[VincentVinturi]

(04-09-2017 02:43 AM)Ouroboros Wrote:  

The police and military are part of government, funded by the taxpayer. Why should wealthier members of the community part with their hard-earned cash to subsidise your security?

The police and military are arguably one of the few areas where the state rightfully belongs, to protect one group from violence against another regardless of economic status.

But even that is contentious.

Quote:

They could easily just hire their own security guards and wait it out in their gated compounds. Private security, being sourced from the private sector unlike clumsy state-owned military/policy forces, would do a far better job.

This is actually a very interesting and legitimate issue with a lot of discussion around it.

https://mises.org/blog/privatize-police

Quote:

Taking it further, why should the government protect your property rights at all? If you have worked hard enough, you ought to have enough money to pay for militias to do the job for you. After all, there is no society, only individuals, and they should look after their own interests instead of depending on a nanny state to protect them.

Quoting from the above article:

Free-market police would not only be efficient, they would have a strong incentive to be courteous and to refrain from brutality against either their clients or their clients' friends or customers. A private Central Park would be guarded efficiently in order to maximize park revenue, rather than have a prohibitive curfew imposed on innocent — and paying — customers. A free market in police would reward efficient and courteous police protection to customers and penalize any falling off from this standard. No longer would there be the current disjunction between service and payment inherent in all government operations, a disjunction which means that police, like all other government agencies, acquire their revenue, not voluntarily and competitively from consumers, but from the taxpayers coercively. In fact, as government police have become increasingly inefficient, consumers have been turning more and more to private forms of protection. We have already mentioned block or neighborhood protection.

There are also private guards, insurance companies, private detectives, and such increasingly sophisticated equipment as safes, locks, and closed-circuit TV and burglar alarms. The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice estimated in 1969 that government police cost the American public $2.8 billion a year, while it spends $1.35 billion on private protection service and another $200 million on equipment, so that private protection expenses amounted to over half the outlay on government police. These figures should give pause to those credulous folk who believe that police protection is somehow, by some mystic right or power, necessarily and forevermore an attribute of State sovereignty.

[Ouroboros]

(04-09-2017 02:56 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

This is actually a very interesting and legitimate issue with a lot of discussion around it.

My response was somewhat facetious, but I respect the fact that you engaged with it in a thoughtful manner.

I actually agree that in economically prosperous areas, private security would be/is superior to the police. However, the obvious consequence of replacing the police with private contractors is that in poorer neighbourhoods that can't afford it, security would deteriorate. Why bother investigating the death of some prostitute murdered in the poor end of town? Who would pay for it? If police were motivated by purely monetary incentives, you could just offer them more money than they would earn from the investigation and easily get away with any crime (provided wealthier interests than you didn't care, and in many cases they wouldn't). Sure, there are lots of uninvestigated deaths already and bribery still occurs, but it would surely get worse. I imagine you would end up with an incredibly secure and economically prosperous city centre and a crime-infested no-go zone surrounding it, not unlike what you already have in many Latin American cities where the police is ineffectual.

It would be a truly 'might=right' society.

Beyond the purely economic perspective, there are ethical issues which I think touch on every aspect of state-provided benefits, be it healthcare or the rule of law. We can discuss which system is a more 'efficient' use of money as much as we want but at the end of the day it comes down to your values.
Which do you find to be more of an affront to your morality: (1) seeing poor people dying on the street from preventable illnesses, or getting into enormous debt to get treatment, or (2) the government 'stealing' money from wealthier people to prevent the former from occurring?
I'm not judging either way, just saying that they're irreconcilable value systems.

[Leonard D Neubache]

I can at least feel somewhat placated that VV is potentially accepting of the fact that there might be a lot of blood spilled on the way to this libertarian utopia. The libertarians I can't stand are the ones that believe that as soon as taxation is dropped to a fraction of its former levels and most of the government is disbanded then we'll all hold hands and sing songs of voluntary solidarity and mutual respect.

There would be something of an unprecedented culling of certain demographics, which sadly would be shall we say "over-represented" within certain minority groups. In that, you would be fighting not only those groups in the larger sense but all the provident who's consciences could not abide the process.

Yet at the end of the day, I can say that my nation has what passes for single payer national health care. It has for decades, and never fell over in a screaming heap. Hell, unlike the US we balance our budget as often as not despite the rigours of socialism ravaging our markets on a number of fronts.

Give pause for thought that the US by comparison runs up trillion dollar deficits and provides precisely what to their citizens for all that debt?

The US doesn't have a socialism problem as much as it has (((another))) kind of problem. You guys could easily fund a basic, limited health service for free rather than providing the military with hammers for $30,000 a pop and toilet seats for the low low price of 20k a unit.

Perspective. Focus.

[Leonard D Neubache]

p.s. Fantasy land concept, but I would love to see the following.

A Federal mandate in the US that all states have to fund and provide their own single payer system. No federal assistance for anyone.

THEN we'd see if it could be done in an economically rational manner. The US was born on the premise that people could vote with their feet and it worked well until honest Abe set America on the path to becoming one massive Federal plantation.

[BrewDog]

(04-09-2017 02:43 AM)Ouroboros Wrote:  

The police and military are part of government, funded by the taxpayer. Why should wealthier members of the community part with their hard-earned cash to subsidise your security? They could easily just hire their own security guards and wait it out in their gated compounds. Private security, being sourced from the private sector unlike clumsy state-owned military/policy forces, would do a far better job.
Taking it further, why should the government protect your property rights at all? If you have worked hard enough, you ought to have enough money to pay for militias to do the job for you. After all, there is no society, only individuals, and they should look after their own interests instead of depending on a nanny state to protect them.

This is the typical response to libertarian ideas. If we want smaller, responsible government, then surely we don't desire any government at all.


Appeal to Extremes

Description: Erroneously attempting to make a reasonable argument into an absurd one, by taking the argument to the extremes.


Libertarians aren't anarchists. If we were, we would call ourselves anarchists.

[SamuelBRoberts]

(04-09-2017 01:35 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

Man, there are countless jobs available for these able-bodied bums.

Construction, hotels, fast food, restaurants, sanitation, etc.

What makes you say this?
If there were large larbor shortages in the fast food, restaurant, construction, etc. industries, wouldn't you expect to see rising wages as they tried to pull more people in? That's not what we're seeing at all. Here's an article from Breitbart on the construction industry:

Quote:

If there’s a massive job shortage in homebuilding, however, wages should be skyrocketing. That’s not happening.

The average hourly wage adjusted of nonsupervisory workers engaged in the construction of buildings was $25.65 in January 2017, according to the most recent data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s an increase of just 7.18 percent over the inflation adjusted January 2007 average of $23.93. In other words, real wage increases in building construction have averaged around 0.72 percent per year over the past decade.

That increase is less than the 8.6 percent real wage gains of nonsupervisory private sector workers overall during the same period.

The fact that construction work wage gains lag behind those of the U.S. workforce is clear and decisive evidence that there is no labor shortage.

If there are enough free jobs available to absorb all the non-workers in the US, why is immigration such a hot topic? Why would anyone care about immigrants if there are all these jobs just open and waiting?

Quote:

Trump's election proves that there's a shifting tide in the West.

People are getting sick of the bullcrap from the left, both on the economic and social fronts.

The people that propelled Trump to victory were poorly-educated whites in job poor areas of the northern midwest, like Michigan. The idea that they voted for Trump in order to dismantle the government programs they depend on is... one I'm going to need to see some evidence for.


In my mind, libertarianism as an ideology has been tried and failed. There's a reason the last libertarian convention featured a fat man stripping on stage: very few people want anything to do with it anymore.

[BrewDog]

(04-09-2017 09:30 AM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

In my mind, libertarianism as an ideology has been tried and failed.

When was this?

Are you talking about the first 150 years of the United States when the government was small, industry wasn't hampered by regulation, there was no welfare state, no income tax, no corporate tax, the government didn't conquer Arabs, and the United States rose to be the world's greatest industrial powerhouse like no other before?

Yeah, I suppose that was a failure.

It's a much better country now that we have massive government with a gargantuan welfare state, 800 military bases in 80 countries, $20 trillion debt, 2 wars and trying to start several more, a military larger than the next 12 countries combined, a War on Drugs, a War on Poverty, a War on Racism, a War on Bathrooms, the highest corporate tax rate in the world, millions of people with no jobs, unaffordable "free" healthcare, the highest prison population, the fattest citizens, 20 million illegal alien moochers, failed government schools, a domestic spy agency that records every email and phone call without a court order, and Kaitlyn Jenner.

I can see how most people prefer the two major US socialist parties over libertarianism. It's clear why many view libertarians as being out of our damn minds.

[Leonard D Neubache]

Questions that libertarians might want to ponder.

Would libertarianism work in Africa? If not, why not?
Would libertarianism work in the Middle East? If not, why not?
Would libertarianism work in Mexico? If not, why not?
Would libertarianism work in China? If not, why not?

Brewdog says that Libertarianism worked in America for a time.

If so, why there and nowhere else?
What happened that stopped it?
If it were a better system, why did people not defend it or fight to regain it?
If we had it again, what would stop it being defeated again?

And the last one for kicks.

What odds do you give a libertarian nation of any size successfully defending itself against a foreign superpower?

[BassPlayaYo]

I keep hearing mention of the "Welfare State" and I'm not sure what you think it is, but here in the USA everyone corporations as well as individuals pay taxes to the government and that money is used to fund wars and missions that topple governments, to fund the largest prison population and to create propaganda that convinces most people to vote against their own interests. The labels thrown around are all apart of the propaganda, liberal, democrat, republican, all irrelevant, the government isn't acting in the interest of the people, the lack of universal health care is certainly proof of that. We the greatest country in the world but we don't have high speed rail? Seriously?! Did you listen to Paul Ryan's pitch for the bogus health care plan? Obviously he and others thinks people are stupid.

[void]

If you want to privatize the executive power of the state (police/military), you can look at African states ruled by warlords or look at Europe before the unification of all the small kingdoms, you would be back to the feudal age. Without a functional society and division of labour, even the quality of life of the new 'lords' would suffer.

[Orson]

(03-05-2013 05:24 PM)MaleDefined Wrote:  

A government's fundamental role is to care for its citizens. I don't see how competent healthcare should even an issue that is argued.

Well, cost for one thing.

Name one thing "FREE" that people won't consume to excess....

You might learn the old term TANSTAFL" - "There Ain't No Such Thing As a Free Lunch."

Because when that happens and costs are controlled (as they must be under "free" care), then the state controls the people:

For the USA, even before ObamaCare, government was already been spending more than 55% of all healthcare spending.... I haven't followed how much higher it is now.

[Leonard D Neubache]

(04-10-2017 04:21 AM)Orson Wrote:  

...

Because when that happens and costs are controlled (as they must be under "free" care), then the state controls the people:
...

Australia has an aggressively nanny state stance on smoking and wearing helmets on bicycles but that's about the worst of it for socialised health care leading to tyranny.

Obviously the potential is there but it hasn't manifested so far.

Frankly a little more control might not be so bad in some cases. My local hospital has no less that 3 patients taking up 6 bed spaces because they're so fat they cannot care for themselves. Despite this they refuse surgical treatment and are provided triple serves for each meal. I have conservatively estimated their care costs at over a million dollars a year each and needless to say, none of them have a dollar to their names.

In all my years working in and around the health care sector I've never seen an instance of someone being snuffed before their time on the call of a bureaucrat, but plenty are kept alive against their wishes.

Just presenting testimony as food for thought.

[Orson]

(04-10-2017 06:50 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(04-10-2017 04:21 AM)Orson Wrote:  

...

Because when that happens and costs are controlled (as they must be under "free" care), then the state controls the people:
...

Australia has an aggressively nanny state stance on smoking and wearing helmets on bicycles but that's about the worst of it for socialised health care leading to tyranny.

Obviously the potential is there but it hasn't manifested so far.

Frankly a little more control might not be so bad in some cases. My local hospital has no less that 3 patients taking up 6 bed spaces because they're so fat they cannot care for themselves. Despite this they refuse surgical treatment and are provided triple serves for each meal. I have conservatively estimated their care costs at over a million dollars a year each and needless to say, none of them have a dollar to their names.

In all my years working in and around the health care sector I've never seen an instance of someone being snuffed before their time on the call of a bureaucrat, but plenty are kept alive against their wishes.

Just presenting testimony as food for thought.

I certainly know fewer Aussies, Leonard.

But news and people from Canada and the UK show Americans that the divide between socialized and more market friendly systems have at least three consequences: first, the former can do simple things well and widely. The second can do more complex procedures better and tends to reward innovation and adaptation quicker.

Furthermore, people with socialized systems of medicine tend towards fierce loyalty. But how much this is shaped and mirrored by media, one is left to wonder because more careful studies show - for instance - longer life expectancies in the US for those over 50 in general, and longer survival rates for certain common cancers in particular. (Accordingly, high rates of non-English speaking immigration in the US skews younger life expectancy in the US lower; the language barrier is also a barrier to gaining medical attention.)

To take one celebrity example: in 2009, the wife of actor Liam Neeson was filming in Toronto when his 45 year old wife, actress Natasha Richardson, tragically died skiing in Quebec, Canada. She simply had a fall on an easy beginners slope, hitting her head. But appeared quite OK. She refused further attention.

It's when headaches grew that the story grows uncertain, except that aid came too late and too slowly to help her.

Quote:

Although her fall may have first appeared minor – she reportedly refused to be taken to hospital at least twice – the head injury she suffered is a type that, if tended to quickly at a qualified trauma center, can often treated successfully – and can just as easily turn fatal if not treated in time.

The New York City medical examiner’s office ruled March 19 that Richardson died from blunt trauma to the head, causing massive internal bleeding in the brain [ie, epidural hematoma]. In such cases, blood from a damaged but still-pumping artery can quickly pool in the brain, creating pressure that must be relieved before irreparable damage is caused.
_ _ _
Medical experts tell PEOPLE that time is of the essence in increasing the chances of survival.

http://people.com/celebrity/natasha-rich...atal-fall/

A specialist in New York City continues:

Quote:

Richardson died of an epidural hematoma — a bleeding artery between the skull and brain that compresses and ultimately causes fatal brain damage via pressure buildup. With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive.

Could Richardson have received this care? Where it happened in Canada, no. In many US resorts, yes.

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/27/did...ichardson/

It turns out that the nearby town's hospital did have a CT scanner. But the lack of emergency evacuation services at the ski resort and a relative dearth of neurosurgeons in Canada doomed her.

As it is, Canucks on waiting lists often come to the US for speedy testing and treatment when waiting lists are onerous.

Sometimes you do get what you pay for. American's pay a lot more for medicine, overall. And part of this is a result of higher levels of optimism for the hope of saving more lives, and thus a greater willingness to spend more for life-saving skills, technology, and systems to make them effective.

[Leonard D Neubache]

Oh, that story is absolutely relevant.

Public sector health is subject to the same forces every other public sector organisation is. Remarkably I never saw someone die because of bean-counting. The staff typically go out of their way to be wasteful if anything. The problem is that they are simply by and large incompetent and getting worse by the day.

This is because nobody can be fired for anything (public service), there is no consequence for failure (public service), promotions are chosen entirely by political correctness or nepotism (public service), budget shortfalls are rewarded with more taxpayer money (public service) and the really bad fuckups that occasion law suits simply hurt the tax-payer, not the CEO or the shareholder (public service).

In my region we have entered the realm of having a first world medical system staffed by third world assholes held together (not always) by a few dedicated individuals. Nurses in private hospitals get paid less and work harder because there isn't a giant slush fund for their boss to draw from, but they work where they do largely because they're just so sick of how degraded the public system is.

And yes, a lot of people die or suffer needlessly from this slack and negligent level of care, but I have an extremely limited range of experience in private hospitals so it's hard for me to make a comparison.

[Matt3B]

(04-05-2017 07:04 PM)Ouroboros Wrote:  

(03-05-2013 09:34 PM)Matt3B Wrote:  

I have a fairly controversial view that people who are not contributing to these services should not get them no matter how inhumane the circumstances. Sick people with no money and ill babies shouldn't receive treatment because they haven't paid for it. It's harsh, but as a nation and indeed as a race, bottom dwellers need to be cut off I think. If they aren't contributing to society, why should society provide for them for nothing in return but more demand for consuming?

You don't go into a restaurant, not pay for anything and expect food to be given to you. Why should it be the same for the health service? Think of how much more money this country would have to improve the life of those contributing to it if the bottom feeders and bottom dwellers were cut off.

You wrote this a while ago but I think it still deserves a response. Irrespective of any moral objection, I don't see the logic in denying ill babies healthcare because they haven't 'contributed'. Do you mean ill babies from poor families who haven't been paying taxes or ill babies in general? If you just mean ill babies from poor families, how is it fair (as I believe the appeal to fairness is the premise of the argument) to punish them for their family's life choices/situation before they have even acquired proper sentience? You can't seriously argue that a baby shouldn't get healthcare because it's too 'lazy' to get a proper job and contribute or it acquired leukaemia through 'poor lifestyle choices'.

Thanks for flagging that, mate. I re-read it myself while reading through the thread and got confused by what I had meant by that!

I also assume what I had meant by that is the same as your latter assumption - that ill babies from poor families shouldn't receive the health care.

This was written 4 years ago and my views have changed on that. The rest, I still firmly believe. We as a country really need to take a hard stance on the way our healthcare system is used, especially with shortages of doctors and nurses, and the lack of money available to the NHS.

There are constant stories about how the NHS is struggling and is overcrowded, yet we are not addressing the root causes of it.

[frenchcorporation]

(04-12-2017 05:52 AM)Matt3B Wrote:  

We as a country really need to take a hard stance on the way our healthcare system is used, especially with shortages of doctors and nurses, and the lack of money available to the NHS.

There are constant stories about how the NHS is struggling and is overcrowded, yet we are not addressing the root causes of it.

Im gonna expand on the bolded slightly, and I'll try to be brief

1) In the UK there is a rapidly increasing % of female doctors
2) on average these female doctors work less years than their male counterparts, due to going part time sooner for lifestyle/childcare regions
3) as a result Uk taxpayers are getting less value for money from female doctors , and are having to train more doctors to fill the void left by the part-timers, which are predominately female .... which leads us back to point 1.


So part of our problems in the UK is this feedback loop which is making things worse. Some sort of system should be put into place to make sure the money lost on doctors semi-retiring earlier is recouped.

Other things that should be done is:

introducing a fat tax
limiting healthcare access to citizens
making travel health insurance for tourists mandatory
A compulsory down-payment/ additional fixed-period insurance for people moving to the Country
"free" healthcare for people new to the country, only after contributing to the tax base for X amount of years

I think the NHS is a great thing,and am happy with paying for it, but like other posters have said, universal health care works best in a high-trust society, where people are sure others arent trying to game the system. Making it harder for people to game the system would make people feel better about paying for universal healthcare.

[rudebwoy]

I had a close family member die from living in a country which didn't have good healthcare.

Paying money out of my paycheque for medical seems ridiculous to me, considering how much money these WESTERN governments get from taxation and other schemes.

Most guys on here are young and probably have never had any health issues.

Wait til you get older, get sick and have to get a 2nd mortgage on your house to cure some ailment. I am sure if that happens, most of you will hop on a plane to Mexico, Thailand or some third world country that has good medical.

In Canada, we have nice modern hospitals and yes people do abuse the system.

I had to do a bunch of tests recently, it didn't cost me a penny.

[Matt3B]

(04-12-2017 09:26 AM)rudebwoy Wrote:  

I had a close family member die from living in a country which didn't have good healthcare.

Paying money out of my paycheque for medical seems ridiculous to me, considering how much money these WESTERN governments get from taxation and other schemes.

Most guys on here are young and probably have never had any health issues.

Wait til you get older, get sick and have to get a 2nd mortgage on your house to cure some ailment. I am sure if that happens, most of you will hop on a plane to Mexico, Thailand or some third world country that has good medical.

In Canada, we have nice modern hospitals and yes people do abuse the system.

I had to do a bunch of tests recently, it didn't cost me a penny.

My father died late last year rather quickly. He had to be in hospital for 2 weeks before they did a biopsy because of staff shortages and other people being ahead of him, and 2 days later he passed away.

I can't help but think that had they had the staff and didn't have a waiting list through overcrowding, that he may be here today.

(04-12-2017 09:07 AM)frenchcorporation Wrote:  

.

I agree mate. I'd even be happy paying £10 per GP visit.

I'm now paying over £100 a month for my girlfriend and I to be on private health insurance so that we can be seen quicker if needs be. My mum last year was on a waiting list for gall bladder surgery for 15 months. It's ridiculous.

[rudebwoy]

^Ah man sorry to hear about your Pops.

!5 months is a long time to wait for anything.

I would be curious how much that surgery would cost in America, if you have coverage?

[Matt3B]

Thanks mate.

Your point is valid and I respect it - I remember seeing a receipt from the US that was doing the rounds a while back for the cost of giving birth. It came up to around $80,000. I didn't really investigate it and know little of the American healthcare system, but took it at face value and tried to imagine those costs over here. People would dart off elsewhere.

In theory, we shouldn't pay for healthcare and people should use it honestly. But it's a false ideology, really. In principle, if someone wants to come over here and take advantage of the system then it's the system's fault for allowing it, and really, what's the problem if it doesn't affect me? But when the system is being crippled from the same situation happening over and over again, then something needs to be done. This country's citizens should take priority.

I think frenchcorporation makes some good points. It'll never happen though.

[rudebwoy]

Yeah the Emergency sections at the local hospitals, are full always.

Plan on a 7 hour wait on average if you have a problem, granted they take the more serious cases in right away.

A lot of people take there young children if they have a scratch on them, which makes things worse. If they had to pay even a nominal fee they wouldn't bother going.

My mate's father was diagnosed with Cancer recently, he was able to get surgery right away to remove part of his stomach.