We have an entire thread on healthcare elsewhere. So, one last time here. YES, I agree, we all agree, our model in the USA is broken. But Universal healthcare is not the way forward for us, in the USA. I've literally said this a million times. We are not Japanese. We are not German. What works for those societies, will not work in the USA. Japan has welfare, Japan does not have ghettos. They do not exist AT ALL in Japan. As in - non existence. We have welfare, and our Government run welfare ghettos are drug dens of violence, ignorance, racism, prostitution, pedophilia, etc... We are not them. They are not us. I do think Germany and Sweden will be like the USA in 25 years, and at that time, I bet they enact the same laws we have. For the same reasons. The solution to our problem is free-market medicine. End regulatory capture and rent-seeking, and you will see a boom of economic activity. There are 10s of thousands of Americans who'd LOVE to provide value for money, but are trapped in our current crony capitalistic system of rent-seeking, unable to do anything but play along.
From the end of the Civil War, throughout the late 1800s, Americans living in the East had little required contact with the Federal Government. The most many Americans did that involved the Federal Government was the USPO. I know it's hard to imagine, given that the late 1800s was the most prosperous time in HUMAN history. The Second Industrial Revolution in the USA launched humanity into the post-modern Era. Thousands of ships carried thousands of Europeans to America, not for the Welfare benefits, but for the freedom FROM Government. Up until the Progressive Socialists amended the US Constitution giving us an Income Tax, Central Bank and Fiat Currency. How did that work out? Well, the Central Bank caused the Great Depression by expanding and contracting the money supply. Whereas Americans were told the 'Rich' were going to 'Pay their fair share' (yes, Progressive B.S. hasn't changed in over 100 years, see: B.Sanders) it ended up being the worker who pays while the Rich get bailed out. It's the worker who fights and dies in government run phony wars, while the rich Bankers get even richer selling to the MIC. Anyway, there was one area where the Federal Government did apparently expand it's reach. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Where did the Federal Government get this authority to STEAL the Native Americans lands it had previously agreed was sovereign through treaty? Violence, that's where. Not trade. Violence. Yes, stealing can be profitable FOR ONE SIDE. Free-Trade on the other benefits BOTH parties. So, sure, the Federal Government did expand in size and scope during the late 1800s, in the West. Where it paid for land theft, murder, rape that apparently did benefit the settlers for took advantage of the Federal Government's generous offer of cheap lands. Of course, the Second Industrial Revolution didn't happen in the West. Nor in the Slave-minded South. It happened in the East and North East. Which were the best examples of free-markets we have. Automobiles, electricity, airplanes, generators, radio, on and on and on. All of these we invented by people working together in the free-market. Did the Government try to stick it's hand in the mix? Sure, that's what it does. But, because we hadn't yet amended the US Constitution, we didn't have a Central Bank, nor Income Tax/Labor Tax backed Fiat Currency, people were stuck with working WITH one another, instead of against one another. Sure, they were as greedy and cheating as they still are, but without the State there to pick winners and losers, bail out the rich, or divert resources, people were able to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is where the most prosperity, for the most people, comes from.
The Hill: Trump calls for 'new election' after accusing Cruz of fraud in Iowa LOL.....The Donald Tweets: Twitter: During primetime of the Iowa Caucus, Cruz put out a release that @RealBenCarson was quitting the race, and to caucus (or vote) for Cruz. Twitter: Many people voted for Cruz over Carson because of this Cruz fraud. Also, Cruz sent out a VOTER VIOLATION certificate to thousands of voters. Twitter: Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.
WaPo: Bernie Sanders’s fiction-filled campaign I wouldn't so much call it fiction, more like Magic Thinking. Particularly the part where he suggests higher taxes on the middle class, combined with Government pork, is going to improve the economy. What a laugh. Yes, Government, that bastion of innovation and cost-savings.... riiiight. In summary: Mr. Sanders is a lot like many other politicians. Strong ideological preferences guide his thinking, except when politics does, as it has on gun control. When reality is ideologically or politically inconvenient, he and his campaign talk around it. Mr. Sanders’s success so far does not show that the country is ready for a political revolution. It merely proves that many progressives like being told everything they want to hear.
More of good joke. Your example is evidence to the contrary. I got a kick out of it - it's your standard pattern here, but that one was just blatant. Or South Korea where they have worked. Or North Korea as an example of decentralization leading to loss of freedom and prosperity (Korea started out unified). I'm missing the connection with this: In that case, including your examples, the US has had a very small government for a while now, and if we can somehow get a leash on the current rise of fascism may hold on for a while more. No wonder it has prosperity and law and - so far, although deregulating the banks and starting wars on credit has threatened it - sound money. So you've backed up from the early 1900s entirely. That was wise. You are still being foolish, of course - aside from your silly attempted hideyhole about "required" contact with individual persons, the Federal government had more involvement in the US economy (including the East) during those years than almost any other peacetime years in its history. It was giving away huge chunks of territory to individual owners (people from the East, that would be), supervising the Reconstruction of the Confederacy (which had to be readmitted to the Union, btw, which took years - including the East parts), establishing a railroad system across the expanse of the continent (connecting the East), admitting huge areas of land as States of the Union, buying Alaska, developing the Mississippi River as a navigable waterway (along with the Ohio and Missouri), establishing the National Park system, etc. That time was one of the greatest expansions of a central government ever seen on the planet. Which means government itself is not the problem. Those other countries, where this stuff works just fine, all have more government in their lives than the US does. They are even more subject to the horror of taxation, rules on what they can do and when, and so forth. The part about getting a leash on the rise of fascism is, of course, not small. We face the prospect of Republican Party control of Congress for some time to come, with consequences visible for decades now, and the obvious dangers posed by one of their own attaining the Presidency again and continuing the Reagan era rollback of the New Deal. All the European countries went through that, to some degree, and it may be a necessary phase of capitalist development - but it will be a pretty rough ride for some people not famous for their patience, humility, or willingness to endure the consequences of their mistakes to establish justice.
LOL 2015 the US Federal Government passed more laws and regulations than any other year in US history. No. I said through the 1800s, right on into the early 1900s, up until the State took over the money supply and started forcing workers to pay the State a tax on their labor. LOL One more time, most Americans living during the Second Industrial Revolution ONLY made ANY form of contact with the US Federal Government when sending a letter by USPO. Other than that, they had ZERO contact with Washington. Hell, DC could have vaporized off the map and most Americans wouldn't have noticed, nor cared. They certainly didn't ask for permission to cut hair or sell flowers. Now they do.
Simple fact. All of Korea was gradually unified under an expanding central government hundreds of years ago, and then further centralized by being brought under the expanding central government of Japan in 1910 - a pattern that ended with Japan's defeat and the splitting of Korea into separate pieces no longer under one central government. One of those pieces was North Korea, a product of the breakup of the Japanese Empire and then the breakup of the hundreds of years old Korean unity - decentralization, in the extreme. By your criteria above, it's nevertheless a fairly small government yet. Do you want to modify your criteria? Will you make up your mind? Any time in that range is as comical a display of ignorance and willful denial as any other, but the details do vary. Except of course for those living in the former Confederacy, or those traveling by train, or those engaged in the westward expansion and their relatives back East, or those whose lives and travels involved one of the major rivers or canals or ocean ports, or those engaged in international trade, - - - but we've been over this. Last time iirc you ended up narrowing your Shangri-la era to a fifteen year span between 1890 and 1905, and just denied everything about that span from then on.
Let's not forget that there is no contradiction between government being really small and the greatest increase of power by the government ever - if the government control raises from 0.01% to 10% it is small all the time but has increased by a factor 1000. Today, starting with around 50% government control, it is simply no longer possible to reach a similar increase of state power, simply because 100%, factor 2, is the upper limit. So one should not confuse the question if the state is big vs. small, and the one if his power is increasing or decreasing, and (even more) if an increase is relative or absolute: The remaining factor 2 increase in the example about would be yet 5 times more than the whole factor 1000 increase of my example. Similarly, splitting one big GULAG state into several smaller ones is also some decentralization, and increases freedom, even if the remaining GULAG peaces remain really horrible totalitarian. But, of course, also with limits: Splitting the prison you are incarcerated in into separate parts will not increase but decrease your freedom, you will be even unable to talk with the guys from the other tract after this. The basic point of decentralization is that it increases your freedom because you get the freedom of choice between the parts. But this presupposes that you have such a freedom of choice. Usually you will have it.
Today in the US Federal control is nowhere near 50%. What we are seeing is attempted expansion of Federal power in some arenas (harassment of individuals) and attempted reduction of Federal power in others (oversight of large corporations). Both of these tend toward oppression of individuals, which is a serious worry. In the case of Korea, the original larger central government offered more freedom than at least one - and possibly both - of the eventual major pieces. Freedom decreased via decentralization. This is not true of geopolitical centralization in real life. In real life decentralization beyond a certain point - such as actual breakup - usually creates vulnerability and reduces access to resources, sets up barriers to trade and travel, and allows more rigid enforcement of conformity within the pieces (even encourages it, by starting fights). It reduces the freedom of choice for the individuals involved. The greatest geopolitical freedom appears at a midrange of centralization, measure both in extent and intensity.
Maybe, my remark was not about US Federal vs. other forms of state control in the US. Of course, this may happen. It may be even quite typical, once decentralization is usually related with separatist civil war, and war is in general the worst thing for freedom and the best for state power. But these are unfortunate consequences of the resitstance against decentralization, not consequences of the decentralization. That decentralization means more freedom is the rule if everything else remains equal, and if free choice between the parts is possible. I disagree. The smaller the size of the political unit, the more impossible it becomes to close the borders for people as well as for trade. And this clearly also allows people to emigrate to other parts.
I was replying to Michael, and he's talking about the Federal government. Or he says he is (the haircutting licenses etc obviously don't apply). Actually, this is fairly deep principle of reality - in general the greatest complexity/information/number of choices/options for action etc etc are somewhere in the middle of the connectedness/organization/values of the significant variables etc etc etc. This is clear in the abstract - there are more combinations of choices from a set in the midrange of the possibilities (from ten things, choosing four offers almost five times as many combinations as choosing two). As an analogy, consider the physical freedom of action of a human being - what actions they can take, physically, given various physical restrictions. At one end of the scale, encased in heavy cement - no freedom of action. On the other end, free floating in a vacuum - very limited possibilities of action, a ballistic object. In between, various restrictions - such as a wall, or some gymnastics equipment that gets in the way and prevents many actions - increase the possibilities from which the person can choose. Somewhere in the middle of the restriction scale, a middling imposition of restrictions, one finds the greatest freedom of action. (Compare State roads, with all their rules etc, to roadless - but owned and populated - terrain.) That isn't always true - it can be easier to close a short border than a long one, control a small number of people than a large number, etc. - and it isn't always a key factor: small places support less variety internally, so one must cross a border for freedoms - itself a reduction in freedom (e.g. Palestinians in ever smaller but less free homelands). Meanwhile, the larger the size, the greater freedom within it - large enough and one need never approach a "border" to enjoy great freedom. However, at the same time the borders themselves have become more distant. So the freedom available from crossing them is reduced. (Monolingual Americans) So somewhere in the middle of the size range, one hits the sweet spot - the greatest internal freedom X border crossing freedom. All of this is just about the spatial scale aspect.
A libertarian society will be heavily connected, so this is hardly the point. So there are several things one has to care about in the abstract: (1) the costs of border crossing (2) the freedom inside the border, (3) the differences between different political units. Note also that I'm not thinking about a completely abstract situation, but about a reasonably modern human environment. This has consequences: If the political units are small, border crossing has to be cheap, else the whole unit would be considered as a prison and immediately faced with internal resistance against imprisonment. Essentially, in the long run a state like Eastern Germany was too small from this point of view. If the political unit is small enough - like a gated community - border crossing will be everyday routine (living in one political unit, working in another one) so that it has to be very cheap. And, on the other hand, many political units leads to small distances to other units, and the existence of other units with similar culture, language and so on. This alone is a heavy decrease of the costs of emigration. Assuming that border crossing is cheap, and small political units, the amount of freedom inside the border becomes quite irrelevant, because it will contain the right to do all what the inhabitants really want to do. If the inhabitants are religious fanatics, this will be a monastery with very rigorous fundamentalist law - but so what, nobody is forced to live there, those who want to live there want to follow this law, and will be happy with this. In this relation, note also the segregation effect: If all those who want fundamentalist law have the possibility to live in monasteries where is is obligatory, most of those who love such ideas will go to such monasteries. And that means they will no longer disturb the freedom of others in non-fundamental communities with their fundamentalist wishes. Same for racists, communists, and a lot of other freaks. Point (3) will certainly rise with more political units. Because of this same segregation effect, which will lead to a lot of rather extremist local communities. But this variability will reduce a lot with the increase of political units, simply because the large political unit needs to be habitable for average people, and this will move them all toward some middle ground. I think your error is that it is not freedom itself which matters. It is the freedom of choice of the rules which I agree to follow which matters, not the restrictions imposed by these rules. The monk in the monastery will be happy, even if the rules of the monastery will be very restrictive and fundamentalist from point of view of the average atheist. And he will be happier than today in a modern society, even if some weak form of monasteries are allowed. So, with many different political units and low costs of emigration the freedom of choice between different sets of rules will be the greatest. And this is what matters. [/QUOTE]
Don't look now, but you racism is showing. The solution to our healthcare problem isn't free market medicine as has been endlessly pointed out to you over the years. In business Michael, we have this thing called "best practices". We look at different models and learn from them. When a best practice is discovered we implement it. Let's remember, the healthcare we have had for the last century has been a free-market healthcare system. Just because there has been rent seeking, doesn't mean we have a free-market healthcare system. Rent seeking is only exists because the political system enables it (e.g. corruption). The best healthcare systems are single payer systems. That's what the data very clearly shows. We have best practices. We should learn from them and use them. After WWII, Japanese manufacturers learned from American manufactures. During the 70's and 80's American firms learned best manufacturing processes from Japan. So your argument that cultural factors prevents the US from copying Japan's or European healthcare best practices just doesn't hold up either to reason or history.
LOL The only racist here is you. Race isn't the same as culture Joe. And America has a modern culture of creating phony wars out of made up bullshit, dropping chemical bombs on women and children - you understand 100s of children are born everyday in Vietnam missing limbs thanks to our chemical warfare half a century ago? Then there's the generational welfare ghettos, violent crap-hole crime ridden cities where a culture of SlumLording and DrugLording is virtuous. A Government run Healthcare system will be as safe as Government run Welfare Slums and as useful as a functionally illiterate Government School graduate. Take a good look at Flint - THAT is what a Government run Hospital will look like. The phrase 'Good enough for Government work' is a common truism because the quality of workmanship is so crap in Government run institutions. But, hey, here's the rainbow. YOU think YOU have a sustainable to means to provide healthcare to millions of Americans, the answer is simple: DO IT. Open an insurance company and start serving up the savings. See? It's quite easy. You think most Americans support Socialistic Healthcare, good, then the customers will be bounding down your doors throwing money at you. I heard Bernie state healthcare would cost Americans 500 dollars a year without cutting into other "Social" programs. LOL.... B.Sanders. Try 5000 dollars a year, with most healthcare NOT being covered for anyone with any money, huge co-fees, and massive deductibles AFTER another humongous tax levied on the middle class. The upshot? Medical Error will rocket to #1 reason to die, but hey, blame the Kock brothers....LOL
You mean like Flint's water supply? Oh, but I'm sure that's the fault of the Kock Brothers or some other boogieman. Economists have already published papers on how the quality of engineering in the USA is going DOWN due to lucrative Pentagon contracts. For example, a company that makes light vehicles for the Iraq War was making vehicles that were lower in quality now, compared with 10 years BEFORE the war. THIS is what Government monopoly does Joe. It stagnates quality and then begins to erode it. So that one day some functional illiterate is pointing up at an aquiduct telling his kids Giants built that. You didn't build that, Giants built that. Anyway, seeing as in were in the middle of the Government-led GREAT Recovery LOL, Americans will have allllll sorts of money to spend on healthcare needs - just look at ALL them ther jerbs The Government is helping 'society' to create. Oh, and with the massive inflation in healthcare - gee, think how more wealthy everyone is. LOL I have an idea, how about this? We tax everything from everyone in YOUR generation to pay for the healthcare needs of YOUR generation. ALL of it. We tax away your homes, your businesses, your pensions - everything. Then we sell off and 'redistribute' the proceeds so that YOUR generation it 'taken care of'. You know, maybe you guys can go live in the Government Welfare ghettos that you happily ignored for the past 50 years. Sound good? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You know, for the Good of Society Joe. Anyway, it's just a tax. If the people vote for it - then that's fine. Right? Of course. Sorry Joe, the Millennials are tapped out. You've stuck them with your bills, gutted the economy, used the State to bailout your pensions and now they can't afford to pay your medical bills on their McJerb wages. But hey, the functional illiterates will probably work as your Carers in the Government run Baby's Homes Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
2 things first you don't know what rent seeking actually is, as you've shown repeatedly. secondly for fucks sake learn how to post in a coherent fucking manner. this 3 or 4 post shit in a row makes threads much harder to read and find intelligent posts(ie not yours). are you doing it to stroke your precious little ego. it not that hard to quote multiple posts in one. if you can't be bother to learn proper forum etiquette please stop posting.
