Socialized medicine
A useful data point in the largely fact-free argument between Libertarians and everyone else: private-only health care doesn't work, in the sense that it delivers substantially lower levels of public health....the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public
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I, unlike Heather, have NO (read none) health insurance (Heather has coverage for everything save her drugs) and aside from the time I was in design school, I haven't since I was 22(I am 38 now.). I went through acute liver failure and needed six weeks in hospital when I was 23. No one can tell me I have never been gravely ill. They called my mom and told her they didn't expect me to live through the night.
I still believe in the government butting out of my health care. Liberty, security...Benjamin Franklin said it and you've heard it. I believe it. And I act on it in my daily life. That's how this project came about, after all. Individuals, not the state, helping individuals. What Heather does with the money when it gets to her is entirely her call. We do not dictate what that has to be (as happens, it genuinely is for her drugs, but there were no restrictions placed on her.) . It is *hers*. It comes with no strings from us. (we will avoid the tax issue for one moment as it's tangental.)
I am not a humanitarian. I am not an altruist(nor have I ever claimed to be either- in fact, I specifically tell people I'm neither, right on the Lime Project site.) The thing is, I don't expect anyone else to be, either. I am an individual person who believes that my money is my own, and that I can, and will support _whatever_ it is I deem worthy without theft of same from a government entity. I took my clothes off to raise money for my friend, because to me that is far preferable to a government that can tell her (or me, or anyone) what doctors I can see(and where), what drugs I can take, what treatment I can seek and how *fast* I get it. I support whatever charitable causes I wish.
The key here is I wish. I don't force anyone to have the same list I do. If they overlap? Great! And if they don't? Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. You can't win em all.
There are well more than enough people on this planet. Some believe every single person is exactly the same. I agree. They're all equally of little value, save the value placed in them by others. no one is special until someone else makes them that way. Everyone thinks that someone is special. People looking after one another, as individuals, is the name of my game. I walk it like I talk it and I took my clothes off to prove it. Other people had other reasons. This was mine.
I make no apologies and never have (this was written in *1998*) for the variations in personality amongst people. That's just the way it goes.
I did say I wasn't a humanitarian.
But so far I've managed to keep this project together and we've raised over 12k without one drop of government help in a little over 8 weeks. I call that a win.
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I find your worldview... extraordinarily bleak. But basically, you're saying that the effectiveness or otherwise of nationalized health systems doesn't matter to you, because that's not part of your definition of "goodness" - is that right? A good health system is one that allows you to spend your money in a way that you see fit, and to act according to your wishes.
12k - that's a fantastic achievement. Go you!
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Diverting from the actual topic just slightly, if you coerce someone into doing something you perceive to be good, is it still good?
The problem is the coercion. It is forcing people to adopt your worldview, simply because you claim that it's for the greater good. Except that expects that everyone agrees on what that is. And we don't. I don't accept that from anyone- not my government, nor religious people, nor anyone else. It's about having the *choice*.
It also expects that life is, or should be, *fair*. And it ISNT. It just isnt. It's not fair in nature, it's not fair in human society either.
(and thank you- we should be down to around 50 calendars by the end of the night here. Orders are still coming in pretty fast.)
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No one is *entitled* to what I produce. Either I give it willingly, or not at all. Again, this solution involves coercion. It assumes everyone wants the same things. It involves forcing a worldview on people and eliminating choice.
I can't support that.
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But your libertarianism seems to be of a different brand, and that's really interesting. If I'm understanding you correctly, you'd literally rather die than be unfree, and you don't just mean a glorious death in battle against the oppressors with all wounds to the front, you mean a shitty, Third World death (in the richest country in the world) from some eminently treatable disease because you don't have health insurance and accepting healthcare from the government would mean an unacceptable infringement of your liberty. I can't help but respect that.
But it doesn't mean I have to agree with it. Freedom isn't simply a matter of not being prevented from doing stuff by the government: I can't see any real difference between being prevented from doing something by a law or by poverty or by (say) discrimination by private individuals or firms. In fact, the first situation is probably better: laws can be broken, and in democracies they can be changed. Once you accept this view of freedom, you realise that freedoms must be traded off against each other. And then it becomes possible to think about trading off minor freedoms (the freedom from having a proportion of my income taken away by a government body) for more important ones (the freedom from the aforementioned death, or at least its diminished likelihood). The question is: is this a good bargain? And the linked article seems to show that it is: you get better health care that way (other figures I've seen suggest that you get it much cheaper too, but I don't know how they were calculated).
Of course, not all such trade-offs are such a good idea: the trade-offs we're asked to make for protection from terrorism are usually appallingly bad deals, for instance. But we can have a debate about that. And the tradeoff (freedom to do exactly what I want without government interference) versus (freedom to take advantage of the things governments can do for me) seems, to me, to be a good one. Particularly since the first situation, as far as I can see, would quickly degenerate into a Mafia-led kleptocracy in which we had neither the first nor the second lot of freedoms.
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Your second example, btw it's flawed. You act as if there's no price. Freedom to take advantage of what governments can do for you comes at a cost. It doesn't come from thin air. And that cost is not acceptable to me. It also becomes a debate over what is a minor freedom. I'm not so sure there are any minor freedoms, but even if there were, the point is that which ones are which varies from person to person. We don't all agree on that. And in a nation of 300 million, we *really* don't agree on that.
It also doesn't address the part about coercion- which is really at the center of all of this. Again, if you say "okay, if you want in on this deal, then sign up" and see who does, then I dont have a problem. If you say "you *HAVE* to do this, because we know what's best for you even if you don't agree" then I have to say "go fuck yourself". The issue is the coercion. It's why I support small cooperatives, but am totally against forced governmental control (of pretty well anything)
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And yes, some freedoms are minor. For example, I really don't care that I don't have the freedom to practice dentistry. I'm happy to exchange the freedom to practice dentistry for the knowledge that the guy pulling my teeth has passed some exams that show he knows what he's doing. I couldn't ensure that - I don't have the knowledge to assess him. You need a whole setup ensuring the universities are training dentists to adequate standards, and that they're testing them adequately at the end. Multiply this example by every interaction you have in a lifetime, and hopefully you can see my point. There are, of course, major liberties - the right to speech, freedom of assembly, travel - and we should not accept infringements of these except under the direst provocation (like, er...)
Yes, I'm aware of the infringements on American liberty by the US government - have you seen what they've been doing over here? It's terrible, but that doesn't mean that the entire institution of government is flawed. It means that we, the people, must stop them. The price of liberty, and all that.
I don't want our government in control of ANYTHING (anything) that affects my personal body.
Because that's so much worse than having it in the control of the insurance companies, over whom we have (comparatively) not the slightest power.
Coercion: yes, you're right, this is the central point. OK, maybe it would be ideal if you never had to agree to any part of the social contract you didn't like. So, this isn't going to be a form that you fill in (Qualified dentists only? Yes/No; Free education? Never/Primary/Secondary/Tertiary; National Health Service? Yes/Emergency medicine only/No), it's going to be, essentially, a free market, and what the linked article purports to show (coming back to those tricky "evidence" and "real world" things again) is that that sucks. It provides a shitty deal for everyone. You're measurably, objectively better off under a system where everyone accepts a certain amount of coercion in return for decent basic services. Vote and march and protest to change what you don't like, but put up with what you can't change.
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If I wanted to, I could change careers, get a job in an office and get insurance. I have *a choice* as to whether or not I want to participate in that. It's my choice. Not so when it's attached to government. I also accept that government has an agenda. And specifically that as someone who is female, atheist(and anti-theist) and adamantly childfree that I lie in direct opposition to what the executive branch of this government would like to promote. They are in no way looking out for my interests and I have no interest in promoting theirs.
And that's the central point. I don't accept coercion. No one is entitled to anything I produce save that which I give willingly. So I support a line item veto on the social contract. And if that means supporting a free market, then I support that. I'm not a humanitarian, nor am I an altruist. I support personal liberty first, last and always.
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