nst the ideology of President Obama is being waged by those people with the same values and passions as those who waged the fight against slavery in the United States. This can be seen by comparing the arguments made in favor of Obamacare and those made in favor of maintaining slavery in the United States. Upon careful examination, these two situations are eerily similar.Today, not much has changed. We hear health care is not affordable and the crushing weight of health insurance and care will destroy the U.S. economy. Advocates who claim such things believe this correlates to a justification for destroying the principle that each person, and the business they choose to enter, possess the same rights as everyone else.
Somehow it is also reasoned that a person’s right to choose to not pay for health insurance must be sacrificed for the supposed greater good of more affordable health care. We are told that doctors and medical device manufacturers’ profits must be kept at what a politician considers reasonable because the economics of freedom, somehow, simply do not add up. Much like the economics of freedom for slaves somehow did not add up during the early potions of our nation’s history.
Argument 2: Every society on earth has it
Robert Higgs, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, cites in his article titled Ten Reasons Not to Abolish Slavery, one of the main reasons given at the time was every other society on Earth had slavery. This is very much like what we hear today about government controlled health care.
Doug Pibel and Sarah van Gelder of Yes Magazine states that the U.S. is the only industrialized nation without nationalized health care in their article Health Care: It's What Ails Us. So, of course, one must conclude that because all other industrialized nations exploit health care workers’ minds and effort for their own irrational desires, the U.S. should follow.
Argument 3: People can’t take care of themselves
Higgs also cites that prior to the Civil War the belief that if one wants to offer freewill to slaves, the result would be cruelty and destitute for the rest of their lives. This same argument is made by Pibel and van Gelder today. “An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured.”
In other words, Pibel and van Gelder are claiming that people cannot survive on their own today, so it is necessary to take the property (money is property) from one group in order to compensate for those who are either too ignorant or unproductive to provide health insurance on their own.
Upon making these points to a person determined to believe they are advocating for a moral and American position by imposing universal or Obamacare-type health care upon the country, they generally move to the absurd. Much like those who supported slavery so many years ago.
Such arguments as, ‘unrest will ensue without the right of one group to take what they need from another for their health care needs,’ or the idea that free markets in health care will not work as well as the free markets in food distribution and so many other industries. All of these arguments are very similar to those made in favor of slavery.
According to Higgs, pro-slavery advocates claimed “[w]ithout slavery the former slaves would run amuck, stealing, raping, killing, and generally causing mayhem.” Furthermore, they cite that others stated “[t]rying to get rid of slavery is foolishly utopian and impractical.” Both arguments are perfectly parallel to those made today, invoked only when all other arguments have failed.
There is a reason why the mantra “land of the free, home of the brave” is an axiom that underscores the American experiment. In order to be free, one must in fact be brave. One must be willing to work for their earnings. One must respect the equal rights of others. One must fight for principle.
Those people who are willing to stand up for equality under the law and the right of every individual to pick their own destiny, no matter how foolish or unwise, are the newest breed of Americans to fight for freedom and liberty for all. They are the same personalities from yesteryear that stood for what was right, and ended the robbing of dignity and self worth which slavery stole from people of color in early America. They are the newest American heroes.
***
Support for this article will be found:
How a Virginia district court took the first step to save American principles
Health care employment opportunity costs and the inevitable rationing of care
Massachusetts pediatric mental health care provider shortage - the real cause and effect
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Comments: 268
But then government has always demanded taxes. So is this post an argument against all government? If so, how do you propose to prevent government? It seems to spring into existence whenever and where ever money is used. (See Organized Crime.)
If you prefer true freedom instead of the facade of freedom, the false freedom we know today, you might investigate the role money plays in preventing freedom. Change the nature of our money and we can have freedom.
End the Fed!
I feel you are trying to explain how old and modern slavery are beneficial!
It necessarily implies the will and discretion of politicians and bureaucrats being substituted for your own. It implies that the government has legitimate power of disposal over the fruits of your labor, independent of your own wishes. That your own decision-making regarding your life, your actions, and your property is subordinate to that of the state's.
How might you describe this condition; this relationship between the individual and the state? Perhaps "slavery" has connotations too strong to be associated with our present condition. If so, then I propose "serfdom."
That's true of taxes in general as well.
The essence of the state is coercion. You will notice that law is strongly associated with penalties. You will notice that the state has the authority to use deadly force.
You are quite right about the arguments.
Larry, your book and frequent referrals to "money" would warrant you reading what God has to say about it....... It's not money that's the root of all evil, friend. It's the love of money that is the root of all evil. Thus, the problem and what you sincerely believe would fix it or at least change folk's attitudes about it, is merely another symptom of our lack of discernment from choosing to live in a Godless, man run society...
As far as I am concerned, whatever is donated have value or it doesn't. Hence my confusion. Larry insists though that his idea is non-coercive and I believe him.
1. Imported black workforce, the Negroes, were considered and accepted as not even animals the Church itself having STATED that these "black animals" could not be suffering at all and had no souls. Some slaves have developed Stockholm Syndrome but many of these human beings were clever enough as to create some sort of sabotage. The new industries were in need of working forces and these people who were looking to be freed would bring in a new productivity ... if respected. And this has been confirmed, time going on.
BTW some of this new workers have been well treated (as agreed then generally) because these "animals" were bought on the market as you can buy a cow or a bull and therefore "implied an investment" from the master. During WWII, the Nazis had a similar system but didn't pay for "enrolling" their slaves. This gives us an idea about the average living time of a slave when mistreated: about 7 months! Freeing slavery meant then a new and enthusiastic workforce ... which would accept low wages!
2. This is not an argument and is a wrong statement: Most African countries ave no such system but, in fact, they don't enjoy the same living standard than us ... with the exception of the higher classes, of course!
Reality is that 1 child out of 10,000 is born with a slight disease which HAS TO BE CORRECTED asap. Otherwise, when adult, the disease may develop in a quite higher problem: eating, walking ones, etc.
But 1 child out of 40,000 is born with some heavy health problems which cannot be corrected and imply quite heavy expenses and sacrifices. These statistics are increasing due to, it seems, a lesser general sperm quality.
So the question is: can a baby with any disease be able to "take care of himself"? Is it going to slavery if everyone contributes helping him or his family?
3. As far as economy is concerned, industries need to improve productivity and fight absenteeism. Slavery (modern one) implies paying the LOWEST possible wages. However, this becomes an inconvenience when the employees are called to spend in order to support the industries. Taking care of themselves, facing the risks of illness, sickness, accidents, unexpected disabilities implies creating reserves in order to face them. And, obviously, the longer the life is, the more exposure to such disease is.
On the other hand, the governments are not in a position to control each and everyone health care bills. So some intermediate control has to be set (insurances) which should be competing in order to provide the best services with the lowest premiums. The market is "expected" to help in this matter.
Any how, the lost difference is to be paid by the taxpayer and through the debt.
And when one takes into consideration that a non-insured person calling on ER costs about 7 times more than calling for a doctor, one can understand how expensive the non-insured are to the taxpayer.
Furthermore, often, who calls for ER is not a taxpayer!
In fact Universal Health Care is a compelled saving in order to avoid raising other taxes on the near or medium future.
Shall I underline here that all and every country applying such Universal Health Care system enjoyed a slow down of the medical raising costs? A raise all countries try to slowdown?
If there is no expense control, are the industries, the hospitals and clinics, the doctors willing to low down their issued bills and invoices? Could the market provide a better system?
If one goes to a doctor he may, of course, get a better bill reduction when discussing it. However this will be done on an increased rate: the insurance has therefore a better way to counter-check and even to limit the bill than an individual.
One thing that is not taken into consideration is that many people who do work and pay taxes are the ones giving these free programs their tax money, whether we want to or not ... But many by doing so are the very ones who cannot afford insurance or are the underinsuranced... How is this fair? So , in other words the poorer middleclass or even the working poor are kept down by paying taxes and their money is being taken away to support someone else... This is just crazy...
John, great comparison and great article... I get what you are saying and its the truth... It does appear that History does indeed repeat itself...
I feel we shall end up with no workers, no employees, no soldiers but just CEOs working in banks and creating some other bubble!
Provided these CEOs are mainly males ... should we just ask prostitutes to procreate?
This position recalls me the Nazi one when just blondies were expected to procreate as well.
There is a problem ... it seems to me. (LOL)
BTW, are you blonde?
Obviously no baby can "take care of himself." It is the responsibility of parents, family, guardians, etc., to take care of youth until the time when they are adults and can assume the full responsibilities implied with self-ownership.
At any rate, you seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between the mutually-voluntary social phenomena of fraternity, philanthropy, charitable assistance, etc. on the one hand, and compulsory government wealth redistribution programs on the other.
Just because a person opposes something being done by compulsion, doesn't mean they oppose the thing as such. It is commendable when a person sacrifices their time or money to assist someone in need. It is not so commendable if that person robs a third party at gunpoint and then turns around to give that money to someone in need. (Not to mention arrogantly presumptuous; how do they know that person didn't intend to do something with that money which would have provided an opportunity to benefit the person in need to a much greater extent?)
As far as economy is concerned, industries need to improve productivity and fight absenteeism. Slavery (modern one) implies paying the LOWEST possible wages.
The fact that businesses negotiate wages does not imply "slavery." If the workers are not being compelled to labor, then it necessarily implies that not only is the employer/employee relationship contractual and mutually-voluntary, it also necessarily implies that the worker considered the job to be the best opportunity available to them (or else they would have done something else).
The only time a word or concept like "slavery" applies is when the pertinent relationships between individuals or institutions is hegemonic, not voluntary and contractual.
Of course employers want to keep costs as low as possible, and this implies paying the lowest wages workers will accept. But when you speak as if wages were determined solely by employer fiat, you are being intellectually dishonest and/or falling prey to the most egregious (but easily refuted) Marxist fallacies.
In a market-based society, wages are a price, just like any other market price; and they determined the same way all other market prices are determined: by the relationship between the supply of, and demand for, the various types and sub-types of specialized labor. Ultimately, workers tend to receive in wages the full value which their particular contribution to production commands. Obviously, governmental interference with prices and contractual relationships have certain effects on this economic Law; but they cannot defeat it any more than political decrees can defeat the Law of Gravity.
At any rate, I think the term "slavery" has infinitely more relevance where considering the condition where the state claims authority to compel individuals to purchase products regardless of their wishes; i.e., claiming the right to make individuals decisions regarding disposal of the fruits of their labor subordinate to the whim and discretion of politicians bureaucrats; than it does concerning the terms of mutually-voluntary contractual arrangements between employers and workers.
Taking care of themselves, facing the risks of illness, sickness, accidents, unexpected disabilities implies creating reserves in order to face them. And, obviously, the longer the life is, the more exposure to such disease is.
Right. No one is arguing that point. What is being argued against, is your logically-deficient leap to assuming that the above statement necessarily implies that "creating reserves" is something that must be done by statist compulsion.
It is a premise which itself assumes that people are generally stupid and backwards and unable to make provisions for themselves without being coerced and cajoled by political and bureaucratic overlords into doing that which is in their own best interests to do. It assumes that people are too dull and imbecilic to be trusted to care for their own needs on their own terms.
And all that is aside from the even more unsound assumption that politicians and bureaucrats have anything resembling a right or legitimate authority to compel people to purchase "insurance," or any commodity or service for that matter.
So some intermediate control has to be set (insurances) which should be competing in order to provide the best services with the lowest premiums. The market is "expected" to help in this matter.
Yes, well; it's kind of hard for the market to help to anywhere near it's potential when it is persistently being sabotaged from all points and angles by incessant interventionist statism.
You can't have a situation where the government regiments nearly every aspect of an entire industry, interfering with everything from prices to minutia of service terms and stipulations, and is responsible for nearly 50% of all expenditures within the industry -- and then when costs are accelerating through the roof and prices go out of reach of more and more people, point the finger of blame at "the market"! It's the absolute epitome of intellectual dishonesty and self-reinforced ideological obtusity.
Any how, the lost difference is to be paid by the taxpayer and through the debt.
Why? Why is this just automatically assumed; treated as Holy Writ? you certainly can't just toss out this assumption as a valid argument in favor of socialization of medicine. How about this for a solution to all the complications implied by that situation: Stop making taxpayers responsible for subsidizing the ER costs of the broke and uninsured!
Why should the government be considered a de facto collections agency for hospitals?
You know, it hasn't always been that way. There was a time -- back before state violence was widely considered the de facto solution to all problems whatsoever -- when voluntary fraternal and religious charitable institutions and organizations contributed to the emergency medical provisions of the poor and infirm, and whatever shortfall remained was written off as a charitable contribution of the hospital staff and doctors themselves; and no one was ever turned away. And know what? Skyrocketing healthcare costs and insurance premiums -- not to mention taxes, deficits and public debts -- were not a consequence, and indeed weren't even on the social-political radar screen.
In fact Universal Health Care is a compelled saving in order to avoid raising other taxes on the near or medium future.
Nonsense. In the first place, having bureaucrats negotiate prices instead of market forces is a tried and true way to raise costs and consumer prices -- regardless of the cooked-book, manipulated statistical dissembling of government agencies.
Secondly, even if socialized medicine was an effective way to arrest or bring down costs and consumer prices (which it is not), that still would have no bearing on the relative burden of future taxpayers.
It's almost a rule of thumb that government will spend as much as it can possibly expropriate without inciting rebellion; especially in this day and age of unprecedented, unadulterated statism. Whatever might be saved in one area of expenditure will almost certainly be amply compensated for by increased spending in another.
Shall I underline here that all and every country applying such Universal Health Care system enjoyed a slow down of the medical raising costs?
Shall I underline that to the extent that what you say has any merit at all, that it can be wholly attributed to rationing and arrested development of progress and innovation?
Sure, government can "control costs" when it controls every aspect of an industry. But that "cost control" comes at a serious, heavy price in terms of availability and quality of service, and the opportunity costs in terms of lost potential innovation and increased productivity and access (i.e., real lower costs and prices).
This whole argument underscores the intellectual and ideological bankruptcy of whole generations by statist indoctrination. It shouldn't require an economist or historian to point out that free markets have always been, and are always, attendant to greater abundance, more widespread availability, lower consumer costs and increased quality. So why is it so hard to fathom that the very forces which bring that result about in every other area of social cooperation and exchange, would bring the same results if cooperation and exchange were not so regimented and "regulated" in the area of healthcare provision and health insurance markets?
How an individual will make the difference ... supposing, EVEN, that he is AWARE of all in need? Color skin, empathy, accepted sickness, personal hospital support? Church? Beliefs?
The only time a word or concept like "slavery" applies is when the pertinent relationships between individuals or institutions is hegemonic, not voluntary and contractual.
An individual who NEEDS to work and don't find any could accept anything even food stamps discarding not only personal needs but even RESPECT. Human beings are not machines you put on work or not ...
It is a premise which itself assumes that people are generally stupid and backwards and unable to make provisions for themselves
When an individual can't create reserves because the wages are too low, is he stupid?
Stop making taxpayers responsible for subsidizing the ER costs of the broke and uninsured!
OK. Imagine a hospital in deficit because of non-payments. Will you close it and harm all future ill people? Where will you look for the lacking money? Do you believe the banks will fund it? Will you wipe out the ER? Will you send someone with a heart attack from Kansas to New York? Will you look for charity before caring him? And if an accident with practically lethal consequences, will you ask the ambulance driver for charity before even looking at the bodies?
Human beings are not just numbers on a statistic sheet.
But for sure you have studied all the related problems and their organization. I am pretty sure of it. Therefore you are in a position as to help us understand how the deficits created by late or unpaid bills is going to be compensated ... without taxpayer intervention.
Of course, no government needs to raise taxes: it could be sufficient to proceed to money devaluations as in any banana country or in Weimar. But you have never experienced this ... yet.
Again a lot of words to justify the unjustifiable.
reminds me of a modified old saying to remember days in a month
"30 days hath septober, april joon, and no wonder, except peanut butter, because my gran mudder has wooden wheels on her tricycle. can you swim?"
holy sheep dip.
This being stated, I am glad to see that with a few more learning I could add Japanese as a 5th language. I'll consider it, Del Nerkez!
Back to the subject, indeed John " companies always must deal with bad debt."
The problem is not lying there: The problem remains public health. So you may have 2 types of hospitals: private and public.
Public ones are funded by the taxpayer and therefore call for ER while delaying some interventions and surgeries to the benefit of urgent ones. They issue bills, expect them to be paid and, when applicable, revert to the taxpayer.
These hospitals usually have ER full of people, many of them with benign diseases and non-emergency treatment. They cost about 7 times more than just a doctor consultation while they slow down emergency help.
Furthermore, these public hospitals, depend on the taxpayer as far as their budgets and expenses are concerned.
On the other hand you have private clinics which are competing on the market but which competition is "twisted" for many reasons including proximity and corporatism agreement.
In the middle, in America, maybe even exclusively, you have semi-public hospitals PARTIALLY funded by large US companies - as a former finance VP to one of them, I know what I am talking about. These hospitals ARE DEFINITELY of public help. They extend invoices as any corporation and have to face unpaid bills.
How are these hospitals going to wipe out these unpaid bills?
1. Either raising the next bills (expecting them to be paid) but increasing the risk of lack of payment.
2. Either by calling the known donors for a new gift. This could be successful but charity is in no way a permanent solution.
3. Either by calling on the public. However many of these hospitals are in a way or another, share companies and such pace would harm all the shareholders making it even tougher to get bank extended credit lines.
All above means that, at the end of the day, no funding is sure enough. However the public service remains NEEDED, remains a question of PUBLIC HEALTH, so these institutions are just left - unless you have another suggestion which is ignored for the time being - with one pace to achieve: calling for help to the taxpayer!
Furthermore, often - and the hospital organization we were funding shows it - these hospitals specialize in some particular field(s) mostly dependent on their own locations. Shall we penalize this R&D, because bills remain unpaid?
So, at the end of the day, the Authorities have to face this dilemma: helping or not! Avoiding help may be quite expensive for many reasons including geographical and political ones.
At this point, supposing the taxpayer will not help the hospital, the bills will remain unpaid and the hospital may disappear with harsh consequences in case of accidents, heart attacks, brain diseases, blood problems, etc.
So how would you deal with the final gap? How will you fill it in , if you decide to? Where would you search for the lacking funds? How much would you have to repay in case of a loan? Who will provide it for sure to you?
Please solve the problem without involving the taxpayer at all!
I am asking you to provide a solution without involving to the taxpayer!
A solution where YOU take into account the consequences and their many feedbacks.
As far as I can see, even when Enron, Lehman Brothers, etc went into bankruptcy the taxpayer has paid for the debts. Each shareholders of them WAS, as well, a TAXPAYER. So, your solution you will provide will have to take this into account.
Thanks.
I asked you for a complete system. Not just empty sentences.
If the company/hospital has enough money it pays the debt.
If the company/hospital has not enough money if goes bankrupt. OK?
If it goes bankrupt (even after Chapter 11) each creditor will sue the management to receive the money back. OK?
But the liquidation of the company will never provide enough funds and the management company, even held responsible, is not intending to pay.
At the end of the day, after several years of legal actions, NO ONE IS PAYING.
Maybe some people will receive just a partial amount but nothing else.
All those people who didn't receive their money (or received it only partially) ARE TAXPAYERS.
But on top of it, the hospital has a social goal to achieve and despite being BROKE it has several patients being under care.
Who will bwe paying the lack of money? the TAXPAYER.
Who will take care of the abandoned patients? The TAXPAYER
WHAT IF THE TAX PAYER REFUSES TO PAY? The national debt increases.
If the national debt increases, who pays the interests? THE TAXPAYER.
If the Hospital has an insurance covering some error, the insurance will pay for it. OK?
But then, who pays back the insurance? THE TAXPAYER as the premiums increase.
Despite your statements, you AVOID describing the whole process just because everyone knows that CREDITORS are , as well, TAXPAYERS.
I suggested you to take as an example Lehman Bs. OK?
All investors, even covered by the FDIC, are TAXPAYERS.
But you may be alone on earth. Then YOU will pay for ALL your problem. You, then, will be the TAXPAYER.
So what? People lose money on investments all the time and yes they are taxpayers. What do you want Gilbert? People to not have to suffer the consequences of their dumb decisions? You are not making any sense.
But on top of it, the hospital has a social goal to achieve and despite being BROKE it has several patients being under care.
So what? Lots of people and organizations have goals. What do you want Gilbert? People to not have to suffer the consequences of their dumb decisions? You are not making any sense.
But then, who pays back the insurance? THE TAXPAYER as the premiums increase.
They can always just get another insurance company. You go under the assumption that the world is encompassed with this coercive, socialist utopia you envision in which no one has any choices and everyone has to go tot he same place to get everything. Capitalism solves this problem, you should educate yourself accordingly Gilbert.
All investors, even covered by the FDIC, are TAXPAYERS.
Exactly, this should end.
People to not have to suffer the consequences of their dumb decisions?
We are now reverting to the beginning: Are sicknesses and illnesses the consequences of personal decisions?
I'll help you: in no way and they cannot be held responsible for it unless they look for it.
Should they depend only on charity? You to respond to this.
Lots of people and organizations have goals.
Usually doctors, hospitals and patients have just one goal: CURE and many, if not all of them want to avoid DEATH. Impeding them to even try to achieve such goals is KILLING THEM BY PROXY and YOU ARE INVOLVED.
They can always just get another insurance.
So you are so dumb that you haven't notice that premiums are similar from one insurance to another? Don't be so dumb (or naive) as to ignore that all insurance companies RE-INSURE their own risks to main other insurances alike LLoyds, Swiss Re, Global, etc. - some of them accepts even individuals, this may be a tip.
Capitalism or socialism have nothing to do with it.
This deals with our personal concept of what our society should be. You should pray and beware for not collapsing as Schiavo did in her own home ...
Should I also mention about this young guy who needed a heart transplant, last year? Was he responsible for having a heart problem since born? Was he dumb enough as to have such an illness?
Your position is LET HIM DIE. He was lucky enough to receive charity thanks to the media. But the media are not in a position to talk about all the others.
My suggestion to you: Take an afternoon and pay a visit to a hospital and explain the patients your position: "if you can't afford the care, you just should stay home (if ever you have one - 50% of teenagers attending schools are actually homeless here in Florida) despite pains and death risks."
I'm sure you will be welcomed!
i certainly apoligize with all my heart for my comment about your language.
i myself have severe arthritis, and a muscle disease, that cause typing to be a problem at times - going back to correct, hitting keys two at once, using caps on a regular basis etc.
did not mean to be disparaging, was simply confused.
Sorry for the delay in responding. Not enough hours in the day, know what I mean?
How an individual will make the difference ... supposing, EVEN, that he is AWARE of all in need? Color skin, empathy, accepted sickness, personal hospital support? Church? Beliefs?
I do not mean to say that one individual "will make all the difference." Only that the decision to buy insurance or not, or to give to charity or not, and which charity to give to or how much to give to each, etc., belongs rightfully to each individual, and should be vested only in the individual.
The recognition that human rights are exclusively rights of individuals, does not in any way deny or repudiate social cooperation. It only repudiates coercive, hegemonic social bonds, as opposed to mutually-voluntary, contractual bonds. Do you understand this?
An individual who NEEDS to work and don't find any could accept anything even food stamps discarding not only personal needs but even RESPECT. Human beings are not machines you put on work or not ...
For one thing, it is grossly inaccurate to speak of people "not being able find work" in reference to a modern, market-based society. What is most often the case is an individual not being able to find work at the particular wages being demanded, or often not being able to find work at the minimum level of wages commanded by government decree in that area.
But at any rate, the fact that an individual is indeed free to turn down job offers which don't correspond to the particular wage rate he would prefer, and free to quit whatever job he may accept or change jobs at his-her leisure, puts the lie to the bogus association of wage labor with slavery.
Obamacare, on the other hand (and socialized medicine in general; and in fact Socialism in general), implies the State presuming the authority to compel individuals to engage in transactions without regard for the voluntary will or discretion of the individual. It implies the state presuming the right of determining disposition of the fruits of our labor. To sum it up; it implies the relationship of the individual to the state to be parallel to the relationship of the slave to his master.
And I find it quite ironic that you would lecture me about humans not being "machines you put on work or not."
I am quite cognizant and respectful of the unique individuality of each human being. That is precisely why I believe that the decisions regarding the lives and property of individuals which socialized medicine places under control of the state, should be left to the discretion of each individual.
It is your ideology which considers the fruits of human labor to be little more than a giant hodgepodge of fodder for the social engineering schemes of politicians and bureaucrats. It is your ideology which regards humans as unthinking, idle automatons, only receiving initiative and virtue by the beneficent intervention of the State.
When an individual can't create reserves because the wages are too low, is he stupid?
Possibly, though not necessarily. My point was that statist ideology assumes that we are all stupid; that it requires the coercive commands of politicians and bureaucrats for human society to function satisfactorily.
But anyhow, I haven't suggested that the only legitimate way for people to deal with unforeseen medical emergencies is to be self-sufficient. I am not against the concept of health insurance; I am only against the regimentation of the industry by statist interventionism.
People of modest means are still capable of joining together with others for the purpose of combining and pooling resources to create a reserve (which can even be managed by financial professionals to become an interest-bearing reserve), so as to diffuse risk of unforeseen catastrophy.
This is what is known as insurance; and as a market phenomenon, it is relatively inexpensive and effective. It's to the extent that it has become the subject of government interventionism that it has come to resemble more of a scam, and has become prohibitively expensive for many.
I'll be back to get to the rest of your comment later this evening...
So we both have the theory but, it seems, that I am the only one to have the physical experience of it and this in many ways, but this is far too long to tell over here.
Theory is nothing if you can't put it in practice. And your first paragraph, is already not responding to practice: How will you manage to reach your point? How will you accept or discard any help to any one? Which are to be the criteria? Who is going to set the criteria? etc.
As far as the 2 others, they are so far from reality, it seems that you have not even had the opportunity to watch films from the years 1930's when the industries were dismantled, closed and could not hire at any wage; it seems that you never been in Hungary 1956, Spain 1939 to 1962, Europe from 1939 to 1952 about, Argentina 1960's, Brazil, etc. just to mention countries I've been involved with in a way or another.
No. You never saw thousand people in line to get just a bowl of soup or an already to old piece of bread not bigger than their own hand! A bread made of corn, which was so delicate to handle that people picked up the crumbs on the floor!
You never saw these people (as in Europe after the war) dying on the streets because no one would take care of their injuries, hospitals being full, and unable to hire doctors either due to lack of funds, either simply because doctors were not existing any more "on the market" as you say.
BTW the market was perfect no supply and no demand and if, YOUR General Marshall would have not interfered (once more America) trhe crisis would have reached you as well.
So, you are a perfect BOOK as far as economy is concerned (excepted Economic History) but you never dealt with the matter as I did sometimes before even my own studies and quite often after.
You may call communism when trying to heal someone who has not even the means to reach any "existing" hospital or even cure. I call criminal not helping someone in need of it, mainly when his life depends on such cure. As I stated already to John Niewicki, this lack of help is being a criminal by proxy.
John has a Polish name but he never been in Poland after the war and, most probably, refused to hear any report on what had been going on.
You are a generation of happy people who got much more than we had but you are just out of reality ... to be kind enough.
However, the least we can do, is to be aware that past will never be recovered, that we may have some influence on a short economic future but on the long run, I mean on a future exceeding so many WEEKS we are just hoping to be most probably right.
From one day to another, no one was able to preview the Fukushima tsunami but we were able to preview 1956 in Hungary for many reasons not to be told over here.
We were even able to preview the Argentinian disaster while the after WWII in Europe was a good training as inflation was going on and few working places were opened due to the destruction.
However when you see, lying in the street kids among adults which cannot be cured because of lack of antibiotics and dying, screaming due to the pains, there is no question of budgets for hospitals, of how many doctors we could hire - if any available - of any budget to be granted in order to find some alcohol, not even any kind of pain-killer........
Of course, you would have "filtered" the entries, not even the bed availabilities, within the recovered premises (as done nowadays in Syria) were a doctor works without any stop for 36 hours.
And the filter you would apply first is: "Can you afford it?"
Then, of course, the second filter would be the importance of the guy. Can he/she tell us more about ... ? Where is his/her family? Can we use it for extracting some info?
The more important the guy the more chance to find a place.
Then the next filter would be maybe blonde or brown?
Then the next one could be the ability to play music, etc. etc.
Not all criminals were sentenced in Nuremburg, many escaped, were recovered by any country or were just acting on behalf of other criminals as Stalin.
However, to see nowadays the same criminal, indeed criminal, ideas flourishing again is ... to say the least, the very least ... disappointing!
Up to now we sent to prisons people AFTER they having committed a crime.
There is not enough available space for sending to prisons people BEFORE they have the opportunity to commit a crime.
However, if everyone in charge of others, would share just a few weeks with criminals it could be a true education: they would have a chance to learn what's FREEDOM.
As human being I have and still will help other human beings as many evolved animals do.
Those unable to do so - unless being paid for it - are just pets and do not deserve any human respect.
You claim to be a man of science but as usual show yourself to be a sentimentalist and bleeding heart and someone who can only call on emotive argument to back up your points. And I notice your chosen science today is economics, how many careers do you have? It's amazing you find time to comment here. OK, let's look at what you say:
Reality is that 1 child out of 10,000 is born with a slight disease which HAS TO BE CORRECTED asap. Otherwise, when adult, the disease may develop in a quite higher problem: eating, walking ones, etc.
But 1 child out of 40,000 is born with some heavy health problems which cannot be corrected and imply quite heavy expenses and sacrifices. These statistics are increasing due to, it seems, a lesser general sperm quality.
So the question is: can a baby with any disease be able to "take care of himself"? Is it going to slavery if everyone contributes helping him or his family?
Now the problem with this woolly brained, unscientific, bleeding heart liberalism is that when we examine the costs involved it quickly becomes clear that advances in medicine which can keep alive (at enormous cost) humans that are not viable or cure at the embryo stage genetic defects which may or may not manifest themselves in later life impose such a financial burden on society we would all have to be enslaved by the government to pay the enormous social costs of salving your conscience.
A statistic related to breast cancer screening came up in the UK today, the government spends £96million a year to save just 1,400 lives. That's £7million a life. Your philosphy might say it is worth spending £96 million if only one life is saved (someone actually did say that on TV earier.) But we have to be practical. To start prolonging all the lives that could be prolonged by thowing that kind of money at medical and social care we would soon find the bill exceeding GDP.
Judging from your track record on economics threads I'd guess you are already thinking of replying that the government can just print more money. But anyone with the slightest understanding of economics would know that the value of currency has to be underwritten by something. And we have seen over the last few years the consequences of inflating asset values to produce the illusion of economic growth.
Now that approach has failed you would have us all become slaves to a Soviet style state.
Gilbert, you know less about economics than my dog knows about literary criticism. And to put that in perspective, I don't have a dog.
BTW you plead that English is only your fourth language, so how come sometimes you write with a foreign accent and at others in standard American usage? Just askin'.
Being a scientist is not just adding figures and an economist is not a financier. It could be but not by definition. An economist works the for WEALTH of all and not only for just a few people.
And, as such, I did this on the field. No financiers may be interested and I don't give a dime for it.
Financiers, when governing, end sharing the wealth among their family and friends. I still support the idea that this is CRIMINAL. And if you don't you can just join them: I don't care!
Science shows that time flows and that your subprimes were just another financiers' ... swindle due to deregulations.
I am an OLD economist but I go with the newer generation while you are just someone adding figures who believe achieving some intelligent work as per old books.
I don't know you personally Gilbert and your personal attacks makes me wonder why I truly believe this is the case, but I think this adage does apply to you. Most often I believe people are truly malicious and know their actions will lead to a bad situation, but they are simply lazy and can't take care of themselves so they are willing to sacrifice what is right for their own need to not have to be responsible.
Your attempts at utopia are misguided and wrong. People die. Bad things happen. People do not get care when they need it. This is true in countries in which health care is "free" and in countries where it is not.
Here's your proof:
"Postcode lottery in social services"
"Older women 'denied breast cancer treatment'"
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa532.pdf
Check out:
Page 4: Patients seen annually
Page 4: Time spent with the doctor
Page 5: High tech procedures and equipment (fig. 4 &5)
"Thousands shun the NHS"
"How Swedish socialists chose private health care"
Brown apologizes for unacceptable failings at Stafford 'Third World' hospital
and on and on and on . . .
The ONLY question is, what principles are you going to support? The on where people are treated equal under the law, or the one where "some are more equal than others"?
As I just stated to Sue, the only question, as far as I am concerned is "How are we going to avoid the unpaid gap to increase?"
How are we going to organize the system taking into considerations each and every feedback?
At the end of the day, whichever the gap is, the taxpayer will have to be involved. Which are the roots of the gap? How to reduce it? How to improve quality despite the gap?
IMO, the gap will not be reduced thanks to a simple refusal of any system. Even the "either you can afford it, either we shall not take care of you" will end to be FAR more expensive than anu other "system" (provided that a NO-system is, in fact a system in itself).
PS No personal attacks against you ... unless you consider that pushing someone into a corner is an insult. Creation is still at this price, unfortunately.
Well, in that case the answer for you is slavery. Just find a population large enough to support what you want and from birth train them to be doctors and staff. You wouldn't have to treat them poorly, give them housing, food, entertainment, everything they need, just remove their pesky free will.
All set, problem solved right Gilbert? Free is as affordable as it gets.
This is my point - the people with your views are the same people who had the same value system that support slavery. Congratulations! You are in good company, you and the president of the US.
No persona attacks?? "So you are so dumb that . . . blah blah blah blah"
If ever you consider that someone who has just enough for living should give up freedom ... you are on the perfect track for NAZISM!
It means that who have far enough for living, far enough as to create industries and political links needs to institute slavery. GOOD THINKING OF YOURS!
Mainly for who has Polish ancestors! Congratulations!
Did you got the "Mein Kampf" diploma or are you still trying to figure it out?
"Well, in that case the answer for you is slavery. Just find a population large enough to support what you want and from birth train them to be doctors and staff. You wouldn't have to treat them poorly, give them housing, food, entertainment, everything they need, just remove their pesky free will."
YOU issued the idea. Not me. YOU jumped into it. Not me. YOU decided that if they have food, home, entertainment(?) everything they need just remove their pesky free will.
I never state anything else than FIRST MINIMUM NEEDS. The minimum needs that any HB is entitled to, HEALTH included, EDUCATION included.
As you seem interested in the matter you should be aware that ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY when such needs are fill up, the HB becomes cooperative, tries to be productive (second needs) and that only when these second needs are fill up the HB is in need of power (Third need) over the others.
So your reasoning is that the guy who just have enough for living (food, housing, health, education) is already a danger for you and our society. This why, I suppose, you would prefer to strip him from "secured" health and, if possible, education ... as some governors did, BTW, last year.
However, EDUCATION and HEALTH drive the wealth of a country.
I appreciate your reasoning.
I say nothing of my solution. Read it again Gilbert.
My question is "How come you reach such reasoning". I want you to describe your reasoning, not just statements, not just unsupported statements.
Just a complete reasoning of yours. But it seems that you can't provide it. So it appears to me, that you keep trying to avoid describing how you reached such conclusion.
It seems to me HIGHLY interesting to be aware that, if people could enjoy a MINIMUM living standard, if wages are sufficient for keeping the workers and their families just ALIVE - I never suggested that he would be a shareholder, spending and acquiring cars and boats and planes, etc. - just the LIVING MINIMUM standard, then they would be converted into slaves.
I am very much interested in you telling me how come, thanks to a complete and detailed reasoning, you reach such a statement. Just the reasoning of yours, no statements, please.
As far as the application of principles, to be clear once for ever, mine is to enhance the welfare of the WHOLE people in group: you, me and my step-mother included. I want to save money for the WHOLE nation and not only for my friend and my boss. I want to save expenditures to any one of us but some points are more urgent than others. I want to sort them to the benefit of the whole Nation ... me included.
If you look for not being "concerned" then you will be depending on bills and taxes just created for you exclusively and then you will become the "slave" of your own decision as, if you can't afford it, no one will help you but charity.
And, in my opinion, who depend on and receive charity is the real SLAVE.
I look forward receiving your own and detailed reasoning, you have tried up to now, to avoid explaining; while, it seems, that you have no solution to share with us.
My criteria is that of freedom, liberty, personal responsibly.
You then deducted from it, that this would make people not willing to improve, working for free. You - and this is rather disrespectful towards your nationals - then decide that they have no ambition, no willingness to improve, no desire to acquire cars, homes, vacations, knowledge, no willingness to go to theaters, to buy themselves TV sets, to eat something else than potatoes, pastas or fat hamburgers or, simply beds for sleeping.
Yes, John, all this "over the very strict minimum" needs to be fulfilled are what we call "consumption"; and drives our economy. So, as per your point of view, having the VERY STRICT minimum available will create a market of people willing to work for "free". This is quite a reasoning! So because you have a car, you will never search for a better one, a more modern one, a cheaper to maintain? So because you have or had a fix phone you never search to be working with internet? Do you really believe that Americans are dumb people, with no personal desires to improve themselves?
This is not reasoning, this is to believe that you are the sole and exclusively intelligent person in the whole America, this is uttering nonsense.
However, if a person knows that some security is enjoyable, this very same person will be able to concentrate and work better, learn better, improve herself. And I state this by real on field experience.
You want more examples as Jobs, Gates and their companies? Look how they managed the people working for them. And have a look how HP, Xerox, IBM, Pepsi, etc. lost people working for them because of a non further personal development and improvement ability.
Yes:
In fact Universal Health Care is a compelled saving in order to avoid raising other taxes on the near or medium future.
Who is to determine a minimum regional living standard? Does it include a car? Internet connection? Food? House? All these things are needed to find an commute to a job today, so they must be part and parcel of your "living standard".
Do YOU decide Gilbert what people get for nothing? Politicians? What about the rights of the person you force to pay for another person's car, internet connection, or house?
Your logic has so many holes in it you could drive a Mack Truck through it.
What is a minimum living standard? It covers : Food, Home (a place where to sleep, wash oneself and family), minimum clothing and shoes, health care. FULL STOP.
Internet, cars, theaters, etc. are SECOND needs and, in gross, they are called cooperative and social needs. Some of them may be integrated as First needs but they are not so.
Never heard about the Amish, per example?
Where I lived in TX (97-2003) you could still buy a house for $25,000. Nearby there were many factories where secretaries earned $50,000 or more, the security people earned $20 per hour (and worked full time). It was certainly possible for people to afford having a family if they so chose and even for one parent to stay at home if that was their choice....all without government assistance.
I really don't get how you think it's right and proper for some couples to be responsible and PLAN to have a family when it makes sense, only to keep putting that off because they have to be responsible (via taxes) for persons who keep having babies they can't afford.
- Wait a minute, he yells, let me see my next year budget!
This is the conclusion we just came in with Mary, my spouse who gave life 3 times out of 4 and an American gynecologist who is visiting us and read this last comment of yours.
Yes, he says everyone plans his own future on the behalf of what life is ... for the time being. But no one is aware of what next day will be.
And I take this opportunity to add that no one plans having children as we plan buying a car....
No one either plans divorcing when getting married.
Indeed, Hitler's wives - the blonde arian girls who were expected to become mothers after relieving East front arian soldiers, were pretty sure that this way they would ensure their future: Hitler promises.
After 1944, they could complain about there lousy lives: America has change it all! And so many people have budgeted a kid before 2007 ... they should be disappointed nowadays ...
If life was as easy and could be just projected as you state, no one would be discussing it now. And no kid would be ever abused ....
If it depends only on me to relieve, not even a little bit, while remaining anonymous and without knowing who receives my mite, this is good enough for me ... Just anonymous, no intermediate, not even a church, just a "cold" service who ignores me.
I have been lucky enough as to help without asking my neighbors to take a picture ...
I agree, and I am the same way. I enjoy helping people and I do it as of often as I can. Where your view enters into the immoral is when you feel you have some right to *force* people to do the same.
However, you pretty well know that such organization is impossible on a personal basis: An individual cannot be aware of ALL needing help, the individual cannot even be aware of the needed type of help and can't even be aware of how to share it.
The only way it to achieve it through a fund(s) and still the have to be coordinated.
If there is no organization then there is no help for those who need it.
However such organization needs funding and again such funding is to be budgeted ... this why the taxes which has to be agreed by the representatives if there is no direct democracy which again will suggest a tax system.
The problem is not to be individually generous but to create an organization way.
A general idea is the funding cancer fight: it could be done by each state but , still, how to help someone who changes location residence: no one could be forbidden changing residence as this would end into a worse social system similar to the communist one.
So, your statement remains somehow utopian.
Good job. Mission accomplished!
And I take this opportunity to add that no one plans having children as we plan buying a car....
There's where you are wrong. Responsible people do plan on having children, and, in fact, they take much more time planing than they ever would plan for buying a car. They don't get married until they're able to care for themselves and others. They set aside money each month to save for a house and for having kids. They make sure they have insurance - all kinds. It is unreasonable to think that all persons are irresponsible and it's totally unreasonable to think that those who are responsible should continue to pay and pay and pay for those who are not.
How about instead of sex ed, we teach kids how to be responsible - in all ways. Obviously some parents aren't doing too well in that regard. The studies continue to show that welfare recipients beget welfare recipients and those who have learned to survive without the government beget kids who don't rely on the government.
Nowadays it is POSSIBLE to achieve but not each one is accepting to be on the same track.
Truth (Marilyn) One day you will learn that sex is a NATURAL FUNCTION of the body. And often, thanks to this natural function, eggs may be fertilized.
Of course, this is why sex shops are making so many business......
You may try one day or another to fight it based on any kind of belief. However, depending on the circumstances, you will suffer quite a bit.
As far as John comment, I don;t see the relation with any BASIC NEED, not even sex. But I am sure he is able to explain this in details.
Fascism is defined as:
"Fascism ( /ˈfæʃɪzÉ™m/) is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek rejuvenation of their nation based on commitment to an organic national community where its individuals are united together as one people in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood through a totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through discipline, indoctrination, physical education, and eugenics."
From Wikipedia.
Just see how the US has moved ever so slowly in this direction despite her foundation in individual rights and freedom.
I am unable to respond to each axiomatic deductions and statements.
The very first statement is already wrong: he states that crisis are exceptional.
In reality, considering the last 6,000 years just less than 300 were peaceful and economically speaking "progressive" ones.
Of course, many countries , took profit in a way or another of these crisis.
You may respond to this that America has not be in crisis in such a proportion and you are right. However since 1776, 236 years ago, would you please compute how many years America was out of any crisis, wars included? Financial crisis did not start only in 1929 as this guy states.
Health insurances do not cover everything and sometimes even refuse to cover what the contract states: Do you believe that the Schiavo family would have been in a position to keep on the $90,000 monthly required by the hospital?
I just hope for you to enjoy the present crisis.
Poison? I never heard that cooperation was poison, if this is what you mean.
I heard that each of us are born equal. Good. Have your Constitution stated that ALL and complete inheritances are to be in favor of he Nation? But this is communism. So equal but not equal. Therefore the son of a slave is not intended to perform high education; but the son of the farmer will have a doctorate, anyway.
So please support yor statements consistently and not just with a "he said ..." or "such statistic" (unofficial), as in such cases I will ask you to provide several diverse sources.
Otherwise, my suggestion to you, is to get back to your studies .
Everything else you state is just a straw man argument that has nothing to do with my position and, seeing we have been doing this for some time, you know it.
"Everywhere I go in the world, the only thing I see that works is when everyone works together and treats everyone with respect,"
No one will ever be able to cooperate with someone who is unable to satisfy ALL of his BASIC NEEDS. No slave is cooperative and you should know that in your position. There is NO COMMUNICATION if anyone of the 4 communication's basic needs are fulfilled.
It goes the same way, even if there are far more than just 4 requisites, when HB are concerned. And this is even true in economics: education, R&D, infrastructures, hospitals should be opened to everyone.
Any site, most of the then start-up Youtube, Facebook, etc. are alive thanks to publicity. But for it they accept members, they provide a support, providers are needed both ways: semantic wave, semiological wave, issuer and receiver.
Just one of them lacking and the system fails and if it fails no publicity and this is the death of the system.
Just one of the BASIC NEEDS lacking: no one will cooperate, work, invest or whatsoever.
Of course you may deny it: you may try other systems but you will FAIL due to lack of exchange (money).
In your position, you pretty well know it: communication (exchange) is the key word but we still need the means for such an exchange ... even if you refuse to provide them or if you feel charity will provide them. This why taxes.
My advice to you: try to sell some software of your to a starving man.
And then revert. I appreciate the way you support your system. LOL
Point One: At some times in the lives of every human being one is unable to take care of one's self. Infancy is one of those times. Serious illness or injury is another.
Point Two: Human beings are mutually interdependent. That is, if we had to depend only on our selves without the aid (by trade for example) of anyone else, our lives would be quite short. We trade for almost everything we consume. We cannot provide, from scratch, any but a tiny proportion of the tools we use. We really need each other for survival (as well as entertainment, sport, comfort, medical care, and so forth).
Point Three: Human society functions to provide the necessities of life for the people of each society. Yes, some members of that society can be sacrificed (ritually, in war, or just by neglect) without destroying the society. But for the vast majority of people, one of the most important things the society does is provide aid in time of need. (See disaster relief.)
Point four: We have the image of the "self made man" the independent, self reliant individual who takes care of himself and doesn't need anyone else. That image is a stereotype and not true at all. There is not such thing as a self made man. Even the fictional Robinson Crusoe was made in England, had a ship load of supplies, and the knowledge gained from others about building, cooking, trapping, and so forth which he used to stay alive. Claims of independence and self reliance general refer to a source of income (money) and no need to accept charity from others to maintain a decent life style.
Point 2: if we had to depend only on our selves without the aid (by trade for example) of anyone else, our lives would be quite short.
Let's assume this is true. So what? We could live longer lives if we enslaved everyone who had green eyes so that we didn't have to stress or work too hard, are you saying such a thing would be acceptable?
Point 3: Human society functions to provide the necessities of life for the people of each society.
Oh really? And what if someone disagrees and doesn't go along, what are you going to to with them Larry? Anything beyond let them be is tantamount to slavery.
Point 4: We have the image of the "self made man" the independent, self reliant individual who takes care of himself and doesn't need anyone else. That image is a stereotype and not true at all.
Okay, let's assume this is true. Instead of one made man we have 20 people that made it on their own and they don't want to give it up to you Larry. What are you going to do about it? Anything beyond let them be is tantamount to slavery.
Point one: Do you advocate "every man for himself" as the way of life we should adopt? I am assuming you either do not understand / know / accept my ideas for resolving this problem and "every man for himself" seems to me the only alternative to the collective / community / society caring for those in need. If you do so advocate that for our nation and we adopt that course, we will have ceased to exist as a nation in short order.
Point two: The point is that we either depend on each other or die. There is not third option. Slavery is depending on others ( those slaves for example). You seemingly did not grasp how literal I was in this point.
Point three: Really. That's what all those social norms accomplish. If they did not, we would all have died already. How that providing of necessities comes about varies from culture to culture but all surviving societies do that. Again, this is a literal point. Some cultures include some form of slavery. How the culture gains compliance with its norms also varies. In my system (since you ask what I am going to do with the person who "disagrees") that person is provided the necessities and pretty much ignored otherwise as being trivial and unimportant. Generally such a person gets really bored before long. But that's my system, not any culture I know. Most conservatives in America claim in one way or another that such a person should be allowed to die. (Cut off welfare.)
Point four: Nobody makes it on their own. They never have. They never will. Without cooperation from other people we die. Al Capone got cooperation by offering money and threats of harm. But he had their help or you would never have heard of him.
You ask what I am going to do about people who have things and don't want to give them to others? In my system, all property is private property of individuals. They can do what they like with their property. That's their decision. In other words, I do nothing about it in my system. It's none of my business what they do with their property in my system. Of course if they try to harm someone else, that is potentially everybody's business.
Well, Larry, let me educate you. It is not the only alternative. What I am advocating is free will and choice. If one wants to live for him or herself, so be it. They must live with the consequences of such a decision. You want to live in a collative, go nuts. Live with the consequences. My only request is that you leave me alone to make the choice that is right for me. Why is that so hard to understand Larry?
Point 2: The point is that we either depend on each other or die. There is not third option.
Yes there is, see point made in #1. This is kindergarten logic Larry, you should know this without me saying it.
Point three: Some cultures include some form of slavery.
Because of people like you Larry.
that person is provided the necessities and pretty much ignored otherwise as being trivial and unimportant.
What if that person organizes and they don’t quite see things your way Larry? What do you do when your fantasy doesn’t become reality?
Point four: Nobody makes it on their own.
You are ignoring my point. I said what if this is the case and it is not one person but 20, what do you do Larry? What happens when 20 people decide your idea is a cock? What do you do then? What if 50? What if 1,000? What if a million? All those people think your idea is pointless, what to you do then?
The smallest minority in the world is the individual. You care about minority rights Larry, or is that an acceptable loss to your collective utopia?
Re: point one: What's so hard for me to understand is what you feel is the point to government, society, community. I am perfectly happy to leave you completely alone. My system is perfectly happy to leave you alone if that is your choice. Of course in my system if you reject sharing in the society you will be allowed to die with no one raising a finger since that was your choice. (That's really clear in my novel.) But we don't live in my system. In our current system supposedly when people are in trouble some attempt is made to help them. Thus, you can get treatment in an emergency room with no ability to pay. Disaster relief is available for tornado victims. The military guards the whole nation. My impression from your comment is that you want the freedom to reject that. Is that your position? Do you reject being a part of this nation, this society, this culture?
Re: Point two: It may be kindergarten logic but I don't get it. Please explain to me how my statement you have quoted as Point 2: is false.
Point Three: I find that quite insulting. I request that you retract that slur on my reputation. Nothing I have written anywhere, gather included, indicates that I accept or tolerate slavery in any way.
Point three section two: What if that person organizes what? If you are talking about my system and some person organizes other people in some enterprise, then they are cooperating with those other people, working with those other people, sharing with those other people. Again, my novel makes it quite clear that if a group of people don't wish to participate in my system, my system pretty much ignores them so long as they don't try to harm other people not part of their group. If you want to make statements about my system you should at least learn what it is. Otherwise your statements about it just look silly.
Point four: You are saying what if 20 people make it on their own. I assumed you meant 20 individuals each making it on their own. I now infer that you meant a group of 20 people cooperating with each other. In that case, more power to them. My system has no problem at all with that. Let them do what they like. They may think what they like about my system with my blessing. My system need do nothing about them. Nothing at all. It will work just fine whether they choose to participate or not. My system is not like the current governments of the world which force people to participate by paying taxes and being drafted and so forth. But you don't have any idea how my system works so you just make up something and claim that's my system.
My system is not a utopia. It's just a great improvement.
If this is true Larry, then you must also agree that your statement “Do you advocate "every man for himself" as the way of life we should adopt? . . . "every man for himself" seems to me the only alternative to the collective . . .” is not true, correct?
My impression from your comment is that you want the freedom to reject that. Is that your position? Do you reject being a part of this nation, this society, this culture?
In a moral society people are free to pursue their lives as they see fit as long as they respect the equal rights of others. That protection from the aggression and disruption of rights that is always a threat in society is guaranteed by government, but that is the only purpose of government.
Point 2: As stated, see point one of that post.
Point 3: I find that quite insulting.
Larry, I say this because a person who states that “every man for himself" seems to me the only alternative to the collective and The point is that we either depend on each other or die. There is not third option. is saying that we must be forced to live as you see fit without any options in between is advocating for the principles of slavery or the principles of some world no one can rely on another person.
It is the “all or nothing” attitude (that is quite evident from what I quote from you above) that propelled me to make the comment. Am I wrong? Prove it, but until then the comment made is founded in logic and therefore stands.
Point 3B: The point here is that what if the person organizes and becomes important and noticed? What do you to then?
Point 4: As I have mentioned before, as long as your system is non-coercive it is fine in my book.
Does communism have private ownership of everything that is owned and no joint ownership of anything? Only private property is a fundamental characteristic of my system.
I suspect we mean different things by "every man for himself." My meaning of the phrase is that each person is completely independent of and does not trade with or receive any kind of aid from anyone else at all, ever. I suspect your meaning is something along the lines of "each person pursues their own ends."
Please confirm or correct my surmise above.
------------
Given my meaning of the phrase "every man for himself", does my contention that we either depend on each other or die make sense to you?
I hold that human beings must find ways to cooperate or perish. That human beings are mutually interdependent. We depend on society for survival. That does not mean that we must use force (libertarian sense of the term) in order to survive, nor that we must coerce others to do our will. Trade allows division of labor which allows greater production. We have become very dependent on that trade even as adults. Obviously as children we are dependent on the care of those older than ourselves.
If some group finds a better way of organizing things, of cooperating, of helping people get along and get along with each other, they would be rewarded by my system for doing so and the better way would be available for adoption by all. In fact, people would be rewarded for helping others to adopt that superior means. That's what my system would do in response to that person who organizes and becomes important and noticed. My system reinforces success.
My system is a system purely of rewards. It has no punishments, no coercion, no threats.
The heath care law your championing is the free part of the 2047 page bill. Have you actually read the bill? I have mind you and there are so many flaws that what it does is enslave the middle and upper class to again pay the way of the poor class, besides the inevitable decline in health care.
This bill would cost the tax payer not the 50 billion first proposed over a ten year period but rather a whopping 100 billion. Experts agree that with the increasing debt of the United States, she is but a few years from economical collapse.
Americans cannot near afford more expense when inflation of food and oil and oil bi-products are on the rise. Now the Government expects them to pay yet another tax to pay for the poor's health care?
Yes Governments have always had taxes. however if you were in tune with the reason and history of the forming of The U.S. many of our great, great ancestors came here to get away with heavy laden and burdensome taxes of The Antiquity of England.
It is true that Banks need to go back to community banking as in the day's before Corporate greed and Corporate Banking. However your system of debits and credits just doesn't add up nor make any sense of any kind. Your just replacing currency with debit and credits.
Do you use insurance for your life or health or your house or your car? That's voluntary (in some cases) and is quite functional for maintaining our life style. I used to sell insurance and have had various kinds of insurance all my adult life. That is the same kind of thing as thinking the government and others owe then a living. You paid into that insurance and you expected to get back from those insurance companies when you needed them. (By the terms of the contracts.)
Now it has been pointed out by better writers than I am that government can be seen as a social contract between the group (nation) and the individual. People who put into government (by taxes, military service, voting, petitioning government and so forth) deserve something back (like law enforcement, the military, social security, and so forth). That is remarkably similar to insurance in my opinion. It isn't thinking that government and others owe them a living. (I worked darn hard for my security in retirement which I now enjoy.)
The health care bill is garbage written mostly by the health care industries (like insurance and drugs) and was not a meaningful change from what already existed. I said so when it was passed and I predicted it before it was debated. It's the same old scams by the same old big money interests.
You have no idea how my system would work as is revealed by your comments about it. Why do you attempt to appear an expert about something you don't understand at all?
Please explain how a system in which all property is owned by individuals and there is no group or collective ownership of anything can be communist. I missed that part in your comment.
What kind of politburo gives no orders at all to anyone?
You really have a talent for misrepresenting my system. You keep saying things that are the opposite of what it is and does.
My system uses free markets, actual pure free markets to operate the economy. But you claim to have a problem with that. What is it about the free market that you object to? Is it that no one is in charge and giving orders?
As I've said about it a zillion times, your system requires a major culture change. Marilyn's opposition for her reason is just one of those examples.
You have read the book. You should be able to provide links to the book (it's on both Gather and my web page) to illustrate what you believe is wrong with my system. Instead of giving misleading descriptions in your own words, use the best evidence, the novel. Use my own words to show your points about my system. I mean, you wouldn't trust the U.S.S.R. propaganda description of our capitalist system to accurately describe it. Use the real thing.
I would love to have the readers decide for themselves but I want them to understand what they are deciding about and they cannot get that understanding from a few comments (even mine).
My system would produce a major culture change, yes. But it does not require any change to be adopted. A culture without poverty, unemployment, inflation, government controls, taxes, politics, and with greatly reduced discrimination and pollution would be quite different from what we have now. There would be far less stress for one thing. Everyone could work at what they chose or not work at all. Every mother would have the choice to stay home and take care of (and even educate) her children if she preferred. No need to save for retirement. No need for insurance. No medical bills. No debt of any kind. It's a really different context for living.
You don't know of any free markets. There are none. They don't exist. The nature of our money prevents them. (See organized crime.)
I had been paying into social security for years before I collected any from them. I invested in stock and waited years to get any payment from that investment. When I bought the stock no one knew what it would be worth years later. Perhaps you have not heard of the stock market? Perhaps you have not heard of investing in power plants or other capital intensive projects which would not pay off for years and whose return on investment could not be known ahead of time?
Your economy is filled with people waiting "years for payment until the value of the product or service could be determined." That's how markets operate. Prices change and not in a predictable way. (See the stock market of your choice.) Investments are made, effort is put in, and it is only later, sometimes years later, that the rewards for those investments are realized, if any.
The novel contains the complete definition of my system on half a page. The concept is defined completely and precisely and concisely. But like E=MC**2 it will not be easily understood in its concise statement.
It's strange that you cannot reference things in the novel to make a point since it's really easy for me to do so. But then I understand the ideas and wrote the novel.
Maybe I missed that part or I don't remember it, but I know that there have been people who have asked you in the comment sections of your chapters for a summary. Why is it that you never offered that reference? Can you give us a link now?
It still doesn't mean that I can reference specific pages because you have made it impossible to do that both by the way it's written and because you have no Table of Contents, once again, but labeling chapters by number and no index to speak of, but I don't see how it would be possible the way it's written either.
It's odd that you missed that definition because I spent about two chapters going over it. (Chapters 28 and 29, start about 2/3 of the way through 28) Are you quite sure you read the novel?
I don't offer that concise definition because people will insist (in their minds) on using our current money properties when reading it. Thus, after reading the first 3-4 principles, they forget them in reading the rest. The novel provides the context in which their minds don't do that. It's like getting someone to understand the Theory of Relativity. The idea that time slows near mass or that it slows as speed increases (and velocity is relative) is difficult for people to grasp. One needs a context to properly understand.
You can reference specific chapters and quote passages. Cut and paste is old hat to you so I know you can do it.
My Profile has the Table of Contents links for each chapter on gather and my web site has each of the chapters links as well if you click on "Read Invisible Hand Here" if you would prefer to avoid the Gather ads. So there are at least two tables of contents.
To make things easier for you, I will provide you the service of providing links to the part(s) of the novel which address any topic you choose. I am at your service.
Still, for the third and final time, with no index and no titled table of contents, it is impossible for anyone whether they have read the book entirely or not, to give specific references to pages to reference. I'd at least have had to have memorized the book to know approximately where they would be, and the way the book is written, with so much extraneous dialogue, it still would never be one or even in some cases, any given 10 pages, where any one point is made.
As it stands, in the comment section of the link I provided where we were continuing another of these useless conversations, I did point out a discrepancy in what I saw you had maintained in your book because it was an easy reference, right at the beginning of the book. You had the payers on their way to payer school. In one of the questions you answered in that comment section, you said payer school was not necessary. That's just a simple example of how you portray things in the book which in your mind are different, but no one but you knows how it really works. I don't think you do either because some of the questions people asked, you also said might be contained in a sequel where you will explain further. It's 4 years later, and I don't see any sequel because you can't answer the questions outside of a fantasy world that exists in your mind alone.
Concerning payer school being necessary: it's available because most people like to have a really good idea of what they are getting into before they make important, life altering decisions. But it is not required. Just like you can major in business in college or you can skip that and start a business of your own today. So where's the contradiction?
Somehow I like to hope that I would never pass myself off as an expert on some book which I had "read parts of and skipped a lot of it because it was not entertaining me...". You seem to have no problem with doing so.
PS: Someone else is writing a screenplay based on the novel so perhaps one day you will be able to see it in a play format on TV.
I never contended I was an expert on the book. I contended that I asked you questions that I would not have had if I were an expert on the book for which you did not provide adequate answers and for which you provided contradictory answers to the ones I did pose from what I had read.
I'd rather read the screenplay so when it comes out, if we're both still alive, please advise.
And of course that is what "my book" is all about, bottom line, fundamental, culture change.
We live in a dog eat dog, big fish eat little fish, dualistic (+/-) world with no noticeable spiritual (=) connection readily realized.
A world with common spirit (=) would be Trintarian in nature (+=-) and we would not have the competitive dualistic nature of fear and selfishness, rather all would work together for common cause and that would result in a "Synergy" that would "raise all boats" to the better life ... as it is the rich get richer and the rest of us rely on "trickle down" thinking, maybe wishfully, that we are not being "dumped" on.
IMnsHO
If you don't read the whole book you have no grounds to complain that something is missing. I definitely made clear that the only requirement to becoming a payer is to volunteer and that payer school was not required in the book in several places.
From what I have read of the screenplay, it's quite like the book. :-)
Can you show me references where you made that clear, Larry?
From chapter 28 about 2/3 of the way through:
"All Payers must be volunteers and all volunteers must be accepted unless and until evidence of their biased or dishonest payments is produced. "
From chapter 29 where that statement is being considered:
"It says that all Payers must be volunteers. Why do they have to be volunteers?”
“What kind of Payers would they be if they didn’t want to be Payers at all? Why do you think we go to such pains here to weed out those who wouldn’t like being Payers? But most fundamentally of all, to force someone to be a payer would be a form of slavery, especially when you consider the tenth principle.”
“Oh, yes. I can see that. But the ninth principle also says that all volunteers must be accepted. Doesn’t that mean that you might get a lot of bad Payers?”
She smiled, “From your question, one would think that being a payer was a wonderful thing and that we have thousands of people demanding to become Payers beating on our doors. Most people don’t want to be Payers. This is good because we need only about three to five percent of the adult population to be Payers. Second, wanting to be a payer is the most important characteristic in a good payer. Unless one likes that life, one will not be able to do it really well.”
“Most important, though,” she continued, “is that it gives everybody the opportunity to put their money where their mouth is in an almost literal sense. If you don’t like the way Payers are paying, then become a payer and do it yourself. Back before the transition, we used to have all sorts of talk about discrimination and affirmative action and glass ceilings and what not. Now you hardly ever hear of that sort of thing. For one reason, it reduces your pay to discriminate on any basis except performance. For another, there are many Payers of every ethnic and racial group I ever heard of. If you don’t like what one payer is paying, change location, change the work you do, or wait a while and the next payer will probably pay better.”
“We do get some bad Payers. After all, Payers are just people. They’re not saints and they don’t have godlike powers. Some are definitely biased. There have been some scandals among the Payers. But oddly enough, they mostly do get better or violate their vows and are kicked out or judge some work that doesn’t let their bias show. The Payers control each other because their reputation as a group is very important to them.”
Sue, you will note that there is no requirement that they attend a payer school or pass any exam or meet any qualifications.
Finally, near the end of chapter 27 we have the following:
"Payer School is a school that persons who wish to become Payers are advised to attend before actually becoming Payers. Attending this school is not required for prospective Payers because any mentally competent adult is acceptable as a payer. You will not be required to become a payer even if you complete Payer School successfully."
Are these enough, Sue?
I remember reading all of the above.
I asked you to show me where it says the payers don't go to payer school. I didn't ask you to show me whether or not they volunteer to be payers. Once they volunteer to be payers there is nothing but what you offered as to how they get educated to become payers and according to your book, the way that is done is that they go to payer school.
It doesn't also have anything to do with whether or not they actually become payers after they completed the schooling. It has to do with what you said in the book that they had to go to payer school if they so desired of their own accord to become payers.
It was not until you were asked questions later that you determined they did not have to go to payer school. There is nothing you have shown me here from your book that says they do not have to go to payer school if they want to be payers.
In the first or second chapter of your book you had a busload of wannabe payers going to payer school, and there is nothing that states or even implies that if they want to be payers they don't have to go through the training. The only reason I brought it up in the first place in one of our discussions is because I was trying to show you that someone is teaching these payers how to be payers and it was an example of source.
The first chapter takes place in Dulles International Airport. The second chapter takes place before the transition to my system. It isn't until the 27th chapter that the 7 people on their way to payer school comes in.
If all payers are volunteers and all volunteers must be accepted (allowed to pay) where is the requirement for payer school?
I can volunteer to be a flippin' teacher, but there still may be a requirement that as a volunteer I need to know something about what I am teaching so I would still be required to have gone to school to learn what I'm about to teach. Whether someone volunteers or not, there still may be a learning requirement for which they must have been schooled. Is that not so?
If someone hadn't asked this question, I would have lost all interest after reading chapter 3. The answer to the question didn't help too much because I thought it was absurd, but at least I wasn't totally confused.
“Why does Tony have to wait so long to be paid?”
Your answer:
"First, what Tony did (or does) gets paid only after the consequences of those actions are revealed to have shown a net benefit to others. Since he was helping to build ships, as those ships contribute to the economy, Tony gets paid. In other words, he continues to get paid so long as those ships are useful. But until they are useful he gets nothing."
"Brianna is getting paid for taking care of her own children and for some of her art work. Since they are home schooling, that will increase her pay as the children grow up and earn money themselves. In effect, she will get a cut of what they earn. The better job she does educating them and raising them to be good citizens, the more she will be paid."
"The payers pay for every action that produces net benefit for others regardless of the motivation for that action. Brianna probably would do exactly the same thing if she were not being paid. But that doesn't matter to the payers. "I can't know your true motives. I can only judge your actions." That could be one of the most common things that payers say to people. The intentions of any person may be good or bad but it is only the perceived consequences that are the basis for payment of that person."
"The payers don't act (pay) this way because of rules and regulations but because people react to them based on the actual consequences, not the intended consequences."
That's why I asked you later what it would benefit someone to become a teacher. I said that the teacher might be dead before she got the benefits of the kids she taught proving a contribution from his/her teaching. You told me that they got some pay because of the care they provided immediately. In this section you state that Brianna gets paid for "taking care of her own children. This doesn't necessarily imply that teachers also get paid for caring for others' children, though that is what you said happens when I asked how they would be paid before the kids grew up and the teacher might be dead by then. There is a lot in this book that you assume people who are reading will get because they are thinking along the same lines you are without explaining what you are trying to convey. Once you convey it, it doesn't make much sense either, but at least we know what you meant. It takes a long time to build a ship, so hopefully Brianna is getting enough money caring for her own children. And who's to know whether she watches soap operas all day and doesn't really take care of her children? Who knows?
So . . the people that taught the teachers, are gettin' a piece of the babysitting pay, so to speak, till the people they then teach, start rackin' up the big creds ; )
How 'bout hair cuts, Larry? Do the people who cut kid's hair have to wait till the kids start earning credits? Or do they get a cut of their various current babysitters' pays?
It's generational.
"How 'bout hair cuts, Larry? Do the people who cut kid's hair have to wait till the kids start earning credits?"
I think the scissor and comb manufacturers get paid from the barbers' endeavors and the barbers don't get paid until the teacher says, "Nice haircut, Johnny," showing some value to the haircut.
Your comments remind me of the verse, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." :-)
Briana gets paid for caring for her children. Baby sitters get paid for caring for children. Children young enough to need baby sitting may have teachers who care for them. Thus, teachers of young children get baby sitting pay. Baby sitting pay is for an immediate benefit, the safety and well being of the child. I'll bet you understood that since that's the basis on which baby sitters today get paid.
Now as people get older, they no longer need baby sitting but they can still benefit from education. Teachers who have such pupils get paid based on those benefits, not baby sitting pay. Those benefits may come sooner or later depending on the particular benefits. Pay follows benefits in time. I'll be you understand that as well.
Now unless a person is willfully trying to misunderstand, they would not think or assume that college professors are baby sitters for their young adult students. I'll bet you understand that, too.
If you work for pay, you probably get paid after doing the work. So let's say Joe works and is paid monthly. Joe works for three weeks, suffers a heart attack and dies. He never gets that three weeks pay he earned. That's in our present system. Let's say Joe is an inventor. He comes up with a great idea and spends years getting it to the market but dies before the first profit from the idea is realized. That's also in our present system. Again, work earns money but the person who deserved profit from that work dies before he can realize that profit. That's also in our current system.
Life just isn't always fair, is it. My system eliminates only some of that unfairness.
The amount a teacher at any level of education receives for pay depends on the net benefits from that education. So it's not possible to say what amount of pay a teacher will receive until those benefits (if any) have occurred. This is quite unlike our present means of compensation.
Today, we have contracts before the work is done. The teacher is promised a certain amount of money and other compensation before the work is done. Then, regardless of what, if anything, the pupils learn as a result of the teacher's actions, the teacher is paid according to the contractual schedule. In other occupations, the same kind of thing is arranged. Joe earns by the hour or does piece work or whatever, regardless of whether the enterprise succeeds or fails. A few self employed folks and salesmen may work strictly on commission or on the profits they generate. But even then, the money they gain is not a result of any benefits they have produced (as in the case of selling illegal drugs or candy).
So it's not a surprise to me when your understanding of pay in my system is difficult to achieve. It's so easy to forget that one is paid in my system for net benefits and only net benefits. Just because a teacher stands and talks in front of 25 kids for several hours does not mean that her actions are deserving of pay (beyond that baby sitting if the kids are all right). My system uses hindsight to determine pay. (Hindsight is 20/20 you know.) You don't get hindsight without the passage of time. But unless one uses hindsight, one is just guessing as to whether pay is deserved. Our current system guesses quite a lot and is wrong quite a lot. You seem to tolerate that quite well.
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Now as to "splitting profits", yes credit for net benefits is shared among all those who appear to deserve it. That's only fair. Would you prefer an unfair system as we have it now? It appears you would from your comments.
Haircuts are on my mind today since I plan to visit my barber this morning. Barbers provide benefits. Those benefits begin immediately after they provide their service. So pay is to be expected shortly thereafter (a week or month or whatever the standard time used) and those who provided the scissors and combs and "hair oil" and shampoo and mirrors and the chair and the shop and so forth all share in the pay for those benefits since they did help to provide them. And yes, the teachers of all those persons also helped provide those benefits. So the pay covers a very large number of people. (Computers are very useful for keeping track of such things.)
Now in some cases, the hair cut affects the ability of the person getting the hair cut to produce net benefits. Actors, for example, may need a particular hair cut to do a better job in performing some role. Thus, the barber and those who provided support for the barber would have earned a small portion of the credit for the net benefits the actor provided by playing that role. That could generate income for them over a rather long period of time if the performance is recorded and played back many times over the years.
I am sure, Sue, if you put your mind to it you can misunderstand all the above. :-)
"Now as people get older, they no longer need baby sitting but they can still benefit from education. Teachers who have such pupils get paid based on those benefits, not baby sitting pay. Those benefits may come sooner or later depending on the particular benefits."
So unlike what I thought, the teachers don't get paid for childcare after a certain grade level but they get paid for "other benefits" to the student. So if the teacher is a younger female, would she get paid if she wore a tight sweater in a class of adolescent boys who might feel benefited? I'm just trying to think of what the "other benefits" might be that are not paid until the student builds a ship that sells and sails.
The only other part of your explanation that needs to be further clarified is this one:
"A few self employed folks and salesmen may work strictly on commission or on the profits they generate. But even then, the money they gain is not a result of any benefits they have produced (as in the case of selling illegal drugs or candy)."
So in your system, if I have this right, chocolate Easter bunnies, asparagus and cocaine would be in the same category for a salesman. So the guy who sells the chocolate Easter bunnies would get paid if and when the recipient gets a taste pleasure, which would be the benefit. So they log into a computer how much satisfaction, if any, they got from it. I guess it must be an honor system as to whether they check off 1. Loved it, 2. Thought it was just okay, 3. Hated it.
For the roadside vendor selling asparagus there may be more than just a taste benefit. There's a nutritition benefit too. So besides the taste evaluation, they would also log into the computer a nutrition benefit. Let's say it's a kid who ate the asparagus. Maybe he would have a benefit chart that asks how much he grew in the last month, and depending on how much they decide to attribute the asparagus to the growth spurt, the salesman would get paid accordingly. (and, of course, the farmer would also get credit)
Now, where illegal drugs are concerned, I can see how your system may totally wipe out this kind of crime. Drug addicts are not the most honest people in the world so when it comes time to log into the computer the value of the high they got, they'll probably all say it didn't work. The salesman never gets paid and there's no reason to be a drug dealer. I think that's ingenious, Larry.
The system has just so many possibilities. For creating it, you would share in the profits of everything everyone in the whole world of your system does. I wish I had thought of this now.
I'd be providing a benefit (to myself), which is, after all, the "currency" Larry prefers to deal in, and...I know that I could benefit from this Class!
Sue, maybe Larry is onto something!
I love Sue's idea's; they're always beneficial!
Great points in your Piece, here, John.
Well, I don't know about my niche, Sue...but I'd promise to be very fastidious in my Duties as "Professional Benefit Evaluator."
Would I get a Dollar-Bill Stipend for those Field Trips? :)
"A world with common spirit" and "we would not have the competitive dualistic nature of fear and selfishness" simply goes against reality. We are all individuals, we will never have a common spirit. Our nature is to be self interested, a baby instinctively goes for the teat and doesn't think about sharing it because that is how we survive as a species.
It will never happen Jerry.
Yes, my system is subjective because only subjective human beings can assign values. Those value assignments are the basis of the free market that exists between payers and producers (those whose actions result in net benefits to others). The payers are the buyers of net benefits.
That free market sets the pay of producers. There are millions of independent payers and still more millions of producers. Any payer is able to pay any producer. The system, by its nature, does its best to make its actions transparent which gives both payers and producers access to as much information as is available. It is a true free market and needs no enforcement to remain such. It works strictly on rewards, no force is involved.
Regarding your 10:21 AM comment.
A teacher gets paid mostly for the knowledge and skills that the pupils gain due to the teacher's actions. In other words if you teach a child to read and that child in later life produces lots of net benefits to others then the contribution that reading made to that pupil's success would get rewarded as those benefits were realized.
Please note, Sue, that benefits can be to the student directly but for teachers, the big money comes in what the students contribute in later life.
I question what benefits a young female teacher would provide to a class of adolescent boys which would earn her money. You see, the distraction would prevent their learning the subject matter and thus cut her off from the greater rewards. Of course, if she wants to behave foolishly, no one will try to stop her. It's her choice.
(I have to wonder about your mind coming up with that example. It shows a really strange idea of "net benefits".
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The quote you provided about self employed folks and salesmen was referring to our current economy and its way of doing things. Thus it is irrelevant to my system.
I repeat that in my system people are paid ONLY for net benefits to others which result from their actions. Those benefits are subjectively judged in a free market by the payers.
PS: I do not expect to benefit at all (financially or materially) from having gotten this idea. If it is adopted in my lifetime I will get considerable satisfaction. But payments by payers should never be made for actions taken before the system is adopted. Thus the idea should not get me any money at all in my system. What I mostly expect from publicizing the idea is lots of abuse from those who are afraid of the idea.
Professional Benefit Evaluators are called "payers" in my system. They get no money and have no luxuries and thus live materially at the lowest standard of living of anyone in the economy. Having no money to spend on girls, they would mostly be ignored and certainly would not be "date bait." After all, any payer they dated could not pay them without suspicion of bias.
You might see if you could come up with some benefits that strip clubs and cat houses provide. Otherwise I doubt they would exist in my system. (Sorry to disappoint you.)
In the present case we have a written document stating that any sick or ill person who can't afford being cured or any kind of care, should be left on his/her own, even if this implies death.
No other comment is needed!
So do I but people have to make subjective judgments. There are billions of subjective decisions made daily in our economy. Like it or not we need a rational means of dealing with those decisions. The true free market provides that.
"I have to wonder about your mind coming up with that example. It shows a really strange idea of 'net benefits'."
If you knew my mind, you wouldn't have even mentioned it.
Anyway, good luck with the TV show. Are you going to get the same cast from Planet of the Apes to play the payers?
That's not my affair. So far as I know (and that's very little about this project) the playwright knows some people in the industry at low levels but there are no "angels" on the horizon for the production or selling of such a show. Lots of daydream level stuff I should think. But then some people win the lottery so it is possible that something will come of it.
Oh, the operative word was perhaps. I see now.
Barter is still available in my economic system. Of course that means that pimps and other aspects of organized crime would be quite rare. Also, it means that the relationship between harlot and customer would be public. (Transfer of ownership is a public thing as when you buy a house or a car.) So the relationship would be considered to be of benefit to one's self in each case rather than a benefit to the other. But it's up to the payers and if the community thinks harlots are of net benefit they would be paid.
In the case of the actor's special haircut described above, that's part of the actors work and as such is a capital service, not a luxury nor a necessity.
Now you say that haircuts are beneficial so barbers would be paid to provide them which seems to me very confusing because necessities are also beneficial but people don't pay for them.
But now I see a new grouping, things that are neither necessities nor luxuries in the actor case, and it seems also that all haircuts go into this grouping of neither necessity nor luxury, but some kind of amorphous category that floats around and grabs things people have to get paid to do but that can't be called necessitites for that reason and they're not really luxuries either. (However, I can also think of a number of things that are necessities that people should get paid for but are still in the necessity category.) Now I see there's a sort of subset of necessities called "capital services" so people must pay for them even though they should fall into the necessity category except for a whim that puts them into a "capital services" category. hmmmm
So what I get from this is that anything that is a necessity that is supposed to be free but isn't becomes a capital service. Okay, that's clear to me now.
Did you actually read my 8:18 comment? I quote: "As regards haircuts, it seems to me that they are beneficial and as such, barbers would be paid to provide them." The only people who can pay are the payers.
So picture yourself as a barber. If you give a haircut to someone who needs it you would expect to get paid. Haircuts are beneficial after all. So does it matter to you whether the person who's hair you cut has money? No it doesn't since the benefit should be about the same regardless. Therefore barbers would provide cuts to anyone who seemed to need a cut.
I really can't see an ordinary haircut being considered to be a luxury.
You wrote:
"I was always under the assumption that all the things in your system that are deemed necessities are free of cost and everything that isn't deemed a necessity is defined as a luxury, ..."
Let's assume that you were referring just to consumer goods in your statement above. In that case your statement would be quite correct. All consumer goods not designated as luxuries would be considered to be necessities. Of course that would omit medical care and education which most folks do not consider to be consumer goods or services. They also are considered to be necessities.
If someone produced some consumer goods and gave them to people freely ( which, as the owner, is the producers right ) then those goods would be considered to be necessities. Note that no one could demand of the producer that those goods had to be given to any particular person nor that they had to be given at all to anyone. Note also that if those goods consumption produced no net benefit the producer would not be paid for giving those goods to others. So by simply giving products to others a producer can make that product a "necessity." That's what would probably happen with regards ordinary haircuts.
You wrote:
"Now you say that haircuts are beneficial so barbers would be paid to provide them which seems to me very confusing because necessities are also beneficial but people don't pay for them. "
If anything illustrates that you have no idea how my system works, this sentence of yours does the trick. Note that you have slipped back into treating my system's money as if it were our current money. That's very natural and to be expected. That tendency is exactly why I was forced to write the novel. It's also why most people read the whole book rather than just skimming over it reading a little here and there.
In your statement you say that it seems very confusing that barbers would be paid to provide haircuts. But payers pay for net benefit and haircuts are a benefit to those who receive them. So it's only natural that barbers would be paid to provide them. You then say that necessities are also beneficial but people don't pay for them. Being paid for providing something does not mean that the people you provide with that thing are the ones paying you nor does it mean that someone has to give up money in order for you to be paid.
Capital services are not a subset of necessities. They are labor and capital goods (like tools and infrastructure for production). No one pays for those since they are not luxuries. The money in my system buys only luxuries (luxury consumer goods and services). People don't pay for tools and factories.
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Payers pay for any net benefit regardless of the product (good or service) involved. The product can be a necessity, luxury, or capital. It can be a good or a service. But it is the net benefit that is paid, not the mere production of that good or service. Unless the good or service is used and its use results in net benefit, no pay for its production.
Money buys only luxury goods and services. Necessities and capital goods and services are given, not bought by consumers. It's the third party, the payer, who provides money to the giver after net benefit results, not the person(s) who benefited.
Only payers can increase the amount of money in a person's account.
Only the account owner can spend the money in that account.
in regards your comment of 8:52:
You wrote:
"So what I get from this is that anything that is a necessity that is supposed to be free but isn't becomes a capital service."
Any consumer good or service that is given freely to members of the general public is classified / designated as a "necessity." Education and medical care is also designated as a "necessity."
I have no idea what you mean by "a necessity that is supposed to be free but isn't". Necessities are free. Whether they are designated as necessities or not. Preventing death, infirmity, and suffering is a great benefit and gets paid for. Therefore, those preventions will be provided whether anyone buys them for themselves or not. If you use your money to buy a luxury meal in a fine restaurant, those who provided that meal would be paid for the nutrition you receive (a necessity) as well as being paid for providing the luxury aspects of the meal.
Things which are not really necessary but which are cheap and easily produced (like coffee? cell phones? Costume jewelry?) are likely to be included among the things designated "necessities."
Necessities, designated or not are never considered to be "capital services." Capital services are things like accounting (keeping track of inventory), tool making, construction of office buildings, and secretarial work.
With regards your 9:20 comment:
It doesn't end until the contribution trails run out. It trickles through the economy. When benefits are evaluated by the payers, the contributions they have already noted during production are realized in the form of pay. Is it complicated? Very. But it's also computerized. It's a problem of scale. Our computers are already dealing with such things. Airline reservations, stock markets, "just in time" production scheduling, all use complicated programs and lots of computation. We have the technology to do it today.
Do you think any of the oligarchic collectivists in this thread have read Orwell's 1984 - oh sorry, silly question. I'll rephrase; do you think any of the oligarchic collectivists in this thread have listened to an auido book of 1984?
I told you a few years ago that you should make up a game to which you agreed, but I don't think you've done it because I don't think you can do it. The rules change too much. There is almost nothing that is a constant. Even the constants become variables. I don't think I've ever in my life come across anything that is such a flux of ideas molded together in some way in one head. I haven't seen one person who understands your system, though some have taken bits and pieces of it and have said it's understandable, and then you roar in agreement that they understand what you're talking about so it's not just you who understands it. But anyway, as I said, you've certainly given us a good rendition of "the system" here. Thank you for being so accommodating.
You haven't read the novel either. If you get some free time you might check it out. It is free.
The system's simple. The computer programs are "recursive" so they can deal with complication. Modern economies are complicated as you know.
Larry, the book isn't as explicit as you've made it here in your replies. I'm going to save this link to this post so when you tell people to read your book, they can get a much better idea of what it's all about if they read this thread instead, or along with it.
I have read "1984", also "Brave New World", "Animal Farm", and "A Clockwork Orange." Have you tried "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?
Thanks. The more publicity the better.
It's much easier to read than "Wealth of Nations."
I have read 1984 several times. And as for the system where people earn and spend credits, I though that was in Star Trek.
The "credits" in Star Trek ( I haven't followed that series) have nothing to do with my system.
Absolutely right, a computer program without contants could not run. I know, like all other programmers I have forgotten to define a constant at times.
The "thinking" of all involved needs a serious overhaul ... IMnsHO
January 1, 1863
A Transcription
By the President of the United States of America:
A Proclamation.
Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.
By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
IMnsHO
Agree?
@The One - I am assuming by the "wealthy" Luckky is referring to those well enough connected to the politicians they get to write the loopholes that prevent them from paying taxes. I advocate for a flat tax that is levied against every adult without any writ-offs, so I agree with Luckky fully. And yes, the same percent if you make a million dollars or $10.
Such minimum life standard will any way vary in regard to the geographical position of the taxpayer. But then, you will be better off with NO DIRECT TAXES at all and, per example, an energy standard.
All exceeding expenditures from the government will be then translated into inflation.
I don't appreciate this solution!
If he pays for them, no problem.
If he can't pay for them, again you have 2 solutions: either you destroy the bill; either you sue him.
If you sue him again 2 solutions : he can or he cannot pay.
If he cannot pay again 2 solutions: either the charity pays,either no one pays.
If no one pays for him and his care: just one solution is left: KILL HIM!
OK. We killed everyone who had a disease and could not afford it. And now what?
The debt created by the unpaid bills is still there shared by some (still alive) 250 million people who are not willing to pay taxes, neither to work for what they believe is government held.
Imports will raise due to lack of workers and the rich will have to go abroad in order to find a doctor for their flues and their STDs!
Is anyone sticking to reality over here?
You're acting like a cartoon, Gilbert.
Does anyone really think that is what we were destined for ?
Gilbert always acts like a cartoon, Wile E Coyote. He always runs off the cliff.
What do you expect anyone to say to that? Yes, the costs that have been incurred, if they are not paid by the person who got the medical treatment will have to be absorbed by the people who pay for it through increased insurance premiums to cover the higher cost of medical bills the hospitals and doctors have lost or if the care was given under the government, the cost will be evidenced through higher taxes. ( don't know what you mean by "250 million people who are not willing to pay taxes," because that just doesn't make sense at all) Anyway. I don't get the point you're trying to make. Is there one? I'd have to first understand what the hell you're talking about before I could even venture to guess what the response should be.
However this is one face of the problem: it has been stated that a hospital should go in bankruptcy as any other company, corporation or whatsoever.
So I asked, to this point, who will be in charge of repaying the debt? (back to your answer) but they refuse to charge the taxpayer (the 250 million taxpayers) ... then who could be charged? And, in such case of bankruptcy, how to deal withe the patients (some in lethal conditions)?
You seem to be the only one sticking to reality ......
This being said, again, I repeat, ECONOMY is for the wealth of each one, not just a few working in even a very large company.
And economy IMPLIES taking into consideration each and every collateral expense. Not just statements linked to demagogy. Not just an addition of figures. And in this case, precisely, not to be aware of the hospital location, its competitors, its ER, its patients, its available beds and staff, its R&D, etc. but the meaning for the WHOLE surrounding people of a close through bankruptcy.
This is a study which cannot be achieved from one day to another as it's very, very complex to achieve. It has also been suggested some sort of filter to avoid any unpaid bill and I asked on which criteria this could be achieved. The lack of answer shows how embarrassing the question is.
PS I was used to question my staff as to reach some reliable statement because, as you stated, at the end of the day the taxpayer is to be involved.
Unfortunately I live in a country where Universal HealthCare has been instated decades ago and where the CARES are quite good and even improved. Exception or organization? Despite some late "improvements"(!) of the law I disagreed with.
But when we talk about "money", we better talk about what is creating the gap which ends being money. And how to try to impede such gap from becoming too large and, finally, unbearable.
That's far more interesting! What causes health care costs to raise? What could we do to avoid it, without harming quality?
IMO, this is the core question! Shall we be brainstorming instead of just denying reality?
This is a post I submitted last year in response to another post that was blaming an actress whose son had autism for deaths of huge humbers, ridiculous as that accusation was. I wrote this to show what the real causes of death are.
Death by Medicine I read in the print edition, but if you Google that, I think there's a PDF of the book, at least in good, part online. For a quick overview of what iatrogenics is about, see this.
Iatrogenics is the major cause of ever rising costs in the medical industry. Until these events are radically reduced, there is no talk about who administers the health care and who gets health care that will make anything different from what we have right now.
In one decade half the population of Americans receive unnecessary medical treatment. It's documented. Think of the cost of that alone.
As far as the charts are concerned, they practically match ours with a small difference about "malnutrition" which should include "overweighted" people (kids and adults). Maybe this was avoided for "political" matters (MacDonald, Coke,, etc.) as in the USA you have some 40% people overweighted and this cost is RATHER important to the community and is even "lethal" in some cases.
Unnecessary procedures: a reason to create individual electronic files. Problem is the access to them.
Outpatients: should take into consideration ER and should be channelized in order to avoid unnecessary ones and procedures. Any ER consultation is about 7 times more expensive than a private physician consultation.
Bedsores: tough to fight this as they much depend on the ability to get out the bed by the patient. We cannot ask him to pay for remaining in the bed! Maybe some R&D will produce special beds one day ... if we can afford them.
There is a lot room for improvement - at the least in both our countries - but this goes through the system's applications and the system is to be defined as to avoid unnecessary procedures. Such personal encoding is still not available.
As far as the "forgotten" obesity (ours raises to 25%) there is a cultural axiom to go through . An axiom which is due to the many times, genetically written times, BTW, when people was starving. However such "lack of satisfaction" is the root of our consumption economy.
This is to say that such overweight which, with its consequences, provides about 18% of the whole "gap" (based on the 25% mentioned figure) is very tough to low down presently. Noticeable is that health costs were proportionally far lower during WWII when rationing took place. In some way, "iatrogenics" was already applied.
At that time people was walking (exercising) far more than nowadays but we cannot kill the automotive industry neither the oil one.
Would you rephrase this in a way that makes a point to me? I don't have a clue what that means.
I think you focused on some of the more minor aspects of iatrogenesis, Gilbert. As I said, I wanted you to focus on one concept at a time because I didn't know for sure, but from what little I've gathered (no pun intended) from you, I've seen you miss the major aspect of issues, the big picture, and focus on what is less important. That's why I suggested you just think about one thing, that being that in one decade half of the population of Americans are medically treated unnecessarily and to ponder what that means in dollars and in the quality of care.
We're not talking about obesity per se here,, but malnutrition. Yes, obesity indicates malnutrition, but so does the high cholesterol problem that my friend had. As I indicated, he is in great physical shape, but his body was malnourished and his doctor did not address his body's malnourishment, He had to find a way to address that himself, but most people would not have done that. They would have taken the Lipitor prescription instead which would have been another iatrogenic event--the prescribing of unnecessary medication that would in its initial phase of years of intake before the side-effects that are other iatrogenic events caused by the indiscriminate prescription, also added unncessary cost of treatment.
Bedsores are not going to be something that's an issue unless you think of why they have them. People who are in bed for inordinate amounts of time get bedsores so other iatrogenic factors are much more responsible and bedsores themselves, though one of the results of iatrogenics, is also a product of many other iatrogenic events. An example would be that the patient might not have been in a position to be in that bed for so long had wrong diagnoses of ailments that progressed not put him in that position to get the bedsores. Wrong prescription and contraindications of medication can result in a long bed stay. You can probably go down the list of iatrogenic events that put someone in the position for a long bed stay to get bedsores. So although bedsores are one of the iatrogenic events listed on the chart, it would probably be one of the last things I would be concerned about because taking care of all the others would greatly reduce the bedsore event.
So I think you need to read the book and focus on that one concept that I suggested when you read it because with that in mind you might get a better idea of what iatrogenic costs really mean and how iatrogenic events are the 3rd biggest cause of illness and death. Illness is, in fact, the reason people are concerned about costs. And death is always a looming fear for many.
So you want me to rephrase the first sentence but you didn't mention my one referring to WWII? OK.
I stated that no one intends to stop breathing ... because the air we breath is already polluted. Good fresh air is for sure not in large cities, not even near industries, nuclear plants even if isolated ... and certainly not when we work in such areas.
On top of it, we just need to drink filtered waters but this is not always possible and certainly should avoid drinking Cokes, beers, orange juices, etc.
BTW, we cannot stop eating either, because the meat is often hormonized, even colored in some cases and any way this "stupid" animals we eat, after a suspicious killing, have been breathing (see above).
On top of all this, the cheaper the meet is the more fats it has or the lesser quality it has.
Howard Hughes had the means to afford good 1st quality meat but he passed away ... any way(?)
So eating , drinking, breathing are points of importance but no one can afford any change fast enough as to decrease the "gap", I mean the non-paid bills within the very next years. Maybe rationing would be an answer, however doing so seems to me politically difficult.
So let us talk about what is really feasible and not about long run proceeds or even wishes.
Some illnesses are any way genetics and one could help not (yet) impede them.
Iatrogenics has not to be converted into a religion but would have been applied since we discovered the fire ... and its CO2!
Iatrogenics cannot fight genetics, it can delay the symptoms, but not fight it.
And there is some consequences of our type of life, in most areas it has recently be discovered that human sperm is less effective (stronger) than 2 or 3 decades ago. I received the report about a month ago, if my memory is good enough, when in Europe. This may imply that genetic illnesses would be raising within the next 30 ears to come.
In the meantime, we have to face more urgent problems but not more important ones.
As far as obesity is concerned, I forgot to mention this point in my previous message, indeed it deals with malnutrition but ... how come this position (malnutrition) is reduced to 0, null within the statistics you referred?
I haven't had the opportunity to see if the obesity related figure have been dispatched into the other figures or not, but I suppose so.
If there are 40% obese (I prefer overweighted peope), they represent about 30% of the 282 billions i.e. 84.6 b., the second position just after unnecessary procedures (43.3%).
While waiting on an electronic solution to deal with unnecessary procedures, we could start fighting obesity and malnutrition.
However, I have a question for you: what are you willing to do to convince McDonald to create hamburgers with meat of only 4% fat instead of a minimum of 17%? How are you going to suggest eating anything but white bread?
Within an experimental research I did with late Dr. Zunic, president of a WHO department, we found many interesting ... and scaring things ... public is not even aware about.
In the first place, most of this is a direct response to the comment before your added comment, a direct response to the comment you made at 7:45 AM. At the end of this comment, I'll just very briefly address the response to your 8:59 AM comment since there will be contained in the body of this comment the reason for the brevity of that response.
Certainly, Gilbert, genetics play a strong role in several aspects of one’s life, not only health. It seems that you have come to terms with the stark realization of some of that and you deal with it. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Let’s develop that thought for a minute. If we were talking here about education and ways to improve it, I would be talking about the quality of the teaching, and everyone else might be attributing the problems of education to funding. So after I present my argument on how I think the quality of education can be greatly improved with far less expenditure of funds, your response, paralleling the one you just gave me, would be that genetics play a role in the ability to teach well and the ability of students to learn so my ideas are not viable because of that.
We’re back to what I started out here with you in the very first comment. In that comment of yours to which I initially responded, I told you that you had spent a lot of time pointing out a given. A given is a postulate or an axiom that we accept as a fact that doesn’t change. It’s the constant of the matter. We know that genetics play a role in the mental capacity of people, and we know that genetics play a role in illness and even in longevity of life. Those are givens, but we’re not going to dismiss that we can improve the quality of health and the quality of education just because some of it is predetermined. Even in those cases where genetics play a role, sometimes people defy the odds. But even if that were not so, we already know that genetics will determine these things to a certain extent. It’s not necessary to make that point because it has nothing to do with what we can
do something about.
So we are not ever going to eliminate the population of people who cannot be educated, and we are not ever going to eliminate all illness or death itself. We can, however, address the issues that cause much more illness than is necessary, thereby greatly reducing those “unpaid bills” you’re one-tracked on since there won’t be a lot of those bills to go unpaid.
End of response to first comment.
Beginning of response to second comment:
The idea of controlling things outside the medical field is not what iatrogenics is about. We can't and should not control what McDonald's serves and we can't control what bad decisions people make about anything. We can have a medical profession that is less likely toi prescribe medications indiscriminately and make people aware that their health is determined to a great extent by their diets. Most doctors don't do that because the medication is the primary crutch. If people with high cholesterol were sent out of a doctor's office with a prescription of oat bran and niacin for 8 weeks before Lipitor were prescribed along with an explanation of how important it is to follow this recommendation with strict warning about how the person will have to be on this medication that will cause adverse effects and what those effects will be, the prognosis for that person's health and well-being on that medication that only controls the condition as opposed to the body's natural way to reverse the problem, fewer people would be dining at the yellow arches. That's just a small part of what addressing iatrogenics will solve.
At this point, if doctors could run out of patients as quickly as I’m running out of patience right now, the problem would already be solved. There also comes a point in most discussions here where you can see an impasse has been reached. I rather got ambushed into this discussion with you against my better judgment, and I see that there is no reason to continue this. Have a nice Passover if you celebrate it. I have a lot to get together for my holiday so my time here will be scarce anyway.
Laughs!
Interesting topic, Sue. I'm glad that you've invested the time.
Yes...that 'Lipitor' is nasty stuff...I think it's killed more than it's saved. While I give a bit more praise to our Pharmaceutical Industry for adding "quality of Life" for Millions of people than might you, I agree with your main premise..."if it's broke, give it a Pill." And a very expensive one, at that.
We, in fact, face somehow a Gordian knot ... and we should start somewhere.
Unfortunately, I've to go NOW. Will revert later on.
The costs to people who pay insurance or who would pay taxes for government administration of health needs are astronomical in part because of this problem. They know what the effects are and they need to account up front for those future predicted claims so your rates increase or your taxes increase as a result. Whether or not insurance companies continue to provide health insurance or the government provides the funding, the money that is wasted is still the same money that is wasted. It's only a different way to pay. You've got to address the source issues, but like everything else, we have another one of the same types of diverstionary tactics that you, Mark-John, just wrote about to distract from the real issues. (I'm already behind schedule here, and if they had an anti-procrastination pill, I'd probably eat my own words along with it.)
The present goal is the healthcare gap and how to manage to help decreasing it.
We defined some solutions, malnutrition (Michelle Obama is trying to take care of it) being one of them. The question is a timing one: you could convince a group to change to perfect food. (Perfect? This to be discussed. Not even you will revert to the original black and hard bread). But supposing so, from the healthcare point of view , when are the even very first consequences to become tangible? At the least about 3 years from now.
So the question remains opened: what could be done for being effective enough as to show some positive figures within the very year?
We ought to design a time scale which will define the budgets implied and when to achieve each pace.
So you may be running out of patience, however I do feel that you should take profit of your Passover time in order to make some suggestions.
Have a nice week!
"You've got to address the source issues, but like everything else, we have another one of the same types of diverstionary tactics that you, Mark-John, just wrote about to distract from the real issues."
Well, you didn't write to distract from the real issues so that sentence should read, "You've got to address the source issues, but like everything else, we have another one of the same types of diversionary tactics to distract from the real issues that you, Mark-John, just wrote about." It happens when you're just writing off the top of your head as you might speak, but much more easily corrected when speaking like I told you there. :)
BTW- Love the SKA logo on FB. I am seeing Madness on the 17th.
I agree with everything you say but one thing. We are not classic liberals, we are liberals. Check this post out: Liberals are not liberal
I say that and the first response is, "no you're not" . . . so I check the dictionary. When we compare views, it is quite obvious I am the liberal. So what are they? Fascist.
There is a second part or by-product to this that you touching on. Most people who call themselves "liberal" never give it much thought. Their understanding of history and politics is very shallow, usually just what some authority figure (parent, teacher, professor) told them. This is because they are never forced to defend themselves and their views. We, on the other hand, must always defend ourselves from constant ad hominem attack, usually in the form of name calling like racist, fascist (ironically), sexist, whatever. This forces us to always be prepared to defend our positions. As a result we have a deeper understanding of the issues and, I believe, makes us better educated.
I believe vernacular is very important, similar to what you said I make the argument often that most people do not think about these things as people such as you, me, and really anyone in this thread. They just think "liberal" and what pops in their head? Liberty, do what you want, just leave me alone. They then support "liberals" without a second thought giving credence to a view in complete opposition to what they intend.
If you read Friedman and Hayek, they both say that it was a huge mistake for "conservatives" (whatever that means) to give up the word liberal to the left in the US and I agree.
I am on a personal mission to take it back! So please, use the word "liberal" to describe your views all the time.
Sorry to continue to pimp my articles, but I think you might like this one too. The Anarchist. Let me know what you think of it.
I think we are a new "generation" of thinkers who are attempting to introduce some truth and intellectual honesty into politics and the governance of this nation. So I am with you in the struggle.
As a result of a book I wrote, I recently had the opportunity to be on a radio show. I think you, as well as others in this stream, my find it interesting. I was on for the whole hour so it is a bit long.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/patriotcomelately/2012/02/08/patriot-come-lately-talk-radio--episode
Maybe the economic side of the History has been a bit hidden. I Don't know as I haven't yet read the book, of course.
I also agree to make the difference between liberals and progressives, which is in fact the pure reality.
We shall differ on some other points, psychology and economics mainly. Asfar as religion is concerned I feel not up to its psychological meaning.
Where we shall differ is on your statement that history repeats itself because this means forgetting "information" changes each individual: it comes from Latin as you know. And information is coming each day faster implying the hate for people to have to change and adapt themselves.
John, thank you for your support. There are other projects I am working on and will share those with you when they are ready.
Problem is that we, Jews, Talmudists, are often progressive! But let's avoid talking about the "how come" of it.
And I also appreciated to be, in front, aware of the subjectivity driving the book as, of course, "Nature" answers the questions the way they are posted.
Page 7: "Can it be preserved?" shows already its subjectivity: it is not "How it faces modernity" or How modernity influences it" (Como se comporta frente a la modernidad). Can any Constitition or law be freezed for ever?
I don't think so. However, the "color" being already stated your book is highly interesting. I will revert after having read it.
Thanks for the signature. I very much regret your mother not having been able to get the first book out of the press.
Yes, it was sad that my mom did not get to see the book in print, although she did read the finalized manuscript. She passed away the day before it went to print so at least I had the chance to change the dedication.
This being said, without getting into the book itself, I have a question:
We both have similarities (incl. the fact that we defeat William the Conqueror, as well), however Swiss organization is older of some 400 years (1291 compared to 1688) .
In both cases, we see groups of people which delegates authority to a third party, on their behalf, and under the "auspices" of God.
What raises my attention is that, In Switzerland, these group of people was and is still going on (Lenzerheide) in some areas. However, maybe to impede agreements, it shape is squared and not round. This is the reason, plus most probably the climate, that impedes the Swiss to group outside the Church and delegate most often any "community's member". As in England this creates powerful families any way.
In England you have a similar system but, most probably due to the climate, who meets and group in the Churches which, obviously becomes the needed intermediary delegated to support and face any "human" power "while in touch with God".
The Swiss individual is far more directly involved in his own God's relationship and therefore far more individually responsible.
In England, an individual has to be member of the Church in order to be able to make himself heard. This goes, then of course in parallel with his donations and charities. This creates as well strong families. But, as well, gives a special importance to the Church itself, which practically "supervises" the law application.
In Switzerland, the law is still supervised through "lenzerheides" in some cases but, as a consequence, where these meetings cannot be held for just practical reasons, each law is to be accepted by the people who, therefore, vote several times a year.
Within England and USA organizations one has to be a member of a church community if he/she wants to be heard or to profit from charity.
In Switzerland the intermediate which is the Church is gone in favor of a direct responsibility to God and citizens.
Without the Church and its charities, you lose your power as citizen.
Without the Church, I am still responsible towards all other citizens and vice-versa.
Confronted to today's science this becomes a huge of a problem because science "may" at a point or another "question(?)" the value of the Church itself which cannot be changes without changing the individual relationship with the power.
Therefore, again, the question is individual responsibility or delegated responsibility.
In the history of England, the role of the Anglican church was often more symbolic than actual. For example, by the time of the Revolution of 1688 to be considered a member of the church one only had to take communion once per year. Rather than being an affirmation of ones religious belief, it was more of an acknowledgement of the government's authority. This was directed mainly at Catholics. What is lost one most people today is that it was not based solely on religion. It was based on the teaching of the Catholic Church that stated that the Pope was the highest authority on earth, even above earthly kings. In modern terms, it would be akin to American Muslims recognizing the authority and law of a cleric in Tehran or Mecca above that of the Constitution. Americans would not tolerate this and neither did the English. So they created this test which allowed English Catholics to show allegiance to England and not Rome. But it was not limited to Catholics. It also affected non-confirming Protestants such as Calvinist, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and, of course Puritans. They, as well as many Catholics, refused to take communion in the Anglican church. This was done more for religious principle rather than resistance to the authority of London. But the result was the same, they were locked out off government and, at times, treated as second class citizens or even persecuted.
This led to the exodus of both non-conforming protestants and Catholics, which resulted in the founding of England's North American colonies. The rest is, as they say, history... American history.