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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2008 : 19:53:39 [Permalink]
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Another problem with a Free Market is for some things which have not monetary value.
For example, in a totally free market, there is little reason for a company to protect the environment. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 11/12/2008 : 23:04:43 [Permalink]
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Simon said:
| For example, in a totally free market, there is little reason for a company to protect the environment. |
Not so.
Ecosystem services could have a monetary value and companies be required (by law) to preserve the ecosystems they operate in.
Because, seriously, clean air and water can't be taken for granted. Just ask your municipality how much it costs them to provide clean water.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Hittman
Skeptic Friend
134 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2008 : 09:29:47 [Permalink]
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| That's the question. If the government essentially taking 19% of GDP is too much government, and 0% is too little, then what is the "correct" amount? |
8.2%
Real answer – the minimal amount necessary to deal with fraud and force, and to provide for the national defense. A good start would be to get rid of half our government, and then see where we could start chipping away from there.
| By the way, if all you know is your co-pay, you're acting with mind-numbing ignorance within the market. A phone call to your insurance provider would inform you as to how much your doctor gets per visit, and you certainly should know how much you're paying per month. Better deals for you (and your doctor) may exist. |
You're making assumptions and missing the point entirely.
I do know my monthly cost. I don't know my cost per visit, because I don't have to know, I have no incentive to know, and I have no incentive to shop for a better deal. The fact that I'm very pleased with my Drs. skill and services keeps me going back there and the full cost of an office visit isn't a factor in my decision.. If I picked a different doctor my co-pay would stay the same, so I have no incentive for me to shop around for the best deal.
And neither does anyone else.
OTOH, if I were working out of a Health Savings Account, spending my own money, with insurance that only kicked in after a high deductible, I would have an incentive to know the cost of every office visit and every procedure. I'd have an incentive to ask to try OTC drugs and generic drugs instead of the latest name-brand prescription. And if most people had HSAs, so would they. We'd see the free market introduced back into medicine. Not entirely, of course, but enough to make a difference.
| If a large majority of people act as you do, then it's quite probable a good proportion of them are getting ripped off and it behooves society to have government step in and protect everyone from the rampant fraud. |
You're very good at missing the point entirely. I'm not getting ripped off by my doctor. There is no fraud in this example. There is simply no shopping for the best price, because there is no reason to do it.
Another problem with a Free Market is for some things which have not monetary value.
For example, in a totally free market, there is little reason for a company to protect the environment. |
Big L libertarians will tell you that companies won't pollute because they won't foul their own nest, and if they do, pollution is a form of trespass, and so we could pursue pollution as a civil case. This is foolish. It ignores history, and the civil route is not practical in most cases. This is one of the reasons I'm a Small L.
But as always, the problem is that government regulation get out of hand rather quickly. The EPA became a junk science machine under Carol Browner, and many of their rules and regulations are ridiculous. So how can we protect the environment from real threats and still insist that regulatory agencies be reasonable?
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When a vampire Jehovah's Witness knocks on your door, don't invite him in. Blood Witness: http://bloodwitness.com
Get Smartenized® with the Quick Hitts blog: http://www.davehitt.com/blog2/index.phpBlog |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2008 : 09:44:21 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
Real answer – the minimal amount necessary to deal with fraud and force, and to provide for the national defense. A good start would be to get rid of half our government, and then see where we could start chipping away from there. |
Which half?| You're very good at missing the point entirely. I'm not getting ripped off by my doctor. There is no fraud in this example. There is simply no shopping for the best price, because there is no reason to do it. |
No, you missed the point. By not paying attention to costs, the cost to everyone of healthcare is going up. A lot. I didn't suggest you're getting ripped off by your doctor, because your doctor is under contract to your insurance company. But if your insurance company is ripping you (and/or your doctor) off, you'd never know it.
I don't know why you think you've got no incentive to get the best bang for your buck with regard to your insurance, but I certainly have such an incentive and it looks to me like everyone else does, too. Shouldn't getting the insurance companies to compete for our custom drive prices down? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2008 : 10:13:47 [Permalink]
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Indeed; but if it is done through regulation; then it not longer is Free Market.
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2008 : 12:09:22 [Permalink]
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All markets have rules, even the mythical "free market". But you could do it under most sets of market rules even without regulation. How much is clean water worth? Quite a bit, imo. Of course, if water weren't considered a right, and a community owned resource, we'd probably be paying $20 a gallon.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2008 : 12:29:05 [Permalink]
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But how much is clean air 'worth'?
And, really, the air-polluting plants do not need clean air. They just need air to release chemicals in, so they would not be affected by a rising cost of artificially cleaned-up air (that reminds me of an old Greenpeace commercial where a dude had to buy some fresh-air from a vending machine). |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2008 : 15:23:38 [Permalink]
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So reading this thread it seems to have veered off-topic. But the central theme seems to be the ability of people to make informed decisions. This is the reasoning behind ballot proposition (I suppose) and behind advocacy on free markets. I call bullshit on this ability for most people in most situations.
At this point, I've worked in telecom, ICT and now am a government employee on environmental health. I've got many friends working in the health sector, both in research and real-life. My conclusion from these lines of work as that even for something simple as telecom subscriptions, people are too stupid to accurately read and understand the clauses of their contract, only to be surprised later when they come across problems. And that is something relatively simple, where you can actually take your time to take the stuff home, study the stuff and come to an accurate decision. Because I worked in the industry, I can do that fairly quickly, I can easily calculate the gains and benefits of offers made. For me, in telecom, free market works. For other it doesn't do as well, but who cares, if they take a subscription for a year or two years, they can change their subscription after that. A (relatively) free market works here, at least it works good enough to not cause serious harm.
For environmental issues and health issues, this is bullshit. The factors involved are just too complex to oversee in the case of environmental issues. You see it in fishery. Fishermen are still actively trying to overturn regulations on maximum catch, even while the yearly catch is still going down every year, so the effects of overfishing are seen. Why? Because nobody looks at the environmental cost, only at the profit made this year. Who cares if we won't catch anything in 20 years time, we'll tackle that problem if it arises. So we are left with a disrupted ecosystem if the government doesn't intervene with regulations.
For health care the problem is different. It's all well and good to talk about free market when you are talking about a headache medicine you get from your doctor and which (probably) won't kill you. You can try out several. But if you lie on the street with a broken bone, or if you're under treatment for cancer or in a large number of other situations, you do not have the time or expertise to make an informed decision. So the free market does not work. And monopolies are all too easily created in these cases, because only a few hospitals in an area will become big enough to gain the proper expertise in a certain area of treatment. And as a number of scandals in America have shown, shopping for health insurance doesn't work in these cases either. Because you won't know your health insurance sucked until after they've disallowed that liver transplant. You'd happily switch insurance after you've discovered it sucks, but since you can't exactly live without a functioning liver, you won't actually have that chance.
It's all fine and well talking about how well a free market would function if you're talking about all those safe areas that everyone is able to understand, like which bakery to go to, or those areas that don't matter much in the end, like where to buy your new coffee cups. But to anyone who ever worked with things that actually matter or things that are actually complex, it quickly becomes apparent that free market in many cases is not a solution and in fact can be a big cause of problems. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Original_Intent
SFN Regular
USA
609 Posts |
Posted - 11/24/2008 : 14:55:41 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Original_Intent:
Their is an obvious disconnect in what the representatives are doing, and what their constituents want. |
On the whole, I am pleased with the job my representatives are doing. On the other hand, I'm sure that those who voted against them are not so pleased. But soon enough they will get their chance to remove those who they don't agree with from office. There is nothing “obvious” about the disconnect you speak of. If I voted for someone to represent the interests of my community and they went off and did not at least try to do that, I would vote against them the next time they ask me for another term. Their voting record is public and easy to access.
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Maybe I don't understand California well enough to figure out how such a liberal state voted for such a thing, other then a disconnect between the elected officials/elected parties and the populace.
Original_Intent:
Do the good people of the Sovereign State of California really not want homosexual marriage? |
As I said earlier, a constitutional amendment is serious business and should not be so easy as to require only a simple majority vote on a ballot initiative to pass. In this case, we are talking about the removal of rights granted to everyone, of a specific subgroup, based on the religious beliefs of the supporters for a change in the constitution. They represent a special interest, even if it's a large one. It is the first time rights granted to law abiding individuals was actually taken away from them. I think it will be successfully challenged in court. But now we have to spend the money to do that. Changing the constitution should not be such an easy process.
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How can the amendment be challenged? Maybe there is something in the California Constitution allowing this.
An interesting conundrum.... You would like to see an amendment dismissing the amendment. I don't see this happening with a super-majority. What do you do? A ballot initiative changing amending the constitution to require a super-majority AND override other amendments that did not pass with a super-majority? How many of the amendments were there. How much did the amendment funding stem-cell research pass by?
Here is where you and I have fundamental difference in opinion. I think at the state level that the simple majority should be the answer. If someone doesn't like it, they can move to a different state, where like minded people are. I think if we had more of this, there would be less fighting amongst ourselves at the state-level, and more smacking down on the Feds. Better for everyone, and definitely more united then what we have now.
Original_Intent:
Were they tricked by flashy wording? |
Yes.
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So much on this. This is what I found, please enter respond if the text is not correct. If it is correct... one more reason for limiting suffrage (this being flash wording)
:CA Prop 8
ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 11/24/2008 : 15:43:32 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Original_Intent
Originally posted by Kil
Original_Intent:
Their is an obvious disconnect in what the representatives are doing, and what their constituents want. |
On the whole, I am pleased with the job my representatives are doing. On the other hand, I'm sure that those who voted against them are not so pleased. But soon enough they will get their chance to remove those who they don't agree with from office. There is nothing “obvious” about the disconnect you speak of. If I voted for someone to represent the interests of my community and they went off and did not at least try to do that, I would vote against them the next time they ask me for another term. Their voting record is public and easy to access.
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Maybe I don't understand California well enough to figure out how such a liberal state voted for such a thing, other then a disconnect between the elected officials/elected parties and the populace.
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As a matter of fact, I am not sure that Caifornia, as a whole, is all that liberal.
They are places in California like Orange County which are actually quite conservative... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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A proposition on propositions
