Eliminate Social Security - Dont 'Privitize it'

[Kuciwalker]

It will hurt them.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
It will hurt them.

Hurt... yeah... but eliminate them as somebody actually suggested...



Somebody is living in a real fantasy land...

[Berzerker]

So anybody that thinks legalizing drugs will end gangs and organized crime is living in fantasy land

I'd be surprised if anyone made that argument, but there can be little doubt that prohibition escalates and funds gang warfare and recruitment. The rise of the Mafia nationwide was enabled by prohibition just as the war on drugs enabled the growth of black and latino gangs nationwide. It's no coincidence juvenile crime began escalating in the mid 80's after Congress and most of the states increased penalties for adult traffickers. Adults began recruiting minors into the drug trade to avoid the harsher penalties, gang recruitment exploded, and juvenile crime continues to increase even as other groups are committing less crime. Look at homicide rates for the 20th century and you will see that homicide rates doubled during alcohol prohibition, dropped 13 straight years upon repeal to half the prohibition peak level, stabilised until the late 60's when Nixon began his war of drugs, then doubled over the last 35 years.

I watched a Clinton policy get together in Nevada and a sheriff from small town USA was explaining how drug dealing gangs had moved into his little corner of Nevada over the past couple years and how crime skyrocketed.

[Berzerker]

Yep... takes away ONE source, and they just find other ways... and there are plenty left

That one source is the most important source they have. Legalise gambling and prostitution and 2 more sources dry up, look at how corporations drove the Mob out of Vegas. If we eliminate the illegality of consensual activities funding gangs, they have to resort to much more risky endeavors to raise money and that increased risk will reduce the number of people in gangs.

[Agathon]

I honestly don't think that profits are the problem. It's inefficiency that really eats up the money. Having numerous insurance companies with numerous policies for instance creates enormous mirror bureacracies to respond. A huge amount of the waste is actually used to provide what everyone in Europe thinks that we don't provide, which is healthcare for those without insurance. We do provide it, but it is done very inefficiently. We provide emergency care in place of preventative care, and we jack up the rates of those who actually pay their bills by about 100% in order to pay for it.

The public health sector is little better honestly

Yes it is - that's one of the major differences. You look up how much the bureaucratic overhead is for the NHS. It's ridiculously low. I know, my uncle is an NHS bureaucrat.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Re: Arguments that will be made in 2005, as well as 2004

Originally posted by JohnT
FWIW, this is a point that Ned made earlier, in another thread and Imran jumped his ass about it.

Funnily enough, Berzerker responded the exact same way as Imran did!

Context is different. I said would YOU consider it a right (to Ned) if that happened. Personally, I agree that it would and come out differently than Berzerker. I made the point to show that Ned didn't really believe that way and was using it only for making of the one point, and not consistently.

[Agathon]

Aggie

quote:
Because it is an established economic phenomenon. I doubt there is a first year economics course in which you don't learn about them. It's not some invention of the left, but an established fact.

You argued that I was concerned with free riders when I'm not, that concern is yours. I don't care if some guy in the neighborhood benefits from the police my neighbors and I pay for. According to your argument, the USA would be morally right to force European countries to pay us because Europe got a free ride during the cold war.

That's not much of an analogy, but it doesn't matter because it's not a moral question. The problem is not about who pays for it, but whether the supply meets demand. Market failure just means that supply fails to meet demand, often because the prospect of free riding is a disincentive.

If you want adequate supply, then you need collective action. You can't have collective action without coercion (because lack of individual coercion creates the problem), ergo we give up certain liberties in order to secure a good we all need, but can only secure by doing that.

It's quite simple. You can raise all sorts of moral objections if you want, but they will fall flat because we are simply all better off doing it this way. If you want to hold a moral theory that leaves people worse off, then go ahead, but you will find few takers.

quote:
For some activities governmental intervention is the only thing that can stop the free riding problem. The reason is quite simple, people wish to get as much as they can for as little as possible. Free riding in certain circumstances is prevented by markets, but other kinds of free riding are created by them. A society that adheres to an austere version of capitalism will be plagued with such problems. We are plagued with them now, but it would be worse if the government lost its power to engage in coercive taxation because we would then lose the only effective means of solving certain collective action problems.


Liberals don't care about free riding, they endorse the free lunch society. So why do liberals care about free riders under libertarianism when there are far fewer than under a quasi-socialist system? Because there are fewer free riders under libertarianism and liberals endorse the free lunch society. I think its for left wingers to feign concern over free riders given their ideological imperative to create a welfare state.

Welfare programs are generally not "free lunch" programs except in the cases where people never contribute (the permanently unemployed, the severely disabled, etc.). People pay taxes and receive benefits back in return when they need them - just like any other insurance scheme. A few people receive more than they pay, a few less, most about the same. But overall everyone receives a lot more than they would under a private system.

As I said earlier, taxation is simply that portion of our incomes that we spend collectively and not individually. The benefits still accrue to us.

You haven't provided anything close to a refutation of my argument. You need to show how free individual choices will overcome market failures. Given that they are what cause market failures in these cases, you need to show us by what magic it will suddenly be different next time.

This is not a moral question, it is simply asking how the libertarian society will be able to supply health care cheaper and more efficiently than a public insurance program. The evidence is not on your side, there is no private program that is as efficient as the public programs in Canada, Europe and Australasia.

Worrying about transfers of wealth from the rich to the poor is a red herring. Even if we all paid exactly the same amount of tax, a public system would still be better than a private system because it can stop free riders.

quote:
Taxation just represents that portion of our incomes that we spend collectively, instead of individually.

It represents time and labor forcibly taken from other people usually under the threat of injury or death. Give us your money or else...

Or else you will suffer the effects of market failure. Being taxed is preferable. You seem to think that you can have your cake and eat it too.

Only a lunatic would choose to live in a society with no taxation. Many things we take for granted would simply not get done, because individual incentives would work against them. The key truth is that individual self interest can be collectively self defeating. As I said this is an established fact in economics. You need to show why they are wrong, or submit to the conclusion that individuals must be compelled in certain areas for their own good. This means you must pay tax, but in return you end up paying a lot less for health care than you otherwise would have.

quote:
The government by and large does not waste money, but spends it on things that we need, like roads and the police.

Doesn't waste it? Compared to whom?

Compared to the private sector trying to sell healthcare. Statistic after statistic shows that Canadians spend less on healthcare overall than Americans, yet Canadians get better value for the money they do spend. That means Americans are throwing money away needlessly.

That's no different than the police example, contrary to what you guys think most people will pay taxes to support a fire department if they are free. Every time we debate this issue you make these assertions backed up only by claims about "economic models". Btw, we have a volunteer fire dept here.

No they won't. I am better off if everyone else around me pays and I don't. Their payment produces a postive externality that I can benefit from for nothing.

Do you know what an externality is? If so please explain to me why one does not exist, and why it is rational for me to pay for something I could get for free.

quote:
What this means is that it is worthwhile letting all the other people pay for the fire department because there is a good chance they'll put out the fire at your place to stop it spreading.

So no one would buy fire insurance because there's a good chance their house wont burn down? How can you depend on economic models that ignore how people really behave?

That is how people actually behave. This is how markets work to set prices among other things. Competitors will lower prices to avoid having unsold stock, this means that they end up earning less than they might have hoped (the optimal situation is where you sell all yours and no-one else does, you get the highest price that way).

quote:
The people who pay for fire protection create a positive externality which others can take advantage of at no cost. That means it is rational not to pay.

There is always a cost, the cost of pissing people off to the cost of not getting help in case of fire.

No there is not always a cost, that is not how externalities work. The whole point of an externality is that it is a positive or negative effect on someone else who has not consented to the transaction. There are many people who are quite happy pissing off their neighbours in our society, so your point is moot. Simple disapproval does not work, otherwise we wouldn't need laws to deal with obnoxious neighbours.

quote:
What usually happens in these situations is that very few people pay the fire department gets underfunded and the fire risk goes up.

And people react accordingly with increased funding.

Whoever does is just subsidizing everyone else's fire protection - that will cause more people to stop paying. The free riding will get worse.

quote:
The obvious solution is to allow an authority the power to force people to pay for their own fire protection.

That is an immoral solution.

Only if you believe that having cities burn down is better than having adequate fire protection. This is another absurdity which exposes the fundamentally mistaken assumptions of libertarians.

quote:
This makes sure that no-one can free ride on any externalities.

What if I don't want your fire protection? I get punished? How is this any different than Mafia "protection"?

No. Externalities are what you get despite what you want. You cannot charge other people for them in a free market - that's true by definition.

You need to read up on some basic economics before you start adovocating the wholesale destruction of society.

[Odin]

Oh man, not another libertarian rant about taxes being organized robbery.

A Libertarian society would never work, it would either fall into anarchy, or it would degenerate into a
de facto caste system. Progressive taxation and regulation of business prevent a fall into such caste system by counteracting the tendency in a capitalist economy for the money to become concentrated in a few people.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Berzerker
The comparison is not slavery to universal health care, the comparison is a right to health care based on what a large majority says and a right to enslave others based on what a large majority says. I'm showing why rights are not based on majority rule.

As I said, leaping from universal healthcare to slavery. It doesn't make your case.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I'd be surprised if anyone made that argument, but there can be little doubt that prohibition escalates and funds gang warfare and recruitment. The rise of the Mafia nationwide was enabled by prohibition just as the war on drugs enabled the growth of black and latino gangs nationwide. It's no coincidence juvenile crime began escalating in the mid 80's after Congress and most of the states increased penalties for adult traffickers. Adults began recruiting minors into the drug trade to avoid the harsher penalties, gang recruitment exploded, and juvenile crime continues to increase even as other groups are committing less crime. Look at homicide rates for the 20th century and you will see that homicide rates doubled during alcohol prohibition, dropped 13 straight years upon repeal to half the prohibition peak level, stabilised until the late 60's when Nixon began his war of drugs, then doubled over the last 35 years.

of course ming never bothers with the facts, he'd rather keep his bliss

[Ming]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
of course ming never bothers with the facts, he'd rather keep his bliss

If you truely think that legalizing drugs will end all gangs and organized crime, which is pretty much what you stated... you are dreaming.

Can I get some of the drugs you must be doing to believe that fantasy

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Berzerker
chegitz -

Right - n. That which is just, morally good, legal, proper, or fitting.

Something that is due to a person or governmental body by law, tradition, or nature.

I don't give a toss what your definition says. Rights are not gratned by nature. There are no rights in nature. Only what you can hold by force. Rights are the product of society and civilization and they only exist with the consent of others.