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Offlinewilshire
free radical
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Registered: 05/11/05
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public healthcare vs. police & courts
    #4978026 - 11/24/05 09:26 PM (18 years, 2 months ago)

i misread annapurna1's thread and got going on a new line of questioning that i want to start a new thread about.

the question is: what is different between healthcare (as a tax-funded service) and "cops, courts, and military" (as a tax-funded service)? and - libertarians - why is one legitimate but not the other?

i have some nebulous ideas floating around, but this is the sort of question that looks like it should have a graceful, solid answer, and i don't want to throw out junk before pondering a little. it also looks like the kind of question that can really illuminate things by the time it is anwered.

let us get to the bottom (the very bottom) of this.


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Registered: 01/01/05
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Re: public healthcare vs. police & courts [Re: wilshire]
    #4978320 - 11/24/05 10:53 PM (18 years, 2 months ago)

I have personally come to somewhat of an acceptance of public health care. I don't think it should be as extensive as it is in, say, Denmark. But I do think that a basic level of coverage by the government would be acceptable. I think that anything beyond that basic level of coverage should be handled by insurance companies.


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Invisibleafoaf
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Re: public healthcare vs. police & courts [Re: Silversoul]
    #4978493 - 11/24/05 11:45 PM (18 years, 2 months ago)

what is 'basic level'?

these mean two different things.

yearly exams and emergency service?


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All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.


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OfflineAncalagon
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Registered: 07/30/02
Posts: 1,364
Last seen: 15 years, 8 days
Re: public healthcare vs. police & courts [Re: wilshire]
    #4979487 - 11/25/05 09:50 AM (18 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

wilshire said:
i misread annapurna1's thread and got going on a new line of questioning that i want to start a new thread about.

the question is: what is different between healthcare (as a tax-funded service) and "cops, courts, and military" (as a tax-funded service)? and - libertarians - why is one legitimate but not the other?

i have some nebulous ideas floating around, but this is the sort of question that looks like it should have a graceful, solid answer, and i don't want to throw out junk before pondering a little. it also looks like the kind of question that can really illuminate things by the time it is anwered.

let us get to the bottom (the very bottom) of this.



The fundamental difference between the act of providing healthcare and military/judicial/police acts is that the latter, of necessity, requires the use of force while the former does not. Your question, however, is what is the difference between them with regards to the fact that they are all (in this construct) tax-funded services. The textbook minarchist answer would probably be 'cops/courts/military deal with preventing (if possible) and responding to the initiation of force, which is the only legitimate function of government.' As any libertarian (anyone really) whose actually followed the standard arguments to their logical conclusions realizes, however, the minarchist position is simply untenable from a moral perspective. If it is immoral for government to rob me to pay for healthcare than it cannot possibly be moral for it to rob me for anything. It seems to me that if you are to take a moral (natural rights based) view on the nature of government, then you must embrace anarchy in a sense. Realistically, declaring anything but anarchy or world government to be a preference is akin to drawing lines in the sand -- in other words, you can rationally argue such a case only from a pragmatic perspective.

Personally, as much as some dislike him, I prefer Harry Browne's approach to the anarchy vs. minarchy debate. In his own words:

    Suppose there were a magic button sitting in front of you. And suppose that button would instantly reduce the federal government to only, say, $200 billion.

    Would you refuse to push the button ? even if you want the federal government to be 0 dollars? Would you refuse to push the button ? even if you think the federal government should be $500 billion?

    Once the federal government is only $200 billion, we can each go our separate way ? trying to make the federal government exactly what each wants it to be. For some the federal government would be $200 billion too large, for others perhaps $300 too small. But for each a $2 trillion reduction in the size of government would be welcome. I doubt that there?s even one among us who would refuse to see the federal government at $200 billion as a first step.

    So why should we waste our time arguing now over where government should go once it?s down to $200 billion.

    ...

    Once we?ve reduced government to $200 billion, I?ll personally head up a fund-raising drive to raise the money to rent the Super Bowl, so we can gather to argue how much smaller government should be.

    Until then, I refuse to join the arguments over the ideal size of government ? despite any opinions I may harbor.

    How small should government be?

    Government is force, and we should be eager to remove force wherever possible from human affairs.

    So how small should government be?

    As small as humanly possible.



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?When Alexander the Great visted the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.?
-Henry Hazlitt in 'Economics in One Lesson'


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Registered: 01/01/05
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Re: public healthcare vs. police & courts [Re: afoaf]
    #4979639 - 11/25/05 11:01 AM (18 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

afoaf said:
yearly exams and emergency service?



Pretty much


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Invisibleafoaf
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Re: public healthcare vs. police & courts [Re: Silversoul]
    #4979819 - 11/25/05 12:05 PM (18 years, 2 months ago)

police/armed forces are there to prevent the initiation of force.

health care is not there to prevent encroachment on an individual's
property or person, it's there as a beneficial service.

personally, a program like the one you mentioned above does not
strike me as wholly repugnant.

this is where I get picky about federal bloat...I would support a
system that provided for yearly exams and emergency services...but
then things get hazy and you have to get granular about what will
and will not be subsidized.

I think of it this way...just make the 'government hospital'. that's
where you go when work or personal funds can't afford you anything
else...no nosejobs, broken bones and bloody wounds to the front of
the line, thank you, come again.


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OfflineJesusChrist
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Registered: 02/19/04
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Re: public healthcare vs. police & courts [Re: afoaf]
    #4981119 - 11/25/05 07:33 PM (18 years, 2 months ago)

I like the idea of an ownership society. If we should all have personal retirement accounts, I think that we should all have personal medical accounts.

We do have socialized medicine in this country. If you can't afford medical services, you can still get them. People forget that. That bill gets paid by the taxpayer, and it is huge. With personal accounts, people can at least make informed decisions to reduce costs. And if you have thousands left at the end of your life you get to give that to the people you love.

One of the ideas that I liked about John Kerry (maybe the only one), was that government should intervene in the extreme cases where people are uninsurable. Some people can't get jobs because extending the same benefits to them as everyone else would cost a small company tens of thousands of dollars. I have been an accountant at small companies, and they look at the bottom line. They have too. Some people would cost more in health care than the salary that you could pay them. Benefits are a huge cost of running a business, and they can drive you under.

So these people can't even get jobs because employing them is too expensive. It is a quirk of the system. If the government came in on the extreme cases, like Kerry suggested, it would help these people lead happy and productive lives, all while contributing to society, which benefits us all. After all, we are going to pay the bill anyway.

The dark side is the slippery slope, and I shouldn't have to explain that to anyone. Once the government gets going, it only get bigger. Any failure is attributed to a lack of funding. Programs never go out of business, they just get bigger budgets in the face of failure. Check out our public schools for instance.

In a somewhat related tangent, I have been doing some research on the homeless.

In the 1950's and 1960's they started to disband state mental institutions. The government was paying to care for people with severe mental problems in health care institutions with people that were trained to treat them.

For the last 4 decades we have let those people out and continued to close down the hospitals. The government estimates that we have 600,000 homeless, and roughly 1 out of 3, or 200,000 of them have severe mental problems. Over the four decades that this has happened, our cities have experience decline as people and companies flee. I am not saying that unleashing the mental patients in our urban areas is the only/main factor, but it is a factor.

And these people are pushed into the least desirable areas. They get moved on until they find the place with the least resistance. This is always in a place in cities, where people are relative poor, relatively uneducated, and lack organization to oppose or fight it. So the working poor with kids have to deal with all these mental psychos pissing and shitting all over their neighborhood. What a disaster for them.

Since we are talking about government funding for medical problems, I think it is useful to bring up those cases that are extreme. These mental patients can kill themselves or other people. They do. They have a high incidence in drug abuse and crime, including violent crime. And for four decades we have looked the other way. It is not right. The government should be doing something about it, for the sake of the taxpaying and working class people who have to endure it.

I am a small government libertarian-conservative, but I do think that government has legitimate ends. Mental health is part of public safety, just like police and firemen. Currently, the largest mental heath institution in this country is the LA County Jail. They provide more services to mental patients than any other hospital in the country. Our jails are the new mental institutions, and our policemen are the frontline health care providers of our mental health system.

And that my friend is just fucked beyond oblivion.


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Tastes just like chicken


Edited by JesusChrist (11/25/05 08:15 PM)


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Invisibleafoaf
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Re: public healthcare vs. police & courts [Re: JesusChrist]
    #4982638 - 11/26/05 10:02 AM (18 years, 2 months ago)

:thumbup:


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All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.


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