Though technically you’re right, Carb, so I’ll shut up now.

I don’t think Josh was making a point specific to this thread but just bringing up a connection he thought interesting. While Hitler comparisons don’t really work because they’re so ubiquitous, ending a conversation because of one (the aforementioned Godwin’s law) sounds like an artificial rule.

I think I could compromise with Carborendum on his anecdote. If insurance companies would behave fairly and not pull strings to deny claims for frivolous reasons then that would solve most of the problems Obama’s program is going for. I don’t think that this will happen, but I recognize that ANY system, private or public, will be limited by resources so decisions have to be made. I’m under no illusions that insurance companies have limitless piles of resources, though I can’t imagine that the really gargantuan ones send a very good image by denying claims while their executives get paid the way they do (for doing what?).

I’m not really out for eliminating equality in society (though I recognize – and have raved about – its prevalence in society and my view toward it), mainly because the panacea may be worse than the sickness. At any rate I hope the private sector takes care of extreme poverty (particularly internationally) so this whole discussion becomes moot.

Keep in mind that I’ve been a small and steady drain on our medical system for the last few years

My brother-in-law is married to a deaf woman who has always had multiple medical issues. Most recently she was told she has maybe 5 to 7 years to live without a new kidney. She’s being treated currently, etc.

I asked bro-in-law what he thought about socialized medicine. I also asked how he’s doing with her conditions, insurance, etc. Here’s his quote as best I can remember it:

It is true that if government paid for everything, it would be a lot easier on us. Currently, because she is deaf, she qualifies for a lot of government funding of her medical care. But we choose not to use it because it’s just plain wrong.

If some rich friend were to give us the money personally, that would be one thing. But when government steals the money from the taxpayers, then gives it to us to use to help (wife’s name) then I’m encouraging theft.

If I don’t want someone to raise taxes on me, I shouldn’t be for raising taxes on someone else no matter how rich they are.

Insurance is a business. As long as they are willing to abide by the contract, I’m fine with how they treat me and my wife. If they blatantly exercise rights in the contract to deny coverage for frivolous reasons, I will definitely sue them. If they exercise rights for reasons that anyone would ETHICALLY agree with, I will get angry. But I will accept it.

Josh,

Readers should know that mentioning “Death Panels”. . .

Since Clumpy was the one who brought up death panels in this thread, and YOU were the one who repeated it, then you are admitting that you have lost the argument.

You might think I don’t “get it”. Yes, I do.

I’m saying that since everyone else here has made valid arguments without mentioning such things, your only defense is to bring up what OTHERS were saying as a way of accusing us of playing the Nazi Card and shutting us up.

This is the converse corollary of Godwin’s law. If you’re losing the argument as a (potentially) accused Nazi (whether you are or not doesn’t matter for the purposes of a debate) you just accuse the opposition of playing the Nazi card. End of discussion.

This is the classic liberal tactic. I don’t like what Obama is doing. You accuse me of being a racist. End of discussion.

A sometimes added corollary of this law is that anyone who plays the NAZI card has automatically lost the argument and the thread is now ended.

I think there’s room for disagreement on this issue, but more importantly perhaps a couple of your points (such as the “citizens’ rights not regulation” point) create a model where the same problem can be solved without introducing more regulation. I definitely see a cognitive need for insurance but think it’s resolved by as little bureaucracy as possible. Credit Unions do pretty well – I’d like to see some equivalent non-profit insurance plans (maybe there already are some!).

Admittedly the Ecuador thing was based on an anecdote from a friend of mine who was severely injured, wandered over to a government clinic and got excellent, professional care. I did some searching online and found similar stories both from tourists and doctors from the area. I suspect that the quality care has more to do with a culture of commitment for doctors (meaning that they do more with less) than the socialized system itself.

Keep in mind that I’ve been a small and steady drain on our medical system for the last few years for a variety of health problems and come out ahead on insurance, so I’ve come out great. Granted I have student insurance at my college and they try to take care of us with fairly low premiums. I’m pretty happy with my situation (though I still pay a fair amount) but understand that many people with more difficult situations or worse conditions might not have the same ability.

Hope I don’t come across as harsh or dogmatic, Carbo – when you interpret some of my posts as more stream-of-consciousness things or thought experiments I hope it comes across clearer that I’m not stating concrete opinions so much as trying to personally think about issues in different ways. Thanks again!

Bravo! Apology accepted.

Now to your points.

I definitely don’t think that this is cut-and-dry

I agree.

…even when they succeed in harming Americans and American interests can at best cause things like suffering.

While I see your logic and pattern of cause-and-effect, I don’t see how this is an argument for or against anything.

You might as well say that disease isn’t bad, just the suffering it causes. Then you’re arguing that we let the disease run wild, but just give any sick person a LOT of morphine.

They’re a step further removed from domestic troubles

No, they’re not. You brought up Pearl Harbor. Excellent. When Japan attacked Pearl harbor, they DIRECTLY caused death, pain, death, suffering, death, chaos, and of course death. What’s with the “one step removed” business?

Is that not fellow citizens harming “each other”?

Depending on the circumstance I would agree with you. But I just don’t agree with the solution. And while I believe in a very rudimentary level of regulation, I just can’t accept our current levels as “necessary & proper”. Examples:

1) Environmental damage: Instead of passing the ridiculous level of EPA directives and additional legislation from Congress that we have today, citizens need to be able to sue big corporations for property damage. We need to have some serious tort reform to make it actually work.

But to pass laws for every single item is cumbersome at best, oppressive at worst.

2) Insurance rejections: For the most part, this is exactly what this blog topic is about.

Because of government meddling as well as some major tort issues (frivolous law suits) that the government refuses to deal with, it has driven up medical costs. Thus the need for insurance was born.

(Thus the government has caused the problem).

Then government comes in with HMOs. It was strange how those who were crying the loudest for them were, in just a few years, blaming big corporations for messing up health care.

(Thus the government caused the problem).

Now that our current system has been pronounced “broken”, government has to come in again and propose the newest solution “socialized medicine”.

How long before it is called “broken”?
Just how far does this process go?

3) Corporate conniving: First let me dispel the myth that

Big Corporation = Evil, conniving, rich, white males.

While I have stated before on this very blog that the bigger the corporation, the less dedicated to the consumer they tend to be, it is still controlled by the voice of the people (with their purchasing power). There are still limits on what a corporation can do. AND if the corporation goes too far, there is always a court to petition to straighten things out. And if that doesn’t work, you have the media (and now the internet) to defame said company or spread a boycott effort.

You just can’t boycott the government no matter how badly it messes up. No, I don’t believe elections change anything. Not when representatives vote against their constituency by a 2:1 margin and still get re-elected.

In ALL of these things, notice two things:

1) As YOU pointed out, government does not fix the result. It can NEVER FIX anything. It merely punishes the perpetrator. We can only HOPE that the perpetrator fixes himself.

2) Whenever the government comes in with “a new way” to fix “the problem”, it generally worsens it.

To argue that government fails as a matter of definition…

Interesting you would phrase it that way. My father-in-law and I just had a conversation the other day saying something very similar, but from the converse point-of-view.

Whenever you see surveys of which country is the best to live in, etc. they are usually based on socialistic principles.

Is there public transportation either free or at minimal cost?
Is there public day care?
Is there public medicine?
Is there public . . .

Who says these are the appropriate criteria? If socialists want public everything, they should move to Sweden. If libertarians want small government, then they should move to Switzerland.

I’m a Constitutionalist. I want a country where the US Constitution is actually followed. Unfortunately, this is the closest we’ve got. So I’ve got no where else to go right now.

we argue that government is good as long as…

This would indeed be circular logic … IF that is what I said.

I said that history has shown certain things that government CAN do effectively. And history has shown that most other things government fails miserably at.

The criteria by which I judge that is:

1) What was the objective of the new effort by the government?
2) How successful was it in achieving that objective?

who would’ve thought that Ecuador would be trouncing us in medical care?

What? How’s that? Come again? Did you actually try to verify that before you repeated it?

First of all, I couldn’t find anything that stated they have a socialized system.

Check the following Ecuador TOURIST sites.

This and this.

They both indicate that there are a variety of competency levels of doctors. And that they cost about 1/10th to 1/4 that of the US. Gee, you mean that after adjusting for GDP they pay about the same as the US? How’s this better?

The first article advises caution with pharmacists and warn against incompetent doctors. But if you go to an “embassy approved” doctor, then that’s ok. — So, their pharmacists are fine, but the only doctors you want to go to are the ones near embassies that serve foreign diplomats. That doesn’t sound elitist at all.

The second article states that their surgeons are fine because they studied either in the US or Europe. So, those that did not study abroad are usually incompetent. How’s this better?

Now check out this article. If it really was that much better and SO inexpensive, why would this woman resort to auctioning her virginity to pay for medical care?

I’m really getting tired of looking up EVERY country that people think is better than the US, then being very disappointed in what I find. Does ANYONE who’s for socialized medicine actually look up the FACTS before making such a statement?

I definitely don’t think that this is cut-and-dry, unless we can equate dollars and cents with human lives. To argue that government fails as a matter of definition is to ignore systems in which aspects of social life have been considered public goods and managed successfully (who would’ve thought that Ecuador would be trouncing us in medical care?). On one hand we argue that government is good as long as it keeps doing the right thing, then turn around and argue that the same government will never do some things correctly. That’s the circular logic I was referring to.

Still, it was pretty dumb of me to use “terrorists” interchangeably with “foreign foes”, and to begin by directly addressing your post and then drift into more general territory. It was bad form and I should stop posting at 2 AM.

You know, I get tired of knee-jerk claims that “if only the government would stop meddling in the ‘free market’, everything would go so much more smoothly for everyone….”

This is like believing that “get a divorce” is good “relationship advice.” In other words, it’s a reductio ad absurdum solution, made from ignorance, to issues which are anything but simple.

I know that political candidates are big fans of talking about “free markets” and “limited government,” which is strange because if they really valued these things, then why do they seek to actively hold onto the reigns of power? (This is like your brother saying “trust me, I know what I’m doing.”…..a statement which should immediately garner suspicion.)

I fail to understand why people believe that unchained capitalism is virtuous. This is, in fact what humanity has on the global scale, so it’s ironic that people use the term “free market” positively, but use the term “globalization” negatively. I think that Karl Marx was correct in his observation that capitalism is one of the most basic underpinnings of a rigid class structure.

So, unrestrained capitalism produces unsatisfactory results; but government interference also produces unsatisfactory results, (to say nothing of a system lacking both.) So where does one draw the line?

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin postulated that western concepts of “freedom” and “liberty” must imply one of two very different ideologies. Berlin called these “Positive Liberty”, and “Negative Liberty.”

Positive liberty is the idea that “freedom” is the having the rights and privileges to act, to achieve one’s personal potential. One of the implications of this is that government, or any entity with social power, should take an active role in improving society, take an active role in guaranteeing the positive liberty of all members of society. Another implication is the idea that, given the right social structure, individuals will experience the maximum of “freedom” and the maximum of personal potential. Advocates of positive liberty often believe that they have the philosophical key to what is the “ideal society.” where individual will have the most freedom and potential. In this sense both our current government as well as religious extremists terrorist groups are operating under the same basic principle: positive liberty. That is: “we will MAKE you free.”

Berlin believed that the pursuit of positive liberty must always ultimately lead to tyranny.

The concept of Negative Liberty is quite simple, that the only possible “freedom,” is freedom from interference by other people. Keep in mind that money is power, and with money comes the power to interfere with others’ lives, so capitalism can be as much an enemy of negative liberty as government.

Berlin would be quick to point out that if negative liberty begins to be pursued as yet another active, extremist philosophy, it quickly become yet another kind of positive liberty, In the sense that one attempts to force it upon others.

How could you have misconstrued

“I’m not talking about the war on terror”

into

“I believe the government should protect us from terrorists”

?

Do you actually READ the words on the screen? Or do you imagine what another person’s position is and debate against your imagined nemesis?

I fail to see what inherent property of governments makes them better and more impartial at preserving individuals from mucking around with one another but would somehow create a disaster at providing healthcare

1) Because government has historically been able to keep people from mucking around with each other. Only when we tie government’s hands from that primary function with false responsibilities does it fail to perform that.

2) Government has already failed to perform in any other field (with EXTREMELY few exceptions). Even in those exceptions, private industry has done a better job where it is permitted.

3) Specifically: social security, medicare, welfare, etc. are already impoverishing our nation. Forget this current healthcare bill fiasco. We’re already going to be broke on our current system. How can we credibly believe that adding MORE responsibility on the government is somehow going to LOWER the budget.

4) Government = force.

Can you FORCE a person to be healthy? Not really.

Can you FORCE a person to be generous to others. NO.
You can FORCEFULLY take from one and give to another. But that in no way causes the former to be more charitable. On the contrary, it often gives that person some negative feelings for the latter.

Can you FORCE a person into prison for mucking around with someone else? YES.

Can you FORCE a person (from an enemy nation) to die? YES.

AGAIN! I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT TERRORISM.

Can you FORCE a person to give back something that was stolen? YES. (This is just the reverse of the welfare scenario.)

5) The law of supply and demand.

We can say that public servants need to convince the taxpayer to keep paying their taxes so the public servants can continue to have a job, BUT, I propose that the military/industrial complex does the exact same thing by INVENTING an enemy (bogeyman) to demand more taxes from us by inducing FEAR in the public’s eye.

I also propose this is exactly what has happened in the current War on Terror. What a scam…….

Looking beyond the normal investigations of government into national safety, forward to some imagined cataclysmic event is impractical but lucrative. Any measure taken to make something external explode or lock militants or friends of militants or cousins of militants away provides a minimal psychic safety boost to the minds of Americans but effectively spends money to weaken our country.

But sickness and disease is a stark reality for every individual on earth. Which is why the elderly, infirm or disabled have been so easily exploited in a hysterical whirlwind of lies that has turned filling in the gaps for the uninsured into “death panels” and hysterical cries of “eugenics!!!” Again, I fail to see what inherent property of governments makes them better and more impartial at preserving individuals from mucking around with one another but would somehow create a disaster at providing healthcare options. This isn’t me being elitist or pushing some predetermined viewpoint, but a real desire to attempt to understand the debate on the terms of Constitutionalists, without resorting to arbitrary categorization or circular logic.

Why does the government have the right to spend billions on protecting us from an abstract foe (thus, in theory, lengthening our lives and providing for our security), but not direct resources inward in order to lengthen lives and provide for security in a much more tangible sense

I think you answered your own question. But you didn’t realize it because you got the descriptors reversed.

I’m not talking about “the war on terror”. You know how most of us here feel about that. I’m talking about a war in which we as a nation were directly attacked by a known enemy. This is a tangible sense.

The more abstract notions are “disease”, “suffering”, “poverty”. I’ve personally experience more of each of these than most on this blog. I know how abstract they are.

The bottom line is that government is to protect humans’ life, liberty, & property from other humans. And we need to recognize that even the best governments will even be bad at that.

It is not to perform social engineering.
It is not to redistribute income.
It is not to eradicate suffering & pain from ALL causes.
It is not to prolong life otherwise shortened by natural (non-man made) causes.

These are things that the government is even worse at.

One point I do agree with is the “billions of dollars”. I envision a system where the government would spend MUCH less to achieve a much more effective system of defense.

1) Every registered voter shall provide for the common defense.

2) Have a SMALL standing army made up of state police who would be the highly trained experts. NO FEDERAL ARMY.

3) The state police would train the local law enforcement periodically.

4) Local law enforcement would get to know the local population by training every registered voter over a rotation similar to the national guards’ “weekend warriors”. Training would of course require the teaching of proper weapon safety and restraint in non-violent situations.

Voila! You have an entire nation trained in defense. AND you have law enforcement that knows the local population personally.

This theory is very rudimentary for now. But with a little work it could solve a lot of the problems that most of us complain about.

In order for “civil servants” to maintain their employ, they need to find problems to fix.

Isn’t this telling? With so many people in full-time politics, anybody who believes in market incentives has to imagine there’d be a lot of “fixes” going around, both needed and questionable. Political natural selection means that small spenders just can’t survive, so guess what we end up with?

But one question: If it isn’t the government’s role to prolong life (say, medicine and social programs and whatnot), why do we have a military? Why does the government have the right to spend billions on protecting us from an abstract foe (thus, in theory, lengthening our lives and providing for our security), but not direct resources inward in order to lengthen lives and provide for security in a much more tangible sense? Is there a better answer than “Constitutional limitation [x] and [y]“?

Cure: More government regulations on businesses, more stimulus packages, more bailouts, more inflation, higher taxes, more borrowing, more debt, etc.

Reality: Capitalism is getting the blame for what government caused in the first place. If we truly had a free market economy:
1) these bubbles wouldn’t have been artificially created,
2) fed-created interest rates wouldn’t have encouraged so many malinvestments and consumer borrowing,
3) incentives for small businesses would grow (increasing employment) were they not diminished by government regulations and over-taxation and
4) government welfare programs wouldn’t exist therefore they couldn’t incite less production from individuals.

I could go on but suffice it to say our country doesn’t have a truly free market economy. We have a pseudo-capitalistic/government regulated and manipulated economy. We have had the recipe for disaster for a long time and now we’re facing serious consequences because of it. Government too often creates a fire and uses gasoline in an attempt to put it out.

The government is best which governs least.”
Thomas Jefferson

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
James Madison

Proper government in its limited form is not a bad thing—in fact it is a very good thing. The government I’m referring to in this post has nothing to do with that long-since-gone ideal, but rather describes our current tangled web of corrupt, inefficient, and horribly bloated government that has suffered major scope creep.

…which was developed first in military circles…

Ah, yes, because the internet never would have been invented otherwise…

…the notion requires such an oversimplified view and appreciation of American life that it’s laughable to hear expressed.

A good rebuttal offers contradictory examples and data; your blanket dismissal of what I’ve said hardly counts as such.