(After 3 days of flakey POTS/DSL I, for better or worse, return. Plus, I was unkind, impolite. Let's see what I can do....make that better? worse?)
It just kills me that discussion of such a basic issue should turn in to a debate about the merits of Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum's objectivist philosophy or Marx's spin on the fruits of labor. I often don't think of myself as an exceptionally nice guy, but the grim grumbling about "property" makes me feel like a pretty cheery dude. Bitt, I admire your patience. TigerJimmy, I have concluded that you must be a robot.
I don't really understand what you're saying. I'm guessing that you believe that I feel no compassion for the unfortunate of the world (or perhaps that I'm an unthinking follower of Ayn Rand), but that is absolutely not the case. I just feel that a totalitarian government is not the way to care for them. I believe that a rising tide of wealth that comes from economic freedom (with regulations and constraints to protect the system) lifts all boats (albeit unevenly). I assert that the reason we have the nearly magical (though expensive) health care treatments in the first place is because of property rights and liberty. When we compassionately try to extend these benefits to everyone without considering that there's no such thing as a free lunch, I fear that we will eventually destroy the system which created them in the first place.
I know that there are no robots on the BBS. I avoided the term "bot" because I thought that would be insulting
My frustration is that I find many expressions of "big L" Libertarian principle to be somewhat mechanistic, dogmatic, inflexible and lacking nuance. Certainly you can credit free enterprise with helping nurture innovation and over-priced treatments, MRIs and such, but you seem to rely on a flimsy straw man -- that polity is a binary function and that places like Sweden (and Canada?) must fall into the "totalitarian state" category because their approach to social welfare is not pure "L".
OK, I jest, I exaggerate, but I just don't get it. I feel like the American body politic is essentially antisocial. There is no sense of the commonwealth. Republicans aren't *for* anything, just against. Democrats pretend to be *for* something and talk about putting insurance companies in their place while taking exceptional care to please special interests (like insurance companies and pharma).
It is not anti-social to mistrust a strong central government, and it does not follow that I believe we shouldn't help those who can't help themselves. I just don't want to incrementally install the next bankrupt socialist government that controls every aspect of citizen's lives in order to do so.
We have lots of reasons to worry about our government, but I think that the chance that we might ever adopt a Canadian-style single-payer system that could reduce costs and take those costs out of big pockets of existing liability (read: corporate-funded employee and retiree health plans) should be low on anybody's list of concerns.
But don't worry. Obama was never too serious about this.
I won't ever vote for a Democrat or Republican again, but I have to say that it concerns me to no end when Republican demagogues spout bullshit about how they have the will of the American people behind them. Goddamn proto-fascists and a bunch of freaking maladjusted children. They lost a few elections but seem to have conveniently forgotten their lessons in Democracy 101. If I wasn't going to be dead within 15-20 years I would be hugely concerned.
Huzzah! I would only add that the proto-socialist Democrats are just as bad.
I'll admit to liking elements of socialism. Public libraries and public schools (more Horatio Alger stories! Everybody can grow up to be president!) and single-payer-style health care. But I mostly like the last one because it take administrative and entitlement overhead/waste out of the system and sets some expectation that therapies get judged on their merits and the effect on outcome.
And it is a total riot. The teabaggers and wingnuts with whom I would expect TigertJimmy to make common cause are railing about the "Socialist!" Obama and his evil designs when, in fact, Obama has turned out to be the most miserable, ineffectual, middle-of-the-road-to-nowhere, Harvard-trained tool of special interests that I can recollect.
Yes, he's nearly totally ineffective in a Jimmy Carter magnitude, and this "reform" will be also. The war on drugs or the USA Patriot Act bother me far more than this legislation. But it's just another duck bite.
I meant to reply to Stuart's reply that I find myself in a unique spot of unhappiness in that I feel almost nothing worth advocating for in this plan...a plan that accommodated the interests of all those "free market" insurance companies and pharma at the very outset. So I could hardly imagine trying to convince anyone to favor the current plan. Yet I find the bases of much of the "teabag" opposition to be appalling. And I obviously think that Libertarian fixation on free-market medicine to be naive and wrong-headed.
We must stop seeing a strong central government as our national parent. If believing that makes me a teabagger and wingnut, so be it.
I think to qualify as a real wingnut you have to be a birther. But such are your allies in the current circumstance
Stuart, was the Canadian single-payor initiative just a pathetic excuse for the (Canadian) libs to get their clutches into their every day lives and tax (Canadians) into oblivion? Or was there maybe something more to it?
Sure there was. Sure people are compassionately motivated. Sure they want to help the unfortunate. But they are misguided because they destroy the protections against a totalitarian state believing the ends justify the means.
I asked rhetorically, but your answer really seems "way out there". If I were Canadian, my feelings might be hurt. I have to say I drive up to BC 4 or 5 times a year and I have to say, not only do people *not* seem depressed like they are toiling in an Orwellian Hell, they mostly seem (on average) 10 percent nicer than folks down here. And certainly nicer (and happier?) to me than a lot of the folks down here who are screaming about "LIBERTY!" "FREEDOM!" all the time. Why are big L Libs so grumpy?
It's the same as the people who (overwhelmingly) passed the Patriot Act. They were motivated to protect people from an external threat. But the result has been abused and is now seen by almost everyone as a terrible assault on liberty. I agree we need to help the unfortunate. I disagree that we can trust the government with broad powers. In fact, I think that putting these matters on the federal government is a form of the anti-social attitude you talk about -- since the government takes care of the problem, we don't need to care for our neighbors or our community. That's a bad thing.
Sorry. I have been around the health care system in various capacities for a long time. I believe that your view, if not naive, is just dogmatic and "binary". Do the socialized citizens of Canada not care for their neighbors?
I think I have posted the link before, but I always reply on smarter people to make a point better than I can. So I rely on
The Onion
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