How can anyone be against universal health care?

[Ooberman]

It may cost some extra money, but when was money more important than health?

[Goat]

[Replying to post 207 by Goat]

Unlike darias, I don't think all things should be privatized. I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but I do think governments have a useful purpose:
To protect citizens both from international and domestic threats, the protection of property, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. This would include almost all of the law & order system (police, law regulation, judicial, and correctional systems). Prisons would be under this jurisdiction.

These kinds of services I approve of taxation for, as the taxation would be equivalent to a business transaction. These are services provided by the government that its citizens are being provided.

@nurseben
Yes, there are alternatives, however, that doesn't make them any better either. If darias is a US citizen and believes this to be the best choice available, he still has the right to suggest ways to improve it even more.

I would imagine that if roads were to become privatized, the roads already considered 'public' would not be auctioned off to the highest bidder as they have already been paid for by the public through taxes. It would be maintaining and fixing these 'public' roads that would then become privatized.

The only reason I suggested you could possibly buy the road in front of your house is because it may be a private road already. If you live in a neighborhood and all the land is owned by the company/corporation in charge of the neighborhood, it could be possible that the roads within that neighborhood are privately owned and were paid for by that corporation as well.

Actaually, there were some attempts at auctioning off public roads, such as the Penn Turnpike.. Some of auctioning off of public roads were a complete disaster..

It makes sense that having a 'for profit' center would cost the public more than a non-profit center.

[nayrbsnilloc]

[Replying to Goat]

Which is why I would not recommend them being auctioned off.

What do you mean by "'for profit' center"?

[Goat]

[Replying to Goat]

Which is why I would not recommend them being auctioned off.

What do you mean by "'for profit' center"?

A group of people that is taking such thing as a private road, or something similar, and is running a business to a make a livign,and to provide value to it's shareholders.

[nayrbsnilloc]

[Replying to post 212 by Goat]

Privatization does not necessitate that something becomes 'for profit' anymore than it would if it were government run

Also, even if it were for profit, would it not actually cost less to pay for the roads you actually use than to be mandated to pay for all of them?

[Goat]

[Replying to post 212 by Goat]

Privatization does not necessitate that something becomes 'for profit' anymore than it would if it were government run

Also, even if it were for profit, would it not actually cost less to pay for the roads you actually use than to be mandated to pay for all of them?

No, not at all. If it isn't 'for profit', what is the motivation for the people to privatize it? So we can be force to get it maintained?? What a pain in the you know what. Then, it would cost me MORE money to maintain it.. a contract would have to be filled out, an agreement among the neighbors would have to be worked out,.. and we would have to get private companies whose motiviation IS profit to maintain it.

[nayrbsnilloc]

No, not at all. If it isn't 'for profit', what is the motivation for the people to privatize it? So we can be force to get it maintained?? What a pain in the you know what. Then, it would cost me MORE money to maintain it.. a contract would have to be filled out, an agreement among the neighbors would have to be worked out,.. and we would have to get private companies whose motiviation IS profit to maintain it.

The motivation would be for me to not be taxed for public roads in north Dakota against my will.

How do you think the government-run roads are maintained?
A contract is filled out and they pay private companies whose motivation is profit to maintain and build them. The only difference is that the people have no real say in the payment and then the government decides how much to tax the citizens for it. The government in this situation is just a middle-man, a middle-man that takes his cut of the pie as well.

[Goat]

No, not at all. If it isn't 'for profit', what is the motivation for the people to privatize it? So we can be force to get it maintained?? What a pain in the you know what. Then, it would cost me MORE money to maintain it.. a contract would have to be filled out, an agreement among the neighbors would have to be worked out,.. and we would have to get private companies whose motiviation IS profit to maintain it.

The motivation would be for me to not be taxed for public roads in north Dakota against my will.

How do you think the government-run roads are maintained?
A contract is filled out and they pay private companies whose motivation is profit to maintain and build them. The only difference is that the people have no real say in the payment and then the government decides how much to tax the citizens for it. The government in this situation is just a middle-man, a middle-man that takes his cut of the pie as well.

Shrug. There are steps you can take to make sure you don't pay any taxes.. It would involve turning in your SS number, not using the post office, not using any banks, and not using a whole lot of other services.

Yes, the government quite often acts as middle men, but we Do have county workers here that specifically are hired to maintain the roads, to plow the roads, to patch the pot holes. ND might be different, .. I have heard bad things about ND.

And, with it in government responsibility, I don't have to worry about the details.. except to complain and make sure there are 3rd party audits so they do their job right.

Privatizing things won't save you money. .. specifically the roads, and you got TONS more responsibility than you realize. I suspect you are being more than a bit naive about it.

[Darias]

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

You're preaching to the choir on this one. If there's any group that needs to understand this fact, it's the progressives and other statists who seem to think state services run on Obama money, as opposed to taxation, borrowing, and inflation -- all of which either robs you, reduces the purchasing power of your dollar, or makes you and your children a slave to ever increasing government debt. This is the reality. Nothing is free.

If you use public roads, or products that were transported over public roads, then you should help maintain the roads.

And if you, placed in the situation you are in, are forced to eat from the master's table to stay alive, then you should pick the cotton without complaining.

But in all seriousness, you are confusing paying taxes with helping maintain roads. As I already mentioned in my post, those Hawaiian residents paid taxes and never saw any action from the state. In fact the state couldn't be bothered, so they banded together and took care of a 4 million dollar job for free.

The thing is, with taxes intended for government programs, there is no guarantee that those who pay will be given anything in return.

This particular case is anecdotal, so take it however you want to take it (you guys seem to like that sort of thing anyway). In any case, it doesn't prove my argument, but it's useful to see how "free" state programs treat people who pay into them:

[center][youtube][/youtube][/center]

And there are alternatives! There are over two hundred countries in the world in which one could live. If helping to maintain U.S. public roads goes against your conscious, you could always choose somewhere else to live.

Back in the 1800s, there were plenty of slave-owners for the slaves to work for. If one was beating them too harshly or not feeding him enough, he could always run away to work for a kinder master. But that's not freedom is it? Too bad so many at the time felt that abolition was too utopic and fantastical to be worth pursuing. I guess the only option people had if they opposed slavery for moral reasons was to promote the kinder treatment of slaves as outlined in the New Testament, or just take a long boat ride to Great Britain.

Saying "these are how things work. Don't like it? Go somewhere else!" is not a valid argument.

Thank you. This is indeed the progressive version of "Love it or leave it!", also known as the fallacious false delimma.

I never said, "Don't like it? Go somewhere else!"

You may not have used that word choice or punctuation, but that is indeed the sentiment you have expressed.

I was simply pointing out the fact that there are lots of alternatives to choose from. No one is forcing Darias to live here. If two hundred alternatives existed in the free market, then Darias would probably be ecstatic. There are over two hundred governments under which one could choose to live.

You see, the number of different religious beliefs in this world beat the number of states hands down. If you aren't happy with the religion you were born into, you are more than welcome to convert to any one of those and be forced to support them with your tithes and donations as commanded by their respective doctrines. The one thing you can't do however, is be an atheist, much less an anti-theist. Are you some kind of utopian idealist? No, the best you can hope for is working with the religious framework, in the attempt to moderate it in the face of an overwhelming majority of fundamentalist teachings. Just admit it, it's just the fundamentalism you don't like. But like I said if it goes against your morals to worship Yahweh, you are more than welcome to turn towards Mecca and pay zakat. I mean if you don't pay, you go to hell for disobeying, or the clerics will put you under house arrest or something, so you can't not pay.

Some choice eh?

Seriously, changing nationality is not easy to do. Just ask the North Koreans. Still, in most states you have to devote years of your life to getting into another country. States don't want their taxpayers leaving en masse. A lot of times that decision will bar you from re-entry into your geographical location of birth. And to what end are you doing this if your goal is to escape taxation? There isn't a state on earth that doesn't extort its subjects. I guess you could probably make the case that some states allow for more economic freedoms or personal freedoms, but moving there doesn't solve the things I take issue with. Besides prolonged statelessness is not a legally recognized right by the UN. You can't be truly free in this environment, unless you join a seasteading city and hope the state won't come after you... just like expecting the slaves to run away to the frozen wastes of Canada or be satisfied with a long list of masters they could work for. There's not much freedom or choice involved in that.

And, I don't want to buy the road in front of my house. I want to buy the road in front of his house. Or more specifically, the four roads the surround the block where his house sits. I would charge One Million Dollars to transit because this is how much it costs me to maintains the roads (my contractor is very expensive). And I would protect my property with an AR-15.

This sounds like the plan of a madman more than just someone with no business sense whatsoever. In reality, people do things based on incentives. Is purchasing the block around my house really worth millions of dollars to maintain, if no one is going to want to pay to drive on them? What are you going to do, enclose it and make a mini race track to ride around with your go kart all day, paroling with your AR-15? What sort of return are you getting for your efforts? I mean it's truly mad but you're welcome to do it. In fact, do it to everyone in the neighborhood with the millions of dollars you conjure up from nothing. I'll go put a down payment on a helicopter and start a business to take people to work everyday. You can keep driving yourself into the ground with your money pit. If you shoot at my helicopter, my insurance company will sue you for all your worth, and then I'll expand my business, since I won't be able to forcibly seize your property if you don't wish to sell it.

Other than this, I personally do not wish the privatization of public roads. Inevitably, someone such as the Koch brothers would buy up all the roads, and the rest of us would be reduced to living on their serfdom.

In a free market, Koch Industries, like all other corporations, would not exist. And the Koch brothers cannot purchase property from people who do not wish to sell it to them.

I find it truly bizarre that people think that in a free market, some madman will just buy all the forests and chop all the trees down for craps n' giggles. That's just not how rational incentives work.

Unlike darias, I don't think all things should be privatized. I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but I do think governments have a useful purpose:

You cannot say "useful purpose" without asking yourself who is benefiting from the state. There is no question that the existence of a state incentivizes companies to get involved in politics, when politicians pass laws that benefit the company. If the initiation of force is treated as legitimate, someone will go for the gun in the middle of the room every time. Is it easier to compete with corporations in the market, or is it easier to protect yourself by turning your business into a corporation with legal personhood? You cannot rely on the prevalence of principled people (over the course of generations) to play fair, if the rules of the game allow them to compete unfairly.

Now in the absence of a state, it is unwise to try to replicate one, because it is far too costly. Walmart or the Koch Brothers would not have the convenience of the same sort sense of legitimacy as the US does today -- because people would not have a blind patriotic ideal drilled into their heads; there is a natural distrust of the market that most here share. Heck Walmart and Koch Industries would not have the protection and advantages that the law gives them now. They wouldn't exist in that regard.

As long as human beings are alive, you can never get rid of self interest. Self interest isn't the problem because it can be very mutually beneficial. The problem is the incentive. This bad incentive is the state itself.

To protect citizens both from international and domestic threats, the protection of property, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. This would include almost all of the law & order system (police, law regulation, judicial, and correctional systems). Prisons would be under this jurisdiction.

Sounds like you love the idea of government rather than the reality. How is the state protecting people from international threats when its foreign policy is focused on power projection, with the consequence of blowback? How can the state protect property if it in actuality destroys it or seizes it for it's own benefit in the form of taxation and eminent domain. If the market is more efficient than the state in the production of foodstuffs as well as a whole host of other industries, then why is the state magically better when it comes to security, defense, or adjudication? Why the special pleading? Why put an arbitrary restriction on what the market is capable of? It seems like it's just tradition for tradition's sake at this point.

These kinds of services I approve of taxation for, as the taxation would be equivalent to a business transaction. These are services provided by the government that its citizens are being provided.

And healthcare and education are the services that progressives approve of taxation for. How are you any different from statists when you think robbery should be used to support things you like?

Yes, there are alternatives, however, that doesn't make them any better either. If darias is a US citizen and believes this to be the best choice available, he still has the right to suggest ways to improve it even more.

Nationality is not really a choice now is it? You're given it at birth and if you want another you have to jump through a lot of hoops to do so. What benefit would it be to go through all that trouble, only to be in the same situation in a different jurisdiction with different flags all around me?



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[help3434]

Sounds like you love the idea of government rather than the reality. How is the state protecting people from international threats when its foreign policy is focused on power projection, with the consequence of blowback? How can the state protect property if it in actuality destroys it or seizes it for it's own benefit in the form of taxation and eminent domain. If the market is more efficient than the state in the production of foodstuffs as well as a whole host of other industries, then why is the state magically better when it comes to security, defense, or adjudication? Why the special pleading? Why put an arbitrary restriction on what the market is capable of? It seems like it's just tradition for tradition's sake at this point.

Public goods and the free rider problem are not magical or "arbitary restriction". As for as I know, there is no way to deny access to the benefits of defense against invasion to those who don't pay, so without mandatory taxes people would not pay and hope that their neighbors would.

[Darias]

The problem with privatization it that a lot of times, it doesn't work It ends up costing more, the quality of service goes down, and resources on oversight of the contract are much higher than anticipated.

I am well aware of market failures, but could you kindly provide some examples of how states, on average, dish out cheaper services of greater quality than the market? I can think of several examples that challenge that assertion. If this is just your opinion then you don't have to support it, that's fine.

There are a lot of failures when it comes to privatizing government services. Just looking at all the fiasco's that trying to have private run jails had, and you can realize there should be some things that should never be 'for profit'.

There is indeed a problem with private prisons. It's not the fact that they may be for profit or non-profit, it's the US war on drugs. You see, federal law provides perverse incentives for private prisons to incarcerate non-violent drug offenders.

Arguably, most people, even if they wanted to pay taxes, do not want their hard earned living sending kids to rape and gang factories, commonly referred to as "correctional facilities." People would pay to house thieves and sexual offenders who are a danger to society, but they sure as heck wouldn't want to waste their money on addicts who sit in their room all day. Unfortunately, none of us have a choice. But it doesn't really matter if these nonviolent people end up in a private or state prisons, the fact that the law is profiting both the private industry as well as the state seems to be the problem here.

The idea that the state has no interest in profits is thoroughly untrue -- quite laughable actually. Marijuana is illegal because it is very hard to regulate for the purposes of taxation, since you can grow it anywhere. (It's not simply illegal because of taboo since a majority favor it's legalization). The fact that it is illegal means the need for more officers and more prisons and more inmate laborers (slaves). Yes this costs more, and yes this hasn't reduced consumption at all -- but the state makes up for it via taxation, money printing, and borrowing. The drug war has done nothing but put us on a path to a police state. It's unnecessary and it puts more criminals on the street, and it's wasteful from the perspective of the public; but for politicians it means more votes and more campaign financing. It means more government jobs for police and correctional officers. It means free labor and trash pick up for the state's roads. The fact that private companies have the incentive to cash in on it isn't the fault of the free market. The problem here is the state, or at least its policies.

When I talk about the state, I'm not just knee-jerk blaming the government and worshiping the market. There are reasons why I criticize the state and this is one of them. For you to have a problem with these private prisons is to miss the bigger issue. For you to blame private pursuit of profit for this injustice, rather than the law which benefits and grows the state, is kind of breathtaking actually.