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On February 04 2012 08:40 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 07:30 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 07:19 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 06:46 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 05:47 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 05:35 Kiarip wrote:On February 03 2012 10:37 aksfjh wrote:
With the exception of housing, which is widely under debate at this moment, the programs you list do things cheaper than the private sector. Education tuitions rose because state budgets have refused to increase funding based on demand for nearly a decade. Military costs went through the roof because we turned to the private sector to help fight the war, instead of sticking to tradition and conscripting. My argument is that when private sector is forced to the compete with the government the prices go up disproportionately to the quality. So all my examples basically on point. I'm talking about costs both private and public. Government drove up the price of education with easy credit, housing with easy credit, medicine with guarantees and subsidies, and military with contracts. These types of economies don't work, you either need to have the whole thing nationalized or privatized without government incentives, and when you're dealing with a situation of individual customers private sector tends to be better, while for something like the military, you obviously want that fully nationalized, but the point is that when you have the two compete you get basically the worst possible situation. I might agree with you on this partially. But I would add that private sector tends to do better only if the customer has at least some ability to actually judge the service at least somewhat objectively. Healthcare is one of those where that is not true and consequences of error are often fatal. Education also but for somewhat different reasons. The first part is definitely true. However you underestimate the effiency of the free market. When its difficult for the consumer to understand how the industry works, they have a need. The market can satisfy that need, and new companies will (probably) specialize in explaining how the health care industry works, and how they minizimze their costs in relation to their needs. However when government is in involved in the market, consumers tend to feel "safe". Like believing that government will fix their problems, and hence their isn't a strong enough demand for private companies to deliever a product that makes it easy to judge the services of the health care sector. Operation of healthcare industry is the easier part to explain. The medicine is the hard part. Those meta-companies will be as useless to the consumers as the original ones. And as all private companies in a market where consumer is not able to judge the product even after he used it, they will just be ripping everyone and most successful will be the ones with best PR department that provide least service, but make it look good. It is easily seen in the privatized parts of the healthcare sector all over the world. Of course you can take a hardcore libertarian stance, that the consumers get what they wanted, no matter if they got totally ripped off compared to the "forced choice" of public system. But if you think that displayed preference is always equal to the real preference I do not think we have any common basis to continue without getting into an even bigger tangent. People complain all the time about healthcare system, so no, people are not complacent, but their complaints are mostly totally wrong and just highlighting my point. If those meta-companies doesn't work they go bankrupt. Why wouldn't they work? They will do everything in their power to make the market easy to understand and analyze for their consumers, because that is their product. And if they are to make money some people have to buy their product. Oh they will make money, and people will buy their products, but not because those companies will offer anything worthwhile, but because people are gullible and have extremely limited ability to judge those products. How do you know if you need CT, you ask the company and they will tell you exactly that what will maximize their profit, which is rarely linked to what is necessary to maximize your health benefit. Why can they do so ? Because in areas where products if they are faulty do not leave much space for punishing bad providers by changing preference (you cannot move to another provider if you are dead) and where quality of the product cannot actually be reasonably judged at all by the customer, because even unsuccessful treatment might be the best possible product, how do you leave market forces any leverage to work. Market forces will work as they always do to maximize "market efficiency", but unlike in many other areas that goal is not at all aligned with the goal of providing good medical care, because the feedback loop from customers to providers is highly unstable and unreliable. That was what I was saying that if you consider displayed preference as real preference that is the only way you can make the claim that the system works. Which in this case means that when scared patient buys snake oil from a dealer his displayed preference was to buy a snake oil. You can say since he showed preference for snake oil, market works, as it delivered him exactly what he wanted. Of course I would say that his actual preference was to get healthy, but was too stupid, uneducated, desperate, poor and that transformed his actual preference into buying snake oil instead of buying 1 dollar cheaper antibiotics in the store 10m away. Of course not all people are terminally stupid so the system would not be completely hellish nightmare, but most people are not equipped to make rational decision about most of the medical field, not only because of lack of knowledge but also because of lack of criteria to judge the product in the first place. In the end system would somewhat work, but would be completely inferior to the standard public system in use today. Other things to consider are that moral hazard is much less than in other areas, because of the nature of the offered service. People prefer not to undertake most of the offered services unless they really need to, especially not the most expensive ones.
So what happens when a company displays bad behaviour to their customers to maximise short-term profits? Do you think thats a viable long-term strategy?
And btw the revenues of the "meta-companies" aren't related to whether the consumers are paying the hospitals. (unless they are being paid by the health care companies and thats obv. not a viable long term business model).
And why can't the services be judged? Patients can tell about their experiences (how they were treated). Maybe they do not know if they are getting the correct medicin. But that just creates a demand for the health care instituions to have someone (independed private company) to control that what they are doing is correct. Will that cost them a bit of money. Sure it might, but its probably nessacary. Why? Imagine this:
You are going to have an operation. You have to options:
1) Get an operation at hospital A for 10.000$. You have no information of this hospital.
2) Get an operation at Hospital B for 11.000$. Hospital has great reviews from customers and the independent companies that has reviewed them give them great grades.
What will you choose? This obv. depends on your subjective preferences (obv. the example isn't realistic, as you most likely would have paid by insurance, but the point is still there).
So you might argue, what if he company that is supposed to review them get paid by the Hospital. Obivously they have to hide this for the public. Corruption is a threat in any kind of society. But is the likehood of this happening in the free market higher than in the world controlled by government?
Most likely not. Because on such an important area there could very well be another company that "regulated these "control-companies", and they would use ressources to investigate if this was happening. And if it indeed was happening, the control"-company would lose all its customers pretty quickly. Hence this would be a extremely risky for the control-company.
So you need to remember that the market is aware of all these concerns and they have a solution for them . Maybe the solutions that I represented above aren't the ones the market will choose. I don't know, but the market regulations is much more efficient than the government regulation.
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On February 04 2012 09:34 zimz wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 09:32 darthfoley wrote:On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote:
You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out? Well, i'm a pretty big fan of big government (socialism i guess you could call it). Obviously there is no perfect government i just think it's stupid that lots of people have in their minds BIG GOV = 1984 FREEDOM IS SLAVERY America brainwash are youth in school with small government, capitalism etc. Books, poems, its indoctrinated. If your not 100% for it you are Marxist evil communist. Republicans think of democrats as that.
Indeed, it's rather disturbing how polarizing Obama is. People hate him for no legitimate reasons (in general, blind hate) or lots of people (usually minorities) how blind love him because he's half black. Might sound racist/whatever but it's true. Lots of first hand experience both ways
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On February 04 2012 09:29 bLooD. wrote:
I really hope Obama get reelected for a second term. I can't imagine how bad things will get with Romney.
It's pretty much a sure thing that he'll be the republican candidate, right?
that's what Im counting on.
observing how the conservatives in this thread think renews my faith that Romney will really tank things 
Americans need a harsh lesson in reality. it is high time to quit lying to ourselves and to leave the 1980s and enter the 2010s
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On February 04 2012 09:40 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 08:40 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 07:30 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 07:19 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 06:46 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 05:47 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 05:35 Kiarip wrote:On February 03 2012 10:37 aksfjh wrote:
With the exception of housing, which is widely under debate at this moment, the programs you list do things cheaper than the private sector. Education tuitions rose because state budgets have refused to increase funding based on demand for nearly a decade. Military costs went through the roof because we turned to the private sector to help fight the war, instead of sticking to tradition and conscripting. My argument is that when private sector is forced to the compete with the government the prices go up disproportionately to the quality. So all my examples basically on point. I'm talking about costs both private and public. Government drove up the price of education with easy credit, housing with easy credit, medicine with guarantees and subsidies, and military with contracts. These types of economies don't work, you either need to have the whole thing nationalized or privatized without government incentives, and when you're dealing with a situation of individual customers private sector tends to be better, while for something like the military, you obviously want that fully nationalized, but the point is that when you have the two compete you get basically the worst possible situation. I might agree with you on this partially. But I would add that private sector tends to do better only if the customer has at least some ability to actually judge the service at least somewhat objectively. Healthcare is one of those where that is not true and consequences of error are often fatal. Education also but for somewhat different reasons. The first part is definitely true. However you underestimate the effiency of the free market. When its difficult for the consumer to understand how the industry works, they have a need. The market can satisfy that need, and new companies will (probably) specialize in explaining how the health care industry works, and how they minizimze their costs in relation to their needs. However when government is in involved in the market, consumers tend to feel "safe". Like believing that government will fix their problems, and hence their isn't a strong enough demand for private companies to deliever a product that makes it easy to judge the services of the health care sector. Operation of healthcare industry is the easier part to explain. The medicine is the hard part. Those meta-companies will be as useless to the consumers as the original ones. And as all private companies in a market where consumer is not able to judge the product even after he used it, they will just be ripping everyone and most successful will be the ones with best PR department that provide least service, but make it look good. It is easily seen in the privatized parts of the healthcare sector all over the world. Of course you can take a hardcore libertarian stance, that the consumers get what they wanted, no matter if they got totally ripped off compared to the "forced choice" of public system. But if you think that displayed preference is always equal to the real preference I do not think we have any common basis to continue without getting into an even bigger tangent. People complain all the time about healthcare system, so no, people are not complacent, but their complaints are mostly totally wrong and just highlighting my point. If those meta-companies doesn't work they go bankrupt. Why wouldn't they work? They will do everything in their power to make the market easy to understand and analyze for their consumers, because that is their product. And if they are to make money some people have to buy their product. Oh they will make money, and people will buy their products, but not because those companies will offer anything worthwhile, but because people are gullible and have extremely limited ability to judge those products. How do you know if you need CT, you ask the company and they will tell you exactly that what will maximize their profit, which is rarely linked to what is necessary to maximize your health benefit. Why can they do so ? Because in areas where products if they are faulty do not leave much space for punishing bad providers by changing preference (you cannot move to another provider if you are dead) and where quality of the product cannot actually be reasonably judged at all by the customer, because even unsuccessful treatment might be the best possible product, how do you leave market forces any leverage to work. Market forces will work as they always do to maximize "market efficiency", but unlike in many other areas that goal is not at all aligned with the goal of providing good medical care, because the feedback loop from customers to providers is highly unstable and unreliable. That was what I was saying that if you consider displayed preference as real preference that is the only way you can make the claim that the system works. Which in this case means that when scared patient buys snake oil from a dealer his displayed preference was to buy a snake oil. You can say since he showed preference for snake oil, market works, as it delivered him exactly what he wanted. Of course I would say that his actual preference was to get healthy, but was too stupid, uneducated, desperate, poor and that transformed his actual preference into buying snake oil instead of buying 1 dollar cheaper antibiotics in the store 10m away. Of course not all people are terminally stupid so the system would not be completely hellish nightmare, but most people are not equipped to make rational decision about most of the medical field, not only because of lack of knowledge but also because of lack of criteria to judge the product in the first place. In the end system would somewhat work, but would be completely inferior to the standard public system in use today. Other things to consider are that moral hazard is much less than in other areas, because of the nature of the offered service. People prefer not to undertake most of the offered services unless they really need to, especially not the most expensive ones. So what happens when a company displays bad behaviour to their customers to maximise short-term profits? Do you think thats a viable long-term strategy? And btw these "meta-companies" do not make money if the consumer buys more (unless they are being paid by the health care companies and thats obv. not a viable long term business model). And why can't the services be judged? Patients can tell about their experiences (how they were treated). Maybe they do not know if they are getting the correct medicin. But that just creates a demand for the health care instituions to have someone (independed private company) to control that what they are doing is correct. Will that cost them a bit of money. Sure it might, but its probably nessacary. Why? Imagine this: You are going to have an operation. You have to options: 1) Get an operation at hospital A for 10.000$. You have no information of this hospital. 2) Get an operation at Hospital B for 11.000$. Hospital has great reviews from customers and the independent companies that has reviewed them give them great grades. What will you choose? This obv. depends on your subjective preferences (obv. the example isn't realistic, as you most likely would have paid by insurance, but the point is still there). So you might argue, what if he company that is supposed to review them get paid by the Hospital. Obivously they have to hide this for the public. Corruption is a threat in any kind of society. But is the likehood of this happening in the free market higher than in the world controlled by government? Most likely not. Because on such an important area there could very well be another company that "regulated these "control-companies", and they would use ressources to investigate if this was happening. And if it indeed was happening, the control"-company would lose all its customers pretty quickly. Hence this would be a extremely risky for the control-company. So you need to remember that the market is aware of all these concerns and they have a solution for them . Maybe the solutions that I represented above aren't the ones the market will choose. I don't know, but the market regulations is much more efficient than the government regulation.
Instead of $10,000 vs $11,000, it's has been something like $10,000 vs $50,000. The seller offering it cheaper often has some competitive advantage, so they can lower their prices well below the "standard." Just go look at WalMart.
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On February 04 2012 10:21 aksfjh wrote:
Instead of $10,000 vs $11,000, it's has been something like $10,000 vs $50,000. The seller offering it cheaper often has some competitive advantage, so they can lower their prices well below the "standard." Just go look at WalMart.
WalMart's competitive advantage is economy of scale to the degree that they have market power.
thing is, the government could ALWAYS do better than WalMart in terms of economies of scale AND scope.
plus, if the government is operating the system on a break even price structure then you dont have to worry about the prices going up because you have no choice in supplier.
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Good god your ideals scare the shit out of me red_b. I'd sooner move to Singapore than live in the scandinavian-esque country you're hoping the US becomes. Thankfully it's not possible.
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Canada11350 Posts
On February 04 2012 09:17 Derez wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote:
You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out? I actually think that over the last couple of years quite a few ideas that originate from marxism have made it into the mainstream of economic and public debate. The idea that crises are inherent to the system is widely accepted, it's just that people disagree with marx's solution (communism into socialism) because it failed empirically, and it has been replaced with varieties of social/liberal democracy. Control of the means of production, overinvestment and overproduction are originally marxist concepts that have made it into the mainstream too, and are still important arguments against unrestrained capitalism. In certain academic fields this holds true also, most global political economy literature in recent years has been dominated by a resurgence of marxist forms of analysis. It's proven to be quite the useful method of analysis too, if you forego the normative prescriptions marx makes.
Hm, I actually think there's a lot of truth to this. My sociology professor was Marxist, one of my History professors was Keynesian and would go out for beers to argue with the Poli Sci professor who was Marxist. But that's really all I've ever seen and certainly never on forums. But I agree that some of his critiques of capitalism have filtered into mainstream dialogue- control of the means of production is still a useful concept. But his abject failure of his solution puts a damper on things.
Anyways, I won't derail the thread further on that line of thought. It just occured to me that the most strenous counter proposals are usually from one camp and yet never from the former Left.
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The Santorum campaign blasted out the news this evening that conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly will be voting for Rick Santorum. Schlafly came to prominence as an anti-feminist in the 1970s and successfully fought ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. She announced her support for Santorum with a message to supporters of her organization, the Eagle Forum:
This is just a quick note to my Missouri friends to let you know that I'm planning to vote for Rick Santorum in the non-binding presidential preference primary on Tuesday, February 7.
Faithfully,
Phyllis Schlafly
Source
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On February 04 2012 10:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Good god your ideals scare the shit out of me red_b. I'd sooner move to Singapore than live in the scandinavian-esque country you're hoping the US becomes. Thankfully it's not possible.
I'm, curious, do you think living in a Scandinavian country is a bad thing? Why?
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On February 04 2012 10:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Good god your ideals scare the shit out of me red_b. I'd sooner move to Singapore than live in the scandinavian-esque country you're hoping the US becomes. Thankfully it's not possible.
yeah gee wouldnt want to live where in a place where people are happy, healthy and educated now would we?
I would really, truly, honestly rather be the white guy next to the only empty seat on the train in Japan or to have to talk to strangers with a talking dictionary in Belgium than live in an America that promises to be as much a wasteland of ignorance 10 years from now as it is today. So I doubt I will be around to be your boogey man for much longer.
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On February 04 2012 10:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Good god your ideals scare the shit out of me red_b. I'd sooner move to Singapore than live in the scandinavian-esque country you're hoping the US becomes. Thankfully it's not possible.
Please share your ideals and ideas, this could be a fruitful discussion, not just a statement!
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On February 04 2012 11:48 red_b wrote:
I would really, truly, honestly rather be the white guy next to the only empty seat on the train in Japan or to have to talk to strangers with a talking dictionary in Belgium than live in an America that promises to be as much a wasteland of ignorance 10 years from now as it is today. So I doubt I will be around to be your boogey man for much longer.
Ahhh, Japan.
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On February 04 2012 10:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Good god your ideals scare the shit out of me red_b. I'd sooner move to Singapore than live in the scandinavian-esque country you're hoping the US becomes. Thankfully it's not possible.
This is some of the most nonsensical things I've ever read. Seeing as how many of the Scandinavian nations have been living very well in comparison to the rest of the world for a rather long time, it's actually comical that you'd even throw such a comment that you'd rather live in one of the most restrictive nations of Asia when all that hangs out of your lips is a demented idea of "freedom".
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On February 04 2012 11:30 Sanctimonius wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 10:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Good god your ideals scare the shit out of me red_b. I'd sooner move to Singapore than live in the scandinavian-esque country you're hoping the US becomes. Thankfully it's not possible. I'm, curious, do you think living in a Scandinavian country is a bad thing? Why?
While I do think the citizens of those countries have become increasingly dependent and complacent, I don't think they are necessarily bad places to live.
What terrifies me, is that there are people like red_b who think Norway is a comparable country to the US, and is to be used as guiding analogue for our socio-economic system. In reality, our situations are so vastly different that any attempts at forcing such a system would backfire terribly.
The reason their systems function well is because they have way less people, far greater homogeneity in both demographics and business scope, a level of transparency that is unheard of in the US, relatively small issues with immigration, aren't participating in massive drug enforcement wars with mexico, and have a commitment to reasonable foreign policy that's not based on militarism.
Kiarip was 100% correct when he wrote the following a few pages back :
On February 04 2012 05:35 Kiarip wrote:
My argument is that when private sector is forced to the compete with the government the prices go up disproportionately to the quality.
So all my examples basically on point. I'm talking about costs both private and public. Government drove up the price of education with easy credit, housing with easy credit, medicine with guarantees and subsidies, and military with contracts.
These types of economies don't work, you either need to have the whole thing nationalized or privatized without government incentives, and when you're dealing with a situation of individual customers private sector tends to be better, while for something like the military, you obviously want that fully nationalized, but the point is that when you have the two compete you get basically the worst possible situation.
Our country is a hodgepodge of interests and there's absolutely no cohesiveness within our country. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's simply an environment in which free-markets would be vastly superior. It's the reason we're slipping on the Index of Economic Freedoms list which itself states: "Fading confidence in the government’s determination to promote or even sustain open markets has discouraged entrepreneurship and dynamic investment within the private sector."
Additionally, let's not fool ourselves. The primary reason the scandinavians have been economically successful is because of the capitalistic sale of oil. The North Sea oil boom of the 60's-70's lead to a hundred-fold increase in oil production for Norway, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, etc. This coincided with several social reforms being passed and unfortunately, they have taken the majority of the credit for the economic successes within these countries.
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solaric I dont think youre helping your cause by saying Kiarip is right.
enjoy your fantasy world, I would recommend Disney World over your sad libertarian fantasy though.
oh and I say that because you, like the other truly guillible types, buy into the lie that America could never follow a proven superior model because of reasons such as size, demographics, etc. your line of reasoning is self defeating and you at best contribute to the trend of the US hurtling backwards in time that started in the 1980s when it quit being the American dream and started being the rich white guy dream.
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Those aren't ideals I'm stating, those are facts.
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On February 04 2012 12:23 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Those aren't ideals I'm stating, those are facts.
this is what libertarians think trolololol
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Please elaborate. You think our spending on the things I listed is beneficial to the economic system you're proposing?
At least attempt a cogent argument instead of using memes.
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On February 04 2012 11:30 Sanctimonius wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 10:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Good god your ideals scare the shit out of me red_b. I'd sooner move to Singapore than live in the scandinavian-esque country you're hoping the US becomes. Thankfully it's not possible. I'm, curious, do you think living in a Scandinavian country is a bad thing? Why?
I'm pretty sure the happiest people in the world live in Scandinavian countries. Not that the US should be like them as the culture and geography is much different but still it wouldn't be bad to live there.
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well I cant fault your for identification of causes, but your understanding of the effects is deeply flawed and based on ideology as opposed to actual statistical inference.
your claim; that imposing a scandanavian system on the US would automatically result in disaster, is CLEARLY conjecture.
unwillingness to test models that work is not surprising coming from someone who buys into the hilarious argument that the models do not scale without any historical basis for it. several empires throughout history scaled up mercantalism which was demonstrated to be flawed and did not fall apart. please provide a historical example of where the scandanavian model was scaled up and failed.
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EPT
