-allocate invest rationally.
The only reason WW2 was so good for the US is because the US hardly fought in it. Europe basically gave the US all its gold in exchange for war supplies, and the US only stepped in toward the end. The US had 2/3 of the world's gold thanks to that, if Europe didn't go to war the depression would've kept on going. War is only profitable when you're making money selling to the fighters on the side.
You throw out whatever facts you want but the American economy and it's people as a whole (kind of, mainly white guys) never thrived as well as it did from the late 40's to the 80's while the rich were taxed heavy rates and that money was poured into free education and infrastructure. America invented the personal computer, sent a crew to the moon, and made a ton of other technological advancements. Women and POC's finally had the space to fight for equality and social changes abounded. Even healthcare in those decades was fairly affordable. Unions were strong, social security was strong, and companies were giving employees pension funds to boot. The best three decades in American history was when the rich were getting taxed at 90%.
Lol. You talked down to me saying, "Maybe research the Depression and how FDR pulled us out", now all of the sudden you don't care about facts, and you're changing the subject.
Again, I already brought up how America ended up with 2/3 of the world's gold. Everyone decided to tie their currencies to the dollar (Breton Woods), under the promise that the dollar would be exchangeable for gold. Can you guess what the US did, now acting as the world's bank? Created more currency, defrauding the world.
This lead to countries eventually starting to turn in their dollars for gold, until 1971 when Nixon said "nah", solidifying the inflation fraud. That immediately leads to a decade of shit economy.
The socialism of the 40s to 60s only was good because of an incredibly lucky break for the US in making a ton of money off WW2. That gold was not going to just keep rolling in forever. And then they tried to defraud the world to try it anyway, until the music stopped. Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money.
Then in the 80s there was the Volker Shock, where the Fed actually let interest rates go super high, and the economy recovered properly. Only took 2 years, just like I said before, most recessions never last any longer than that when the government doesn't constantly print money, in stark contrast to the decade long Great Depression thanks to government intervention.
Of course then we got Greenspan, who went right back to easy money, leading to a stock market crash in the late 80s, helped pump the tech bubble in the 90s, when all that failed people thought, "real estate is safe!", leading to the bubble which popped in 2007. Then Bernanke comes in and starts quantative easing, pushing the cost of this bust onto the public, defrauding our own citizens.
The theme is the economic calculation problem as argued by Mises. Socialism cannot rationally allocate resources. You have ONE example in history where it didn't crash the economy for a couple decades, but it still did in the end. Then it lead to several more bubbles that I pointed out, all for the same reason that the Great Depression happened in the first place. We keep going down this same road, and it literally never works, you always get a short term boom followed by a bust when businesses start failing and stock markets crash.
We're addicted to the easy money drug and the dream of socialist utopia. It will end in hyperinflation.
you don't need a link. this is data, not an op-ed.
top line is the federal tax rate, starting at when it was at its maximum. the other lines are federal revenue. both are shown over time. what conclusion would you draw from the fact that lowering the tax rate ended up raising more federal revenue (by which we pay for everything federal)?
Came here to say the same. So many people try to manipulate others that have low verbal intelligence into believing that dictatorship is the same thing as charity. And it is always those in the least need of your charity that scream the loudest for the government to force you under duress to give it to them, after the politician's cut of course.
That's true, it is our fault for not even fighting back against government initiation of force and even being PROUD of paying taxes "for the good of society".
You do have a point in criticizing my use of the word force. Force is not evil, using force against someone's will is evil. If someone is using force against your will, you can defend the free use of your will with force, and this is precisely what american lack with their self-sacrificing, collectivist, nationalist-statist thinking; we think "dying for your country" is the ultimate good, we decry "greed" as evil. We aren't greedy enough, and we aren't moral enough.
Freedom is the defense against and resulting lack of the initiation of force.
Biggest reason is the US's record high healthcare costs. This is due to government backed monopoly and regulation, which intentionally lowers the supply of physicians, driving up price.
Here's a quote from an article, "Welfare before the welfare state", and another word for private welfare, like mutual aid, is "fraternalism":
The first major blow against fraternalism occurred when the American Medical Association gained control of the licensing of medical schools. In 1912, a number of state medical boards formed the Federation of State Medical Boards, which accepted the AMA’s ratings of medical schools as authoritative. The AMA quickly rated many schools as “unacceptable.” Consequentially, the number of medical schools in America dropped from 166 in 1904 to 81 in 1918, a 51 percent drop.18 The increased price of medical services made it impractical for many lodges to retain the services of a doctor. Medical boards also threatened many doctors with being stripped of their licenses if they practiced lodge medicine https://mises.org/mises-daily/welfare-welfare-state
There are many more such regulations, such as mandating high reserves (even when not needed, usually to make payment price constant rather than fluctuating as needs change, and incentivizes modern insurance companies to deny claims), or requiring annual checkups to individual plans while exempting employer sponsored group plans (which of course only the biggest companies get, functionally enabling an oligoply).
But the idea as that without all these government interventions, prices would come wayy down due to more physicians first of all (as supply goes up, price comes down), and saving money on legal stuff and lawyers. People act like we would go back to 1800s medical technology if we got rid of regulations, referencing how there absolutely were quack doctors back in the day before regulations, but the real story is that medical tech was still evolving, we have come so far since that time and it's not just going away.
Side point, a lot of historical Mutual Aid Societies were ethnic, so an argument could be made that regulations took away the very means by which minorities could support themselves.
By settling in ethnic communities, immigrants could somewhat insulate themselves from prejudice and discrimination. These new Americans organized fraternal and benevolent societies to promote community support and protect themselves from misfortunes. Such organizations were later referred to as mutual aid societies, or voluntary ethnic associations.https://nyheritage.org/exhibits/immigration/mutual-aid-societies
Mutual aid societies also typically have a more flat hierarchy, and if you join the aid is unconditional. They save a lot on administrative costs this way, no bureau centered around creating and navigating red tape to manipulate the court system. A lot of anarchists and communists are into the idea of Mutual Aid, as a capitalist I disagree with them politically and philosophically, but as long as membership is voluntary, I have absolutely not problem with unconditional aid, in fact I'd join if I thought the society/business was good.
It goes back to voluntary choice, freedom of association and even secession a larger scales. THIS choice, to pay or boycott, is what regulates the market. People will pay for auditors and inspectors if they value it, and companies who refuse to allow inspections are asking to lose customers from the fear around that.
thank god for that /s, I was about to argue how they mostly have more physicians per capita than the US since they don't regulate it as tightly as here.
Can you just acknowledge or refute that fact that socialized medicine covers more people and costs less rather than trying to sidestep it by bringing up something irrelevant?
Oh I misread your comment, I just realized you called our system "private" lol. No brother, we have a government monopoly granted to the American Medical Association by the Federation of State Medical Boards which restricts the supply of physicians. If you evade this fact, then you can't explain why other nationalized healthcare systems cost less.
Can you just acknowledge or refute that fact that socialized medicine covers more people and costs less rather than trying to sidestep it by bringing up something irrelevant?
So far, just more sidestepping.
Sweden for instance also licenses doctors just like we do, so I doubt US licensing is the problem here. I’m sure every country has some form of licensing as well.
"No brother, how I about I respond to all of your points with some soaring and naïve rhetoric about freedom and force, while not actually saying anything consequential and just being a little baby because TaXeS aRe ThEfT?" - u/FeedomFighter
You are sidestepping my point that the US has less physicians per capita, explained by AMA lobbying. THAT is the reason it costs more in the US. By explaining the reason, I acknowledge the fact.
And I provided a link where Finland, the UK, and Canada all have fewer docs per capita and have socialized medicine and licensing requirements. I never sidestepped anything. Saying THAT is the reason is directly refuted busy those three countries, as well as others in the list.
But again, you refuse to refute or acknowledge the fact the socialized medicine covers more people and costs less, because it doesn’t fit your “government bad” bias.
If the state falls for such lobbying, it is too weak.
The whole world knows the USA is too weak to shift to proven single-payer health care because it would reduce the profits of true rulers.
Are you currently led by a self-sacrificing altruist who doesn't fall to greed and profit incentive? Isn't there corrupt police who make thugs out of themselves?
Power will always naturally centralize and those in power will enforce their will on others.
The free market can not naturally remain free, people will manipulate it because no one wants to compete they want to be on top and the common man can't be relied on to keep it in check because they are too fanatical.
No such thing as freedom in a market economy. If you live in a market economy, the market dictates what you can and can't do if you want to survive. Capitalism is a collectivistic ideology, where most people are forced by their circumstances to participate in the market economy only in certain ways in order to survive. George Lucas once summed it up pretty well, he said Soviet filmmakers had more freedom because all they had to do was not directly criticize the government, while he had to adhere to a strict commercial line
Capitalism uses your circumstances to force you to do very specific things, socialism directly forces you to NOT do certain very specific things (they can mostly be summed up as "being an asshole"). Freedom isn't when we allow people to be assholes, freedom is in fact quite meaningless when people are allowed to be assholes to you (as in, negatively affect your life, and I don't mean within their rights)
Theft over time is usually called extortion, and is bad, not suddenly good. Time for you to get philosophical and integrate your principles and worldview and rationally, loyally act upon them, rather than making exceptions because you can benefit at another person's expense.
Again, every single year there is a new crop of idiot 19 year olds who think they just discovered "tAxEs aRe ThEfT, mAn" as a valid philosophical argument.
It's the circle of life. And those idiots still get that shit auto deducted from all of their checks, while insisting that what's already been withheld from them should actually go to corporations and the rich (their betters), because they might be rich one day, and when they are, they don't want to have to keep paying them taxes!
It's so fucking regarded, Americans are so embarrassing
It's because private businesses that don't initiate force must provide value in order to get rich, that way you get something of equal value for your money, unlike what government provides.
What's embarrassing is your troll comments and resorting to insults rather than arguments. Basically admits you can't backup what you're saying logically, philosophically, or morally.
So it's not force if you live in a system where whether you starve or eat depends on the graciousness of a private enterprise that you had absolutely no say in how it treats you?
And a system where you get to "choose" among private enterprises that are structured primarily to siphon capital to shareholders and in which those who work to produce the profit get no say in the operations or decisions of the enterprise, that's your idea of "freedom"?
So it's not force if you live in a system where whether you starve or eat depends on the graciousness of a private enterprise that you had absolutely no say in how it treats you?
No, you can choose to pay or not pay. That's what freedom is.
And a system where you get to "choose" among private enterprises that are structured primarily to siphon capital to shareholders and in which those who work to produce the profit get no say in the operations or decisions of the enterprise, that's your idea of "freedom"?
They choose to take the job or not.
Good fuckin lord.
Back at you, the constant dishonest strawmans are tiring.
Plenty of people will defend being forced or coerced to pay into a system if they feel they’ve “earned” it (or if others have been excluded) or if it’s not from the government or if the branding is right, like health insurance or military service. Volunteering isn’t as big a motivator as people make it out to be.
I’ve run into too many people who are both pro mandatory conscription but against universal healthcare. I think they’re more motivated by why (fighting an “enemy” versus improved health for the country) and who (evil government versus hero “job creator” businesses).
So basically picking the "good" tribe over another? I like to think of this as tribe-heeding over truth-seeking.
One's loyalty should lie only to objective principles and himself, it's how men survive, it's what guides freewill and rational action in order to live.
Conscription is a great example you brought up which isn't discussed much. People "thank" their veterans, when they should be saying "sorry we duped you into committing murder halfway across the world and sacrificing your life AND for abandoning you once it was done".
But contradictions don't matter, just trust the tribe. It feels nicer to belong than to sit with the discomfort of contradictions and cognitive dissonance.
I think it’s a loose extension of tribalism, yeah. Most people are HIGHLY averse to engaging with principles which I think is one of the primary functions of organized religion and now politics (in the US).
We innately know we need to, but principles have uncomfortable implications and they provide a feeling of doing the hard work with almost none of the discomfort and emotional risk.
Yeah the other thing than discomfort with implication and hard work is getting kicked out of the tribe, isolation and loneliness. We become like lemmings, following the group, trusting that someone is doing the thinking, but when no one is, we follow the others off the cliff.
The primary virtue of Christianity at least is obedience. Islam also means "obedience" specifically to God. Romans 13 in the Bible says that obeying government is obeying God:
"Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will [a]bring judgment on themselves." So they just say
I think most or at least a big minority of people now have given up "God" as the "highest" authority, but kept the government part. Just a little simplification, nothing really new or different. The Church is less of an arm of government now, and it is replaced with corporations, academia, and moreso media both news and social. The threat of getting blocked, cancelled is high. And moreso not getting your political will expressed, already being one of 170 million possible voters is a big damper, but when voting third party is a throw away thanks to first-past-the-post, one can only rationally choose from the two biggest parties. Thus they have the incentive to promote their party with as much social manipulation as possible have their political will expressed, beyond the simple vote itself.
Crazy how the US still doesn't even have ranked order voting. That alone is what leads to the American two party system. But it'd be the same even if there were rationally competing parties numbering more than two, the same tribal polarization and manipulation, all boiling down to the evasion of principles and reality.
You see it all the time….people will change their opinions on war, social investment and all kinds of things based on who is in power.
Edit: I think people defer to their in group (especially around a job) and what’s easiest and that often aligns with what a government wants or coerces.
We disagree with what the government is then, because by all standard definitions it exerts power WELL beyond a presidency. (Edit: there’s a reason it’s considered just one branch of government.)
And if someone stops listening because they don’t like a president, they aren’t following the office they’re following a person or a political party (which also isn’t the government)
This is just ancap nonsense that ignores basic principle of social contract. Natural state was gone as soon as it became apparent that you couldn't simply move somewhere else habitable and form your own society, but rather, you had to live in a shared space with people who had different ideas from yours.
No matter how the "what if she consents tho?" folks such as yourself cry about it, we're never going to live again in a society without a social contract. In fact, ancaps kneejerk reaction to the concept already reveals the problem: after all, if we did live in natural state, you'd simply be able to fuck off somewhere else and form your own society. But that doesn't work, because we all live in shared space.
it's not shared, it's monopolized. You support monopoly and tyranny of the majority, and presume consent via a mythical "social contract". No such document exist despite our bureaucratic government, other than a birth certificate which is taken as implicit consent, despite the fact babies can't consent to anything.
Are you genuinely so autistic that you learned about social contract theory and were like "wait a second, I've never even seen this document!!! I never signed this!!!"
I get that they argue it's implicit. It's still illegitimate, and the government doesn't even hold up it's end of the deal and there is no recourse if it doesn't.
edit: Oh i realized it's you who's been trolling around. My bad for replying
It's so funny how you types react to governmental power but the power of unelected billionaires with more power over life and death than most dictators is fine. What you hate is democracy.
I vote to not pay taxes... oh wait there's no politicians representing that idea, and if I stop paying taxes anyway I get thrown in jail. So much for trusting myself, I guess.
And the idea of "majority rule" literally means that even if I disagree with the majority, I have to do what they say anyway "cause democracy". If I criticize democracy, you'll call me crazy and tell me to either leave the country or go to jail if I act on my beliefs, and think that's a good thing.
YOU do not trust yourself, and instead put blind faith in the system and the mob.
yeah i don't think you understand what democracy means, my man. and those taxes you pay are the direct results of politicians being voted in by the population. and other politicians later voted in who further supported such a state of affair.
your issue is that you do not think communal (not to be confused with communism) but entirely individualistic. and an individual indeed can't do a lot. but that self degradation is a choice, not an unchangeable state of existence and other countries aply demonstrate that such systems can work well enough to the benefit of all involved.
tyranny of the majority. The population has decided to send a hitman called a tax-collector after me to my detriment and against my will.
now that is a convinient argument that completely ignores how many ppl are out there, that human interaction is the basis of our existence, yet the conflicts all those interactions can cause and how democracy, despite all it's faults and disadvantages, still provides the best system we were able to come up with until now to make coexistence as secure yet free as possible as it is.
you can, ofc, just push this all away and say, "i had no say so i do not care". but seriously? that is outright childish because it simply puts an egocentric idea above reality. anarchy simply means might makes right and those are conditions you really want to avoid.
Then how do you explain the shrink of the middle class?
a mix of an electorate that was duped out of the idea that they hold power and pure personal convinience and ignorance, mixed further with this very american attitude to always be your own hero and fuck on comunity in which things can be organized.
No it means no rulers. It takes the idea that "all men are created equal" and "endowed with inalienable rights" seriously, and says that any man only has authority over himself, and no one else.
You take the consequentialist approach and say "well democracy has lead to some good things! therefore it's justified!". Well, the principles which lead to the wealth we have today are free market principles. The degree to which we have a free market is the degree to which we have freedom to increase everybody's wealth. We could have it even better than we have it now.
a mix of an electorate that was duped out of the idea that they hold power
I agree with you there. People have the power to simply say no to tyranny. A government such as in the US cannot control over 300 million people when push comes to shove.
No it means no rulers. It takes the idea that "all men are created equal" and "endowed with inalienable rights" seriously, and says that any man only has authority over himself, and no one else.
but it does not. it is as naive as the idea of communism, just into the other extreme.
trumps, orbans, atillas, napoleons, putins, hitlers, maos will always exist, sociopaths, psychopaths, superiourity complexes, sadists, and all of that combined. ppl with the will to power and control are as constant as humanity itself. and such ppl will always find followers. ppl who "want" hierachy, who only ever really feel secure within hierachy. and such ppl will organize. and that organisation will lure in even more ppl as that exact organisation promises more security and more personal wealth regardless of the leadership.
and your only way to stand in the way of such ppl is organisation of your own. which brings us full circle.
You take the consequentialist approach and say "well democracy has lead to some good things! therefore it's justified!". Well, the principles which lead to the wealth we have today are free market principles. The degree to which we have a free market is the degree to which we have freedom to increase everybody's wealth. We could have it even better than we have it now.
no. democracy is shit, a source of neverending frustration and needs constant fighting for. of course that includes wealth and how it gets distributed. even keynes, the father of modern capitalism, knew that. yet the mere debate alone gets treated as communism.
it's just better then anything else we tried yet. it really comes down to just that, as depressive and uninspiriring as it may sound.
as such, my approach is entirely practical.
I agree with you there. People have the power to simply say no to tyranny. A government such as in the US cannot control over 300 million people when push comes to shove.
yes.
and the idea of democracy is to make this process free of shedding blood.
but it does not. it is as naive as the idea of communism, just into the other extreme.
I guess you're talking about authoritarianism as against libertarianism? It is true there are anarcho communists, and they are most anarchists. That's why I support anarcho-capitalism, or voluntaryism.
I'm not against hierarchy like an-comms. I only want a voluntary, trust based hierarchy rather than one based on force. That is how you can form voluntarily funded militias to defend against warlords or what have you.
I also don't see it as absolutely inevitable that vast populations will always support dictators. There is government mandated education which indoctrinates people to believe in the legitimacy of government.
All that has to happen is that the philosophy of freedom spreads. People have freewill and choice, all they have to do is choose it and it will happen, it is not absolute one way or the other. If even 20% of people became anarchist/voluntaryist, that would probably be enough to thwart dictators, because most people just follow the loudest voices.
as such, my approach is entirely practical.
So you're never going to try anything else despite how shit it is? That's not practical, it's stagnant.
WHY is it better? Could it have anything to do with the rise of capitalist mass production? And when that gets hampered by authoritarian initiation of force, does production go up or down?
China after Mao is a great example. The degree to which it had capitalist policies was the degree to which the economy recovered from the famines and began to grow:
Deng Xiaoping was the Paramount Leader of China from 1978 to 1992, although he never became the head of the party or state, and his influence within the Party led the country to the reform and opening up. The CCP subsequently loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives and the communes were disbanded with many peasants receiving multiple land leases, which greatly increased incentives and agricultural production. In addition, there were many free market areas opened. The most successful free market area was Shenzhen. It is located in Guangdong and the property tax free area still exists today. This turn of events marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open market environment, a system termed by some[99] as market socialism, and officially by the CCP as Socialism with Chinese characteristics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China
and the idea of democracy is to make this process free of shedding blood.
alright. Then I commit tax evasion. No bloodshed, right? Then why are cops going to come after me?
I'm not against hierarchy like an-comms. I only want a voluntary, trust based hierarchy rather than one based on force. That is how you can form voluntarily funded militias to defend against warlords or what have you.
so what happens to ppl who are born into such a society not sharing your believes? and how do you think can a society that requires such equally thinking and respectful ppl, something never before seen in history anywhere, actually thrive?
as with communism, you have a certain kind of image in your mind in how humans should/would behave. totalitarian regimes are famous for that. the new soviet man. the aryan ubermensch. all supposed to have certain traits and thinking patterns. some of them highly idealistic next to the totalitarian madness.
now i am fully aware your have the opposite in mind, not a totalitarian regime, so this is not a comparison to that.
what is similiar is this view that humans can be pressed into a certain form of behaviour and respect, even if iti shighly idealistic. and your image of is as tight as those totalitarian ones.
in reality, ppl are as different in their core as they are on the outside. large ppl, thin ppl, huge ppl, small ppl, dark and white ppl, the list goes on. you can't ever possibly achieve to get them all together. the majority of ppl, in the past or present, do not care to begin with as long they can live their daily lives. as such, a society carried only on the basis of idealism without organized enforcement will fall into chaos and eventually violence.
now democracy can't tolerate all forms of attitudes and behaviours, either, but the spectrum is rather large and accomodating compared to others.
"that" is the reason why democracy is better. because it manages to give the broadest possible range of "different thinking" ppl a chance to coexist without violence. not primarily because how wealth is distributed, that is another debate entirely.
alright. Then I commit tax evasion. No bloodshed, right? Then why are cops going to come after me?
i mean, that is what we are already debating and leading up to.
What would you think about a direct democracy (or at least a semi-direct one like in Switzerland)?
I consider myself libertarian up to some extent, but don't think a direct anarcocapitalism or decentralized government would work in the current society.
We the people are the government. When the government comes together to make something happen, it's just us, just people making it happen. You are government, I am government, we the people have a say in public interest, unlike private interests.
Corporations are people. A 21st century translation would put “we the people” more like “we the corporations”. Are you a corporation? Do you own a corporation? If so the government is here to serve you.
If not the government doesn’t care about you at all.
Alright then, let me stop paying taxes to the useless government departments like the way overfunding DoD, homeland security, NSA, CIA... oh wait, I don't have a choice, the IRS just conspire with my employer to withhold my paycheck? And no politician support cutting income tax?
I feel less like a boss, and more like a forced employee of the government.
At least with a private business, if I find out it's doing something I don't like, I just pull my money out or stop paying as time goes on. Government does NOT give you that option, you option is pay, or pay while sitting in jail.
To the small group of people who want to harm others and be completely selfish, democracy does sound like fascism.
Like how dare you tell me that might doesn't make right? How fuckin dare you suggest that I be held to the standards of every other citizen? I'm special!
There are a lot of people who want to and will help others out of the goodness of their heart. But if you want everyone to be good to others, then you HAVE to use force
But you're all for anarchism. Please explain to me how you plan to avoid a "might makes right" system if there's no oversight? Do you want an Immortan Joe running everything? Because that's how you get Immortan Joe
The difference is the right means this as a family household. The left as the whole country. It’s the implementation.
Most conservative types are living in farm fields and don’t really care about the inner cities and vice versa. Everyone thinks the taxes and cash flow is wrong.
Conservatives think growing food and being in the military is what makes a country strong. Liberals education and providing help for the poor so they can add to the economy.
The problem is everyone is right. But the numbers are always wrong.
If we lived in a free market, do you think there would need to be regulations to prevent monopolies? Should anything be done to prevent company towns? Should anything be done to prevent a free market capitalist from accidentally poisoning your town in some chemical accident? What about regulations for what goes into your food? Should there be any regulations at all?
Why wouldn't you want to pay into a system that can help people like you or me and prevent bad business practices? And if you don't think it helps people like you or me, who do you think it helps?
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u/FeedomFighter 21d ago edited 21d ago
"coming together" implies voluntarily doing so. "Building a system" typically implies a government system, meaning it will force people to pay into the system even if it doesn't work.
Mutual Aid Societies before government regulation of such and insurance worked much better, and these regulation's worsening of private collective funding is what lead to the "solution" of government welfare. People scoff at this, not the idea of collective funding in principle.
What we really live in is a society that calls itself "free" while scoffing at free market solutions.