[ExI] Yet another health care debate

Samantha Atkins sjatkins at mac.com
Fri Sep 26 09:05:55 UTC 2008


On Sep 25, 2008, at 9:45 AM, Damien Sullivan wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 01:49:44AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>> Damien S. writes
>>
>>> Conservative/libertarians sometimes deride liberals/socialists as  
>>> making
>>> the State their God.  I'd say this is partly true: where the  
>>> religious
>>> worship an unprovable God, progressives set out to build a god,  
>>> finite
>>> and fallible but real, to do the things God is asked to do, like  
>>> help us
>>> in need.
>>
>> I can hardly believe I'm reading this. It's all the worst claims
>> of the right-wing extremists come true, namely, that the left
>> wants to turn government into some kind of god.
>
> A god of our design and under our control.
>
> More *precisely*, the state is doing the things that people have  
> prayed
> for God to do.  Keep us safe from enemies, provide regular water for  
> the
> crops, help us out after disasters, and even prevent natural disasters
> -- Army Corps on water works, possibly future weather control.

People can band together and have for common defense.  They band  
together in many ways for various common needs and to smooth out the  
rough places that can visit each on occassion.  This does not require  
any mega-State.   The mega-State has a very sorry history of killing  
hundreds of millions of its own people.

>
>
> Why can't that be private?  Some of it could, but there's lots of free
> rider problems.  Some of it can't be -- "what should the outdoor
> temperature be?" is an inherently collective decision.
>

What for?  If you can control the weather then micro-climates should  
not be that big a step.  And I think you will agree that is a pretty  
trivial example.

>> I think the EPA has hurt. It costs industry hundreds of billions
>> of dollars annually, which is passed on to people, and we get
>> further and further off the exponential economic growth curve
>> we should have been on.
>
> The EPA prevents industry from dumping costs onto third parties by
> dumping poisons into the environment.  Externalities.  This is making
> the market work better, not worse; a "free market" where costs aren't
> private is a false market.

There were many ways to address pollution and many were used, not just  
government force.    Costs are never completely private.  This does  
not mean they cannot be factored into market decisions instead of  
being matters of State fiat.

>
>
>> Can you perhaps help me with this? My friends can't. Why
>> don't people who think pollution is too high in the cities just
>> move to small towns?  (Oh, right, because their standard of living
>
> Cities are hardly the only problem.  Aquifers, river dumping, ocean
> dumping, acid rain, ozone layer destruction, global warming.
>
> Cities, perhaps, don't need a federal EPA; they could use local laws
> against leaf-burning (hey, they do) or car emissions.  (In the  
> interest
> of unified markets, states are forbidden from being stricter than the
> EPA, except for California which had special smog problems, and states
> are allowed to jump up to California levels.  So we don't have a full
> free 'market' in state laws.
>

A bunch of libertarians can sue ill-behaved neighbors just fine or  
simply shun them until they either become more reasonable or move  
elsewhere.



> But you seem to be saying people in polluted cities should move away
> rather than trying to regulate local pollution.  Why do polluters  
> have a
> right to pollute?  You think government regulations are more onerous
> than dumping toxins into the air?
>

No one has the right to harm others except in self-defense.  This  
flows straight out of the Non-Aggression Principle.  Poisoning a  
common resource we both depend on is most certainly a form of  
aggression and quite actionable by libertarians.


>> I think black people have suffered because of those laws. Sure,
>> you have some superficial hireings here and there, but often at the
>> cost of introducing underqualified workers. And now, even
>
> I don't want to get into affirmative action debate, but I'd note there
> are multiple levels:
> anti-discrimination
> affirmative action (adds making some sort of active effort to recruit
> the disadvantaged)
> quota (adds a hard requirement of such recruitment)
>

If some moron discriminates then others can discriminate against the  
moron and refuse to do business with him.  Discrimination of whom you  
associate with is part of freedom of association. Circumventing that  
was arguably a  mistake.

> Discrimination can at least sometimes be measured directly, such as  
> when
> companies respond to otherwise identical resumes differently based  
> on the
> perceived race or gender of the name on the resume, let alone when  
> black
> and white couples are told different things about home availability in
> an area.

Why should I be able to tell someone they can't do business or not do  
business with whomever they please?   I may think they are ridiculous  
and shun them as rather benighted but I don't see why I or any group  
of people should be able to tell them they must do business with  
anyone they don't want to.    Much less that we should be able by  
force or arms to make them do so.

I dare say that all people no matter how different from most others  
will find more room to live and let live in such a libertarian society  
than they do today where the State uses its legalized force to coerce  
everyone to whatever least common denominator standards with  
considerable twisting by special interests and pressure groups manage  
to make it into law.

- samantha




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