Post #324,310
4/9/10 12:44:36 PM
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Read it again. :-)
Nevertheless, the fact is that American society today is considerably more libertarian than it was a generation or two ago. Compare conditions now to how they were at the outset of the 1960s. Official governmental discrimination against blacks no longer exists. Censorship has beaten a wholesale retreat. The rights of the accused enjoy much better protection. Abortion, birth control, interracial marriage, and gay sex are legal. Divorce laws have been liberalized and rape laws strengthened.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
("Not much, when a Democrat is in the White House!")
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Post #324,313
4/9/10 1:26:16 PM
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Still not addressing the same points
if one group has to "pay" for the rest to benefit, you will still have that group complaining, even if the net effect is all are better off.
That is a rationalization. Pretty accurate, but a rationalization none the less.
I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
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Post #324,321
4/9/10 3:50:11 PM
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Yeah, if by losing you mean
losing the right to rape black women impunitively, then yeah, I guess they lost.
Oh, and how long is it going to take for USians to figure out that comprehensive social insurance improves, not diminishes, economic freedom? I'm very free to quit my job and pursue a business opportunity if I want to, because my children's health insurance is not wholly dependent on me continuing to have the job. If my business fails and I need to seek work again, my kids won't starve because I can depend on help to ensure they're fed. This means that if a good business idea bubbles up, I can actually do something about it. I may pay a lot more in taxes than you folks do (our tax freedom day is still two months away) but I have a lot more economic freedom because comprehensive social insurance gives me freedom from those who have greater resources than I do and can use them to keep me in my place. I can't end up owing my soul to the company store, which is what complete economic glibertarian freedom inevitably leads to for the majority of market participants.
The Heritage institute recently released their economic freedom index, and Canada placed higher than the US. We have more social mobility not despite our comprehensive social insurance system, but because of our comprehensive social insurance system.
The people arguing for the destruction and diminishment of the social insurance systems you've actually managed to set up (SS and Medicare/Medicaid) are hoping to place the majority of the American people in the position of owing their souls to the company store. It's what they want, because they profit from the company store (or think they do, at least). The fact that those systems are imperfect are besides the point; sure, they can be better designed and implemented to be better able to deliver the benefits of insurance, but the truth is all the people that have been talking about "fixing" them only mean that if fixing is used in the sense of destroying.
You gotta grow up Bill... if you think that it can't happen to you you're wrong. Remember that bar fight we nearly got into outside Bistro a Jojo's in Montreal? How would it have gone if he'd had six buddies with him and had been a seriously violent person and had left you (or me, for that matter) with say permanent brain damage? How well would your kids be doing now if you'd required the kind of expensive ongoing care that would go with that? How long until your insurance company dumped you? You can't pretend it doesn't happen to people in your country. My kids would suffer somewhat, but they wouldn't end up homeless and they and my ex-wife wouldn't have to put up with bill collectors and unmanageable debt and bankruptcy just from a trip to the hospital (let alone ongoing disability), despite the fact that I'm way way down the food chain in terms of income and class... it just wouldn't be an issue.
So, who has more economic freedom... you, or me?
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Post #324,330
4/9/10 5:14:03 PM
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There are things that have been lost
recent judgments in property rights (eminent domain rules), civil liberties with Patriot Act items...
are we net better off with SS, Medicare etc...I would say yes. Single payer healthcare is a bit of a challenge...we may get there...but if we do does it cut off the development engine that has driven the advances in healthcare? yet to be seen. Much of that activity is focussed on getting approval in US in the for profit system.
And your response is focussed also on a limited set of "freedoms".
And all of this, by the way, are responses to an article that in my reading was saying that whitey should quit complaining because everyone else 200 years ago was much more restricted. Now they get to partake in the grand experiment...so if you've lost one or 2 things, you should still be happy. >That was my understanding of the position of the article's author.<
I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
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Post #324,351
4/10/10 1:10:18 AM
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But Bill
Those things that you cite as having been lost have nothing to do with comprehensive social insurance. Civil liberties and social insurance are orthogonal.
The sensible thing for the US to do is to look at social insurance schemes around the world and use the experience of others to design one that meets the goals. There's nothing wrong with replacing SS with something better; there is a problem with turning it into an atomic market for individuals in a market of sharks. Social insurance is by its nature a pay as you go... I pay today for the people that need it, and when the day comes that I need, other people will pay for me. The recognition is understanding that the day will come when I do need it.
I can't help but point out that the US is far from the only place where people discover new things about health.
And the point of social insurance is that it is a limited set of freedoms. Social insurance neither helps nor hinders questions of state power over the individual. If the state is bugging my phone, that's outside the scope. That's not to say it's not a problem... but it's not a social insurance problem.
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Post #324,367
4/10/10 8:07:44 AM
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I hate to do this, but
Those things that you cite as having been lost have nothing to do with comprehensive social insurance. Civil liberties and social insurance are orthogonal.
Not here. And not there.
You have civil liberties that are different from ours. Part of ours is a serious belief that our personal and medical information is VERY private. We get to choose who sees what. Of course, this crumbles when you have a medical issue that is dealt with via a large insurance company, but that is part of a required process that an individual agreed with. But some people don't agree with it.
Some people see that once their medical information is part of a vast government database, then a huge portion of unknown people will have access to it.
And they are being forced to join this. If they don't, then the feds will be allowed to fine them some serious cash. And don't bother talking to me about the various support they can get, that's just one more tool for the omnipresent (and possibly malevolent) government to get their hooks into you.
These a reasonable fears. Who among us (in the IT / database side) really sees a correctly designed and administered field by field, record by record, ACL protection system, with each VIEW (as well as modification) of each record tracked, and any abuse of system by any employee (including simply reading a record that is not part of their job) gets them canned and possibly prosecuted.
Not me. I see some minimal multi-tier security. And it'll end up that the help-desk functionality gets farmed out to india, with the ability for them (really, any random IT guy) to suck out the whole database and sell it to the highest bidder.
And that's just one of many examples, they really just go on and on.
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Post #324,374
4/10/10 11:31:04 AM
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Over there
One does not have anything to do with the other. Elsewhere on the planet, the government pays the bills, the doctors keep the records.
In Belgium's case, payments are handled by an intermediary of the patient's choosing. Those organisations see a fair amount of detail but that is as far as it goes. The government only sees coded diagnosis data (coupled to length of stay if a hospital is involved.)
There is a push going on to towards digital records, but those still reside at the doctors offices. Hospitals do manage all the data for their specialists.
AFAIK, the Brits are the only ones pushing for a central medical database as you describe and it is not going very well.
Besides, what do you see the government do worse with your medical data than a profit motivated insurer already does today?
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Post #324,417
4/11/10 1:01:28 AM
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The state doesn't hold my medical records
my doctor does.
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Post #324,380
4/10/10 2:27:51 PM
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Go back to the article
you seem to be discussing something else with me
I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
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Post #324,387
4/10/10 2:56:03 PM
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You have an interesting view of the article.
I thought his point was exceedingly clear, and wasn't that "whitey should quit complaining because everyone else 200 years ago was much more restricted." Most Americans period were much more restricted then than now.
In his first sentences, he's telling us that he's going to be countering the argument that we're on a relentless march to bondage:
For many libertarians, "the road to serfdom" is not just the title of a great book but also the window through which they see the world. WeÂre losing our freedom, year after year, they think.
Has there ever been a golden age of liberty? No, and there never will be. There will always be people who want to live their lives in peace, and there will always be people who want to exploit them or impose their own ideas on others. If we look at the long termÂfrom a past that includes despotism, feudalism, absolutism, fascism, and communismÂweÂre clearly better off. When we look at our own country's historyÂcontrasting 2010 with 1776 or 1910 or 1950 or whateverÂthe story is less clear. We suffer under a lot of regulations and restrictions that our ancestors didnÂt face.
But in 1776 black Americans were held in chattel slavery, and married women had no legal existence except as agents of their husbands. In 1910 and even 1950, blacks still suffered under the legal bonds of Jim CrowÂand we all faced confiscatory tax rates throughout the postwar period.
I am particularly struck by libertarians and conservatives who celebrate the freedom of early America, and deplore our decline from those halcyon days, without bothering to mention the existence of slavery.
[...]
And again I say, when he says "our American ancestors," he's thinking only of our white ancestors. Maybe only of our white male ancestors. Maybe even only of our white male property-owning ancestors. Many millions of Americans would read these paragraphs and say, "My ancestors didn't have the right to worship in their own way. My ancestors didn't have the right to keep and bear arms. My ancestors didn't have the protection of centuries-old legal procedures. My ancestors sure as heck didn't have the right to keep what they produced, or to pursue an occupation of their choice, or to enter into mutually beneficial trades. In fact, my ancestors didn't even have the minimal right of 'the absence of physical constraint.'"
Slavery and Jim Crow were a big deal. Lack of women's suffrage was a big deal. To not even mention it when harking back to the "good old days" is extremely sloppy at the very least. Gov. McDonald, (former half-term) Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. Trent Lott, and everyone else who uses these "freedom" dog whistles should be called on it. It needs to be drummed into their heads so they don't automatically ignore the very real problems in our past.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #324,407
4/10/10 10:11:01 PM
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Re: Yeah, if by losing you mean
losing the right to rape black women impunitively, then yeah, I guess they lost. yeah, now black guys can do the same thing, progress I guess If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
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