Another libertarian debate thread

[bldysabba]

@wolfpup

But if what you say is true, then it does constitute a legitimate debate. My argument there would be that all historical experience seems to show that the kind of anti-government non-regulation proposed by libertarians ends up causing social strife and instability and great injustices, in labor markets, in health care, in the social safety net, in the ability of small businesses to compete fairly with giant multinationals, and throughout society.

If you want to talk outcomes, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the government closest to libertarian ideals was that of the US in the 19th century, and several similar systems in the western world, and it’s hard to argue against the success of the model. The governments furthest away from the libertarian ideal were that of the Soviet Union and several similar systems in India and China, and it’s hard to argue against their failure. Personally, I chalk that up in favour of the capitalist/libertarian models.

There is, for example, as has so often been pointed out, no possible rational justification for running the most expensive yet one of the least efficacious health care systems in the world except the justification that says “Choice! Freedom! Rah!”. It’s one of several libertarian principles that have indeed gone mainstream, to the benefit of no one except enormous and entrenched health insurers and many providers. This is not a matter of political ideology, it’s a fairly objective matter of health care economics, an objective specialized field of economics that demonstrates the value of a broad-based universal collective approach to such an essential service. Libertarianism would never allow such a compromise of its sacred principles, no matter what the evidence, no matter how beneficial the outcome, and no matter how much money it saves.

This is an entirely different debate, with considerable merit on both sides, but you can’t put down the American system as being the fault of libertarian ideals. The biggest distortion in your markets - insurance companies funded by employers - exists because the government favoured employer provided health insurance in their tax code. Government attempts to improve outcomes entrenched large distortions into healthcare - which is already a very imperfect market to begin with. I don’t know if market solutions could work in healthcare. It may not be possible, although given recent technological developments, it might be. But to say that your current problems are because of libertarian ideals at work is just wrong.