Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout? If other, smaller, more efficient companies can replace everything the telecom behemoths do, then let the big boys suffer, but is that the case? Can smaller tech savvy companies do everything the large telecoms do or are we talking strictly about broadband internet?
Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout?
As far as I know, the citizens of the US are engaged in an ongoing "bailout" of the Baby Bells... that's what all of the tariffs, etc. on the standard phone bill are for.
We've *paid* for the infrastructure, allowing the telcos to profit from their regional monopolies for decades.
I think that it is time to reclaim our ownership of it, decouple the infrastructure from the services by making infrastructure maintenance the province of non-profit organizations, forcing the the Baby Bells to compete for services on a level playing field.
Of course, it will never happen - the Baby Bells spend enormous amounts of lobbying money at both the state and federal level to retain their "ownership" and control of "their" infrastructure, and the fact that our money was spent to build out their regional infrastructures is something they'd prefer everyone ignore.
Oddly, one of the justifications that the Baby Bells continue to use for tariffs is to guarantee services in low population density areas... yet these regions are still lagging far behind more populous locations in DSL availability (and even quality POTS lines) because it isn't "cost effective" for the Bells to roll out such services there, despite the fact that the tariffs are supposed to eliminate cost considerations in such places in the first place!
Further, the ILECs continue to prevent competition from CLECs whenever possible.
True story: Here in Upstate NY I had a customer that wanted high speed Internet access... they are located in a small rural town, and a T1 line wasn't an option due to the cost. The POTS lines are lousy (and have been for the nearly 2 decades that I've done service there), and the local cable company didn't offer cablemodem services because their infrastructure couldn't support it and the owner wasn't prepared to make the financial commitment to rebuild the cable plant in town.
The ILEC in this case (Verizon) wouldn't even offer them ISDN, which was in theory available, would have been at least acceptable for their Internet needs (which were basic email and light Web-browsing for some 20 LAN users).
Well, after some searching, I found a CLEC that could offer DSL albeit "only" at 256Kbps due to distance) and local business dialtone service as well. There was much rejoicing, and plans were made to roll it out. A few other companies in town discovered what this company doing, and they too expressed an interest in DSL for their Internet access. It looked like a "win-win" for everyone: My customers would get cost-effective Internet access, lower cost business telephone service, the CLEC would get business that Verizon couldn't (or wouldn't) provide and my company would make money installing the firewalls, routers, mail servers, etc.
When Verizon found out what was going on, they closed the POP from which the CLEC was operating, splitting the services between 2 small cities in the area, citing "lack of demand for services" from that location as the reason for their actions, thereby eliminating the CLEC's ability to deliver local dial tone and DSL services to that town.
This is the same Verizon that is now allowed to offer long distance services because they have sufficiently opened up the last mile to competition...
The more things change, the more they stay the same, at least here in Verizonland.
It's obvious to me that so long as the RBOCs have control of the last mile, continue to have it supported by tax dollars, credits and tariffs, and abuse their monopoly control over it, that they will *not* compete, but will simply continue to ask for more money from us and the government when their mistakes cost them money.
Time to wean them from the public teat. No more bailouts!
Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout?
No.
In fact, quite the opposite. The ideal combination of market and regulated solutions would be to strip the infrastructure part of the task away from the ILECs and create a new category, WC. The Wiring Carrier would handle building out infrastructure, and would sell it to whatever LEC pays the bills. That would put CLECs like Covad on semi-equal footing with the ILECs, who currently use their monopoly over physical infrastructure to beat the competition down like a red-headed stepchild.
I say "semi-equal footing" because in all likelihood, the people constituting the WC will be ex-ILEC lifers, the type that have proven their willingness to creatively interpret job orders in such a way as to screw the competition. After time, though, they'll die off and the WC will deal with whoever pays the bills.
It's our infrastructure. Our universal service fees have paid to make sure it gets built. However, it's managed in a way that allows the incumbent to screw the competition and screw the customer. They've had their day. Let's take it away.
This is why we should seriously consider abolishing the government and leaving everything to the market forces.
I don't know about you, but I'd sure miss the powers granted to me by the fact that I live in a democracy right now, and the rights granted to me by my country's constitution.
Go back to the jungle, or participate in a free fight, if you think that's best for humanity. But please allow the rest of us to strive for some civilization. Thanks.
I did read it again. Apparently, I understood the words it contained. It doesn't grant rights; it recognizes them. The notion that rights exist only because a piece of paper says they do is rather horrifying. The Constitution exists to spell out the specific powers of the government, not the specific rights of the citizenry.
Here, look
Amendment 9: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Translation: Just because we mentioned a few rights doesn't mean others don't exist. They do, because this document isn't the source of rights.
Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Translation: This document says what the government can do. If it doesn't say the Feds can do it, then the Feds can't do it. If it says the states can't do something, than the states can't do it. Other than that, let the people decide how they want their communities to be run.
Yeesh. Before making pronouncements about what the Constitution says, maybe you should try understanding it .
This is why we should seriously consider abolishing the government and leaving everything to the market forces.
Like health care? "Sorry, sir. I know there's a gaping wound in your skull and that it hurts, but your credit is no good here. Please go away and die outside in the gutter with all the other poor people."
Like law enforcement? "I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing we can do. You have not paid for our police services. We cannot dispatch officers even if there's a murderous psychopath banging on your door with a bloody knife in his hand."
Like rescue services? "I'm sorry to hear that your house is on fire, sir, but we are a business not a charity. You should remember to pay your bills next time."
And so on...
People like Friedman and Hayek have proved
You can't really prove anything in even hard sciences like physics. Saying that something has been proven in economics or sociology is just ridiculous. Like psychology, economics and sociology are not hard, predictive sciences (some would say that they're not science at all) in the same sense as physics or chemistry.
If capitalism were a scientific theory, it would have been dropped a long time ago because it has no real predictive power and often contradicts with the real world observations.
And I am happy to know that if I am burgled or mugged the criminal will rarely have a gun and that it's even rarer that the gun will be used. Regardless of whether the cops will catch the criminal, I can cope with losing some money or property.
Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer.
Well, you could say I've been to a socialist country: I was born in a one with mostly state controlled economy. I am currently living abroad in a Northern European country which has had a large socialist party in the government for the last twenty decades. And you know what? The living standards are excellent in both countries. Working public transportation, no people living under the poverty line (check out the US and UK stats in the CIA worldbook for comparison), free public schooling, public libraries and goverment subsidized university level education to allow even the low wage blue collar workers' kids to have an advanced degree if they so choose. Crime is low because the social "safety net" will provide you with basic necessities even you go completely bankcrupt.
As far as your medical care argument goes, you couldn't be more wrong when it comes to Northern Europe and Scandinavia (UK public health care is in real shambles, though). As I've pointed out in one of my recent posts, I've undergone several surgeries. The latest problem with the eye was diagnosed at a private clinic (you know, private clinics are allowed even if the public health care is run by the government!), I got a referral to the local hospital (state run university hospital) and was under the knife in a week. I spent another week in the ward and paid $200 for that - the $8000 operation itself was paid by the society. I pay the progressive 28% income tax gladly for a system like that that is accessible to all citizens regardless of their income (unlike insurances).
You should know more about practical socialism before your spout nonsense like that. That's the kind of black and white reasoning that's not realistic. There is a middle ground between dog-eat-dog capitalism and total commitment to a government run economy, you know.
I just moved back to the states from the Uk, having lived there for 3 years and 1 year in Switzerland.
I found the health care in switzerland to be excelent, even though it was private. You had to have healthcare, to be registered in a city.. which you had to be to legally rent an apartment. The taxes where I was living was about 14% total, not including taxes on things like Garbage (yes,a stamp had to be put on every bag you take out.. at 1 dollar per bag, it encourages you to recycle everything you can).
My wife went to the doctor a few times, for this and that, and was quite happy with the modern clinic. The doctors seemed progressive and would offer medicine that was both herbal and western in nature. (No robotusin for a cold, but a herbal concoction you get at the pharmacy).
Anyway, I loved the swiss method of handling things, and at 1% un-employement, and guarding their borders in a way that would make the queen of england prooud, they don't seem to have a lot of the problems that other EU countries have with the poor and destitute.
Now, england is a complete flip-side. I have spent more hours sitting in a clinic waiting for the bloody doctor to just show up for work. (No appointment at my local surgery). When the doctor does show up, they seem to not give a damn about what the problem is. My wife sat waiting to be seen for almost 6 hours. No joke. A co-worker waited 7 months for status on a testicular lump that he was worried might be cancer. Yada yada.
When we found out we where having a baby, our first, we decided to pack our stuff up and move back to the states. Pretty scarry stuff. I can't speak for the rest of the EU, I am sure that they are in better shape than Uk. I was watching a debate on Brittish TV, and there is a statistic that if you get stomach cancer, your chance of survival is 6%. In the US your chance of survival is 61%. Fricken nuts.
And as for shoving people out the door. When we came back the US, we didn't have a job or much money. We immediately qualified for medicade and even after I got my new job, the state took care of the child birth and all the expenses including 6 months of birth control after the child birth for my wife and 3 follow up visits. Now we are back on private health care with my job, but to say that the hospital kicked me out is plain false.
I don't think that my case is special. I don't think that a lot of people realize is that in the US, there is help if you really need it. I am not a bum out on the street, but when we moved back to the US.. we did need some help, and I am glad we had it.
Private sector will always be better off than public, even in healthcare. What they need to do is put legislation in to keep the mall-practive law-suits under control and help keep the costs down so insurance isn't expensive for everyone. Look at the mortality rates across the board, you will be surprised what america's health care is churning out. It was a big enough difference for me to move across the world to have our baby.
The primary reason most people advocate capitalism is ETHICAL, not scientific. It was liberals and their endless dreams of micromanaging the perfect society that gave birth to that study.
Indeed - you only have to look at the fine examples of capitalistic ethics provided recently by companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing etc to realise how unnecessary government regulation in the free market is.
As far as your other statements, many of us wish there WAS no police force. I am perfectly capable of defending myself, and have a license to carry a Ruger.38 to do so.
Ah yes, and of course the police do nothing that giving everyone a gun wouldn't. It's like I've always said: you can't beat a heavily-armed lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer. Even dialysis machines are hardly easily accessible.
And of course, limiting access to healthcare according to personal wealth or employability is such a fair way of arranging things, isn't it? After all, it's obviously entirely your own fault if you're poor or unemployed. I'm sure many of the/. readers left jobless by recent events in the tech industry will back me up on this one.
Incidentally, which socialist countries are you thinking of? How about Cuba as a counter-example? The health service there is excellent, and completely free at the point of use.
> The primary reason most people advocate capitalism is ETHICAL, not scientific.
In what theory is capitalism ethical? Nothing in my readings has any statements about an ethical dimension.
> Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer.
So what happens if I have cancer, but no money for treatment? How is this different to the "socialist" case?
> You need to think about more than one possibility. Chanting to yourself over and over again "Government can solve my problems, government can solve my problems" is not going to work.
As opposed to chanting "Government can't solve my problems" or "Only the market can solve my problems"?
Well, the point is that it is fundamentally wrong for the government to do anything to hinder the workings of the market economy.
I sincerely hope that you are joking, or playing devil's advocate. The "market economy" is a fiction, created by government contrivance. Do you really believe that it is some sort of objective truth? or that it is the ultimate expression of human desire for advancement?
The market economy has done such an excellent job in protecting the environment and promoting individual liberty. Ironically enough, the "free market" has given us the most blatent interferences in market freedom that we have seen.
This is not to say that the market is undesirable or is not an excellent allocator of (some) resources - just that is it insufficient as a complete societal model.
It is far more profitable to either kill or join with your competitors, than to compete with them by offering better products at lower prices. This is why a strong government is needed to ensure a working market, based a continues struggle to provide better goods at lower prices than your compatitors.
Without such a strong government, producents will join force in guilds, who keep the market closed to outsiders, by force if necessary. This was the situation until the development of nation states with a strong King as the leader.
Unfortunately, this violates the foundation for the Libertarian belief, namely that all evil is created by government and all good come from the market. And as always when belief and reality slashes, the believers are unable to see the reality.
Of course, this isn't an excuse for the government to take up other tasks than ensuring that players on the market follow the rules.
"People like Friedman and Hayek have proved that markets are the ultimate source of truth, at least in this world."
I suggest you go re-read Friedman. First off, he did not prove that free markets are the best solution, he merely made a (very compelling) argument that it is so. Second, Friedman himself pointed out various examples where 'Market failure' can occur. One example he cites is about public works, for example people might be willing to pay a fee for using properly maintained sidewalks, yet it would be economically unfeasible for a private company to collect these tolls. So instead we all pay a small amount of tax and the government takes care of the sidewalk.
There are other factors that may may prompt a government intervention: in case of the telcos, the government may decide that having a phone line is a basic right, and that telcos are supposed to hook everyone up for a basic fee, with the easy hookups subsidising the ones in remote locations. If governments did not do this, then all the telco's would tell the few customers living in the sticks to get stuffed if they wanted a phone hookup.
I am not saying any of that is right or wrong, but there is nothing fundamental about letting the market economy run its course. It may be the most efficient, and there is a strong case for any government to think twice before interfering with the free market, but not even Friedman suggested to leave everything to the market.
Well, the point is that it is fundamentally wrong for the government to do anything to hinder the workings of the market economy.
When the government doesn't do anything to 'hinder' the economy, you get a situation like the roaring 20's, which leads to rapid inflation, and overvalued markets. Then you get the depression. The reason the world pulled out of the depression was because governments started spending lots of money (another interference in the market). The first economy to pull out of the depression was Germany, because their leader said, "I don't care if we don't have money - just build me a frickin' army!" Of course, they could have spent the money on road or schools too, and that would have worked, but hindsight in 20/20.
In more modern times, the central banks *agressively* set interest rates higher if the risk of inflation gets too high, so as to slow the economy, and governments will increase spending and lower interest rates if the economy slows down too much.
Get this through your head: the economy is naturally Unstable! This is what economists have learned in the past century. Economies have to be regulated by governments or they fail dramatically. You owe your prosperity to Greenspan and people like him (e.g. John Maynard Keynes).
As an aside... this natural instability, and our ability to control it with a feedback loop is why I think economists and control systems engineers like myself should spend some time working on the problem together. The problem of economic balancing and the control systems problem of balancing an inverted pendulum have many interesting similarities.
Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and
social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout?
As far as I know, the citizens of the US are engaged in an ongoing "bailout" of the Baby Bells... that's what all of the tariffs, etc. on the standard phone bill are for.
We've *paid* for the infrastructure, allowing the telcos to profit from their regional monopolies for decades.
I think that it is time to reclaim our ownership of it, decouple the infrastructure from the services by making infrastructure maintenance the province of non-profit organizations, forcing the the Baby Bells to compete for services on a level playing field.
Of course, it will never happen - the Baby Bells spend enormous amounts of lobbying money at both the state and federal level to retain their "ownership" and control of "their" infrastructure, and the fact that our money was spent to build out their regional infrastructures is something they'd prefer everyone ignore.
Oddly, one of the justifications that the Baby Bells continue to use for tariffs is to guarantee services in low population density areas... yet these regions are still lagging far behind more populous locations in DSL availability (and even quality POTS lines) because it isn't "cost effective" for the Bells to roll out such services there, despite the fact that the tariffs are supposed to eliminate cost considerations in such places in the first place!
Further, the ILECs continue to prevent competition from CLECs whenever possible.
True story: Here in Upstate NY I had a customer that wanted high speed Internet access... they are located in a small rural town, and a T1 line wasn't an option due to the cost. The POTS lines are lousy (and have been for the nearly 2 decades that I've done service there), and the local cable company didn't offer cablemodem services because their infrastructure couldn't support it and the owner wasn't prepared to make the financial commitment to rebuild the cable plant in town.
The ILEC in this case (Verizon) wouldn't even offer them ISDN, which was in theory available, would have been at least acceptable for their Internet needs (which were basic email and light Web-browsing for some 20 LAN users).
Well, after some searching, I found a CLEC that could offer DSL albeit "only" at 256Kbps due to distance) and local business dialtone service as well. There was much rejoicing, and plans were made to roll it out. A few other companies in town discovered what this company doing, and they too expressed an interest in DSL for their Internet access. It looked like a "win-win" for everyone: My customers would get cost-effective Internet access, lower cost business telephone service, the CLEC would get business that Verizon couldn't (or wouldn't) provide and my company would make money installing the firewalls, routers, mail servers, etc.
When Verizon found out what was going on, they closed the POP from which the CLEC was operating, splitting the services between 2 small cities in the area, citing "lack of demand for services" from that location as the reason for their actions, thereby eliminating the CLEC's ability to deliver local dial tone and DSL services to that town.
This is the same Verizon that is now allowed to offer long distance services because they have sufficiently opened up the last mile to competition...
The more things change, the more they stay the same, at least here in Verizonland.
It's obvious to me that so long as the RBOCs have control of the last mile, continue to have it supported by tax dollars, credits and tariffs, and abuse their monopoly control over it, that they will *not* compete, but will simply continue to ask for more money from us and the government when their mistakes cost them money.
Time to wean them from the public teat. No more bailouts!
No, was Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't their existing infrastructure, and social dependency on that infrastructure, give them a somewhat legitimate need for a bailout?
No.
In fact, quite the opposite. The ideal combination of market and regulated solutions would be to strip the infrastructure part of the task away from the ILECs and create a new category, WC. The Wiring Carrier would handle building out infrastructure, and would sell it to whatever LEC pays the bills. That would put CLECs like Covad on semi-equal footing with the ILECs, who currently use their monopoly over physical infrastructure to beat the competition down like a red-headed stepchild.
I say "semi-equal footing" because in all likelihood, the people constituting the WC will be ex-ILEC lifers, the type that have proven their willingness to creatively interpret job orders in such a way as to screw the competition. After time, though, they'll die off and the WC will deal with whoever pays the bills.
It's our infrastructure. Our universal service fees have paid to make sure it gets built. However, it's managed in a way that allows the incumbent to screw the competition and screw the customer. They've had their day. Let's take it away.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but I'd sure miss the powers granted to me by the fact that I live in a democracy right now, and the rights granted to me by my country's constitution.
Go back to the jungle, or participate in a free fight, if you think that's best for humanity. But please allow the rest of us to strive for some civilization. Thanks.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:4, Interesting)
I did read it again. Apparently, I understood the words it contained. It doesn't grant rights; it recognizes them. The notion that rights exist only because a piece of paper says they do is rather horrifying. The Constitution exists to spell out the specific powers of the government, not the specific rights of the citizenry.
Here, look
Amendment 9: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Translation: Just because we mentioned a few rights doesn't mean others don't exist. They do, because this document isn't the source of rights.
Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Translation: This document says what the government can do. If it doesn't say the Feds can do it, then the Feds can't do it. If it says the states can't do something, than the states can't do it. Other than that, let the people decide how they want their communities to be run.
Yeesh. Before making pronouncements about what the Constitution says, maybe you should try understanding it .
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like health care? "Sorry, sir. I know there's a gaping wound in your skull and that it hurts, but your credit is no good here. Please go away and die outside in the gutter with all the other poor people."
Like law enforcement? "I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing we can do. You have not paid for our police services. We cannot dispatch officers even if there's a murderous psychopath banging on your door with a bloody knife in his hand."
Like rescue services? "I'm sorry to hear that your house is on fire, sir, but we are a business not a charity. You should remember to pay your bills next time."
And so on...
People like Friedman and Hayek have proved
You can't really prove anything in even hard sciences like physics. Saying that something has been proven in economics or sociology is just ridiculous. Like psychology, economics and sociology are not hard, predictive sciences (some would say that they're not science at all) in the same sense as physics or chemistry.
If capitalism were a scientific theory, it would have been dropped a long time ago because it has no real predictive power and often contradicts with the real world observations.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
And I am happy to know that if I am burgled or mugged the criminal will rarely have a gun and that it's even rarer that the gun will be used. Regardless of whether the cops will catch the criminal, I can cope with losing some money or property.
Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer.
Well, you could say I've been to a socialist country: I was born in a one with mostly state controlled economy. I am currently living abroad in a Northern European country which has had a large socialist party in the government for the last twenty decades. And you know what? The living standards are excellent in both countries. Working public transportation, no people living under the poverty line (check out the US and UK stats in the CIA worldbook for comparison), free public schooling, public libraries and goverment subsidized university level education to allow even the low wage blue collar workers' kids to have an advanced degree if they so choose. Crime is low because the social "safety net" will provide you with basic necessities even you go completely bankcrupt.
As far as your medical care argument goes, you couldn't be more wrong when it comes to Northern Europe and Scandinavia (UK public health care is in real shambles, though). As I've pointed out in one of my recent posts, I've undergone several surgeries. The latest problem with the eye was diagnosed at a private clinic (you know, private clinics are allowed even if the public health care is run by the government!), I got a referral to the local hospital (state run university hospital) and was under the knife in a week. I spent another week in the ward and paid $200 for that - the $8000 operation itself was paid by the society. I pay the progressive 28% income tax gladly for a system like that that is accessible to all citizens regardless of their income (unlike insurances).
You should know more about practical socialism before your spout nonsense like that. That's the kind of black and white reasoning that's not realistic. There is a middle ground between dog-eat-dog capitalism and total commitment to a government run economy, you know.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just moved back to the states from the Uk, having lived there for 3 years and 1 year in Switzerland.
I found the health care in switzerland to be excelent, even though it was private. You had to have healthcare, to be registered in a city.. which you had to be to legally rent an apartment. The taxes where I was living was about 14% total, not including taxes on things like Garbage (yes,a stamp had to be put on every bag you take out.. at 1 dollar per bag, it encourages you to recycle everything you can).
My wife went to the doctor a few times, for this and that, and was quite happy with the modern clinic. The doctors seemed progressive and would offer medicine that was both herbal and western in nature. (No robotusin for a cold, but a herbal concoction you get at the pharmacy).
Anyway, I loved the swiss method of handling things, and at 1% un-employement, and guarding their borders in a way that would make the queen of england prooud, they don't seem to have a lot of the problems that other EU countries have with the poor and destitute.
Now, england is a complete flip-side. I have spent more hours sitting in a clinic waiting for the bloody doctor to just show up for work. (No appointment at my local surgery). When the doctor does show up, they seem to not give a damn about what the problem is. My wife sat waiting to be seen for almost 6 hours. No joke. A co-worker waited 7 months for status on a testicular lump that he was worried might be cancer. Yada yada.
When we found out we where having a baby, our first, we decided to pack our stuff up and move back to the states. Pretty scarry stuff. I can't speak for the rest of the EU, I am sure that they are in better shape than Uk. I was watching a debate on Brittish TV, and there is a statistic that if you get stomach cancer, your chance of survival is 6%. In the US your chance of survival is 61%. Fricken nuts.
And as for shoving people out the door. When we came back the US, we didn't have a job or much money. We immediately qualified for medicade and even after I got my new job, the state took care of the child birth and all the expenses including 6 months of birth control after the child birth for my wife and 3 follow up visits. Now we are back on private health care with my job, but to say that the hospital kicked me out is plain false.
I don't think that my case is special. I don't think that a lot of people realize is that in the US, there is help if you really need it. I am not a bum out on the street, but when we moved back to the US.. we did need some help, and I am glad we had it.
Private sector will always be better off than public, even in healthcare. What they need to do is put legislation in to keep the mall-practive law-suits under control and help keep the costs down so insurance isn't expensive for everyone. Look at the mortality rates across the board, you will be surprised what america's health care is churning out. It was a big enough difference for me to move across the world to have our baby.
Cheers
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary reason most people advocate capitalism is ETHICAL, not scientific. It was liberals and their endless dreams of micromanaging the perfect society that gave birth to that study.
Indeed - you only have to look at the fine examples of capitalistic ethics provided recently by companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing etc to realise how unnecessary government regulation in the free market is.
As far as your other statements, many of us wish there WAS no police force. I am perfectly capable of defending myself, and have a license to carry a Ruger .38 to do so.
Ah yes, and of course the police do nothing that giving everyone a gun wouldn't. It's like I've always said: you can't beat a heavily-armed lynch mob for a meticulous and professional criminal investigation leading to a fair and open trial.
Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer. Even dialysis machines are hardly easily accessible.
And of course, limiting access to healthcare according to personal wealth or employability is such a fair way of arranging things, isn't it? After all, it's obviously entirely your own fault if you're poor or unemployed. I'm sure many of the /. readers left jobless by recent events in the tech industry will back me up on this one.
Incidentally, which socialist countries are you thinking of? How about Cuba as a counter-example? The health service there is excellent, and completely free at the point of use.
Capitalism is ethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
In what theory is capitalism ethical? Nothing in my readings has any statements about an ethical dimension.
> Health care? You have only to go to a socialist country to see how that works. They won't throw you out in the gutter, but they will make you get in line, possibly for months to remedy serious ailments such as cancer.
So what happens if I have cancer, but no money for treatment? How is this different to the "socialist" case?
> You need to think about more than one possibility. Chanting to yourself over and over again "Government can solve my problems, government can solve my problems" is not going to work.
As opposed to chanting "Government can't solve my problems" or "Only the market can solve my problems"?
neo-economic-liberal bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I sincerely hope that you are joking, or playing devil's advocate. The "market economy" is a fiction, created by government contrivance. Do you really believe that it is some sort of objective truth? or that it is the ultimate expression of human desire for advancement?
The market economy has done such an excellent job in protecting the environment and promoting individual liberty. Ironically enough, the "free market" has given us the most blatent interferences in market freedom that we have seen.
This is not to say that the market is undesirable or is not an excellent allocator of (some) resources - just that is it insufficient as a complete societal model.
The market economy depends on a strong government. (Score:5, Insightful)
Without such a strong government, producents will join force in guilds, who keep the market closed to outsiders, by force if necessary. This was the situation until the development of nation states with a strong King as the leader.
Unfortunately, this violates the foundation for the Libertarian belief, namely that all evil is created by government and all good come from the market. And as always when belief and reality slashes, the believers are unable to see the reality.
Of course, this isn't an excuse for the government to take up other tasks than ensuring that players on the market follow the rules.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:5, Informative)
I suggest you go re-read Friedman. First off, he did not prove that free markets are the best solution, he merely made a (very compelling) argument that it is so. Second, Friedman himself pointed out various examples where 'Market failure' can occur. One example he cites is about public works, for example people might be willing to pay a fee for using properly maintained sidewalks, yet it would be economically unfeasible for a private company to collect these tolls. So instead we all pay a small amount of tax and the government takes care of the sidewalk.
There are other factors that may may prompt a government intervention: in case of the telcos, the government may decide that having a phone line is a basic right, and that telcos are supposed to hook everyone up for a basic fee, with the easy hookups subsidising the ones in remote locations. If governments did not do this, then all the telco's would tell the few customers living in the sticks to get stuffed if they wanted a phone hookup.
I am not saying any of that is right or wrong, but there is nothing fundamental about letting the market economy run its course. It may be the most efficient, and there is a strong case for any government to think twice before interfering with the free market, but not even Friedman suggested to leave everything to the market.
Re:Legitimate reason for bailout? (Score:4, Informative)
When the government doesn't do anything to 'hinder' the economy, you get a situation like the roaring 20's, which leads to rapid inflation, and overvalued markets. Then you get the depression. The reason the world pulled out of the depression was because governments started spending lots of money (another interference in the market). The first economy to pull out of the depression was Germany, because their leader said, "I don't care if we don't have money - just build me a frickin' army!" Of course, they could have spent the money on road or schools too, and that would have worked, but hindsight in 20/20.
In more modern times, the central banks *agressively* set interest rates higher if the risk of inflation gets too high, so as to slow the economy, and governments will increase spending and lower interest rates if the economy slows down too much.
Get this through your head: the economy is naturally Unstable! This is what economists have learned in the past century. Economies have to be regulated by governments or they fail dramatically. You owe your prosperity to Greenspan and people like him (e.g. John Maynard Keynes).
As an aside... this natural instability, and our ability to control it with a feedback loop is why I think economists and control systems engineers like myself should spend some time working on the problem together. The problem of economic balancing and the control systems problem of balancing an inverted pendulum have many interesting similarities.