I know people who work at Goldman Sachs making six figure salaries that agree it sucks.
I can sum up why all markets aren’t free in a few simple sentences:
Do you think that your job should go to the smartest, most capable person who can perform it the most cost effectively? Or do you think it should go to you?
Let me start with Walmart and all their wonderful benefits and yes I do know people who work in Walmart and they agree it sucks. A very small number of their employees recieve Health benefits. More are dependent on state Medicaid programs.
We as a society have decided that poor people should receive medical care. Therefore, we as a society should pay for it. You do not get to decide that someone deserves something and then point to one group(employers) and say, “You! You will pay for what I want to generously give people!”
There’s a practical reason why we don’t make employers provide health insurance: not every Wal-mart employee needs it from Wal-mart. Seniors work at Wal-mart. Kids work at Wal-mart. People work at Wal-mart for second jobs, getting insurance through their full time job. Spouses work at Wal-mart and have insurance through their spouse’s job. If Wal-mart had to make sure that employees had health insurance, they would simply not hire anyone who would need health insurance. They’d stick to the four groups I mentioned above: seniors, kids, part-timers with other jobs, and spouses who aren’t primary breadwinners.
I said computers were a good example of a product that is cheaper but at what cost? It’s very convenient to just measure cost of goods without considering what the cost to society. Sure the computer is cheaper but who’s making them here?
That’s not a direct cost, and forcing things to be made here has costs of its own(it costs consumers more, which means they can’t buy other things, it costs jobs in other sectors because companies have to use more of their budgets for computers, and it reduces PC quality because of fewer competitors.
**How come all markets aren’t free here? I want inexpensive Canadian drugs suddenly we can’t have a free market.
Why not? **
That’s because drugs have to be approved by the FDA. If you want to get rid of that requirement, let’s talk about it.
Were they? I have seen no particular objective data to that effect. Not that I would argue that bureaucracies are particularly brilliant, and as I already mentioned, I am rather more favourable to essentially market driven solutions. Want I can’t abide is American style market-fundamentalism, in particular because your brand of fundamentalism in the end discredits more balanced market liberalisation.
I’m no fundamentalist. I suppose smart regulation. The only place we differ is that I start from a presumption of liberty, while you seem to start with no particular preference. Which is something Americans don’t get about Europeans: they only seem to support freedom and democracy because it “works”. If totalitarianism “worked” better, they’d do that.
That is one bizarre sentence.
Apart from the curious logic of ‘if something that doesn’t work did work’, there’s a fairly broad sweeping action going on. And I’m just talking about what “Americans don’t get”, never mind 25-30 distinct European nations.
Walmart employees make up the largest pool of Medicaid recipients. It seems pretty evident that it’s a bit more than seniors and kids. Maybe we should just make Walmart and other employers pony up a little if they don’t have the decency to provide insurance.
All drugs do have to be approved by the FDA but that’s not the reason we can’t import them. We can’t even negotiate to buy at a lower price because of the influence of Big Pharma in our government. Reublicans, en masse, coupled with a few Dems continually beat back this common sense proposal.
“I start from a position of liberty” What does that mean? Since that’s a Republican rallying cry I’ll assume. What liberties are you talking about? And if you are Republican, why is the concept of liberty only what you deem important. You guys seem pretty damn obtrusive in bedroom matters and reproductive freedom.
Pretty broad lambasting of Europe, guess you have never been there. It’s not quite as homogenous as you seem to make it. Some countries even have liberty, maybe you should give it a try.
Emphasis added.
I submit that this rather illustrates a position as dogma (and as such, fundamentalist) rather a pragmatic decision.
I further submit that when arguing for liberal economics (libertarian if you prefer), arguing as if your position is the default - the dogmatically correct - as you have been doing off and on is a losing proposition.
Never mind you are confusing political liberalism with economic liberalism - free markets. They do not ipso facto go hand in hand. Again illustrating your dogmatic rather than scientific approach.
This forum is great debates. If you presume your final point, that is called question begging. Now, “question begging in the name of liberty may be no vice”, but it isn’t debate. One of the reasons I read and occasionally post in this forum is to learn about debate.
So why does liberty get a presumption. (yeah, I get it, liberty is swell.) But why is it swell? Why in a debate does it get a presumption when it is the subject is whether the free market works? That kind of makes it circular reasoning, the director’s cut of question begging.
Does the free market work? What is the definition of work? Operate efficient? Make rich people richer? Provide goods and services to those who do not have them in the absence of a free market? Maximize tax revenue?
What is the free market? Do we have one? Do we benefit from it? How do you measure “we” and “benefit”?
Yes, I like the thrill of doing what I want when I want, but other than my instant gratification, what results?
Perhaps a topic for another debate would be why is health insurance even tied to employers anyhow and should it be? Company provided health insurance used to be a perk. Now it’s an entitlement.
What I am against is people who have no idea what they are talking about dictating how companies “should or should not” conduct business. No one forces people to work for Walmart. If they don’t like the benefits, they are free to pursue better jobs.
That would be an example of the opposite of “free market”. Using political influence to enact artifical barriers to entry restricts choice and creates economic inefficiencies. It allows American Big Pharma to get rich at the expense of the consumer who is forced to pay higher prices than they would if Canadian Big Pharma was allowed to compete.
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I also like the long term gratification of being able to decide where I want to live, where I want to work and what kind of work I want to do based on my own interests and skills. Not having them dictated to me by other people.
Who, the Chinese? Depends where in China you live and what your connections are.
Apart from the curious logic of ‘if something that doesn’t work did work’, there’s a fairly broad sweeping action going on. And I’m just talking about what “Americans don’t get”, never mind 25-30 distinct European nations.
It’s hardly bizarre. Europe has a history of jettisoning democracy at the first sign of adversity in favor of totalitarian ideologies.
Never mind you are confusing political liberalism with economic liberalism - free markets. They do not ipso facto go hand in hand. Again illustrating your dogmatic rather than scientific approach.
Yes they do. If you aren’t free to make a living as you see fit(within reasonable restrictions), then you aren’t free. You are dependent on the state, either for support, or for permission to make a living.
So why does liberty get a presumption. (yeah, I get it, liberty is swell.) But why is it swell? Why in a debate does it get a presumption when it is the subject is whether the free market works? That kind of makes it circular reasoning, the director’s cut of question begging.
This debate isn’t about liberty so much as whether free markets work. I threw in that even if free markets didn’t “work”, they don’t need justification. freedom is it’s own justification. Lots of our freedoms don’t “work”, but we have them anyway. Does reproductive freedom “work”? How about free speech? Isn’t the existence of really awful TV shows proof that freedom of speech doesn’t work? How about freedom from search and seizure without a warrant? that obviously doesn’t work because there are criminals on the streets and the law prevents the authorities from apprehending them more easily.
Do you get my point? Freedom doesn’t have to work to be justified. I don’t understand why people think the market has to justify itself, but non-economic freedoms do not need justification.
I agree. With 2,000 years of European history to choose from, we can single out the instance of Wiemar Germany abandoning its experiment after a dozen years and embracing Naziism as a general rule of how all Europeans will behave in any given situation. Clearly, it is the land of pussies.
Yes, I get your point. Freedom doesn’t have to be justified. Even in a thread asking if freedom in markets really works. All praise the Son, Alan Greenspan, and the Mother, Ayn Rand and the Unholy Spirit, Unleavened Greed. There is nothing more to see here. Everyone move along.
I agree. With 2,000 years of European history to choose from, we can single out the instance of Wiemar Germany abandoning its experiment after a dozen years and embracing Naziism as a general rule of how all Europeans will behave in any given situation. Clearly, it is the land of pussies.
There are more instances than that, although Weimar Germany is the best example. But let’s talk about European history. What is the average date that a European nation became democratic? Britain has been democratic a long time, as long as the US. After that though, we’re dealing with some pretty fledgling democracies except for a few small places like the Netherlands. France nearly fell into military dictatorship as recently as 1960. They were all set to hand over the reins to a charismatic general. Fortunately, De Gaulle was more Washington than Pinochet, not that the French people would have cared at the time. Eastern Europe has only been democratic since 1990 and many of them are ready to get rid of it now, because they expect it to “work” rather than treasuring freedom for its own sake. Italy, democratic only since 1945, and none too stable until Berlusconi came around. Spain and Portugal, what, 1980s they became democratic?
This is why I have little patience for Europeans wondering why Americans are so obsessive about liberty.
Yes, I get your point. Freedom doesn’t have to be justified. Even in a thread asking if freedom in markets really works. All praise the Son, Alan Greenspan, and the Mother, Ayn Rand and the Unholy Spirit, Unleavened Greed. There is nothing more to see here. Everyone move along.
Free markets don’t work. Neither do any other economic systems. they all have market failures, they all have regulatory failures, they all have central planning failures.
Now that we’ve settled that, let’s start a thread on whether we should revisit freedom of thought. I mean, people think rather poorly. They have stupid ideas and get their facts wrong. If we abolished freedom of thought and told people what to think, wouldn’t that bring us closer to utopia? I mean, it would probably work just as well as having wise men decide what economic transactions are good and what economic transactions are bad.
I don’t really have a dog in this particular fight, but can you give some examples of European Democracy before the late 20th century in that 2000 year history? Just curious why you seemingly think that Europeans had some kind of good track record (aside from Wiemar Germany…oh, and that French Revolution aberration…) concerning Democracy.
All praise to the straw! It must be on sale…
-XT
I don’t really have a dog in this particular fight, but can you give some examples of European Democracy before the late 20th century in that 2000 year history? Just curious why you seemingly think that Europeans had some kind of good track record (aside from Wiemar Germany…oh, and that French Revolution aberration…) concerning Democracy.
They don’t. That’s my point. But to me, the more important point than the fact Europe is new to democracy is the fact that they have a tendency to backslide, or come close to backsliding. Germany in particular is worrisome because both Nazis and Communists are making a small comeback. I wonder what a Depression would do for their numbers?
Certainly there is no history of democracy in Europe before the 20th Century, and Iceland, with the oldest constitutional government in history can be utterly discounted because they are not really European or democratic by our standards of considering only Americans as valid examples of liberty or democracy. We can discount the ancient Athenians because their experiment failed after only two or three centuries depending on how you measure it. Same with the Spartans, who had the gall to have two “kings”. Screw the Romans who had four centuries of real republic before five more of pretending to have a republic. And forget the various Italian city states like Florence because those pussies pussied out at the first sign of heretic burning. And screw the cheese eating surrender monkeys of the various French Republics because they were never truly about Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite.
Might I suggest that all classical liberals read Montesquiue, Machiavelli, Edmund, Locke, Burke and Lord Acton before spouting off about freedom. They were real philosophers of liberty. Unlike Ayn Rand, who is the L. Ron Hubbard of philosophy.
I think you just proved my point. Europe has a long history of democracy and an equally long history of backsliding into tyranny at the first sign of trouble.
Can you point to another place that has an equally long history of democracy so we can compare and contrast?
Blinkie, I have neither the debating skills or advanced economics knowledge of the other posters here, but I do think I can understand your dissapointment with the current system.
I like music a lot. Madonna is a far better singer than I am, and surely deserves something for her talent, but I don’t care for her music. In my opinion, Johnny Cash was far more talented, made music I love, but earned less money.
However, I think Jonas Salk was far more important and useful for society than both Madonna and Johnny Cash combined.
As someone who doesn’t enjoy sports at all, I can’t fathom why anyone would pay even a cent to see someone throw a ball and run after it.
In MY perfect world, the level of wealth, groupies, and adulation would be distributed in the following order:
Jonas Salk—>Johnny Cash—>Madonna—>Athlete of the Moment.
But, there’s a catch to all this. If my neighbor likes going to baseball games, and his wife likes going to Madonna concerts, what am I supposed to do?
The world isn’t mine, and my neighbor (fortunately) has just as much right as I do to choose where he spends his money.
I could try to have my neighbors killed off so all the people who like baseball games would be dead, then baseball players would earn very little—didn’t the Nazis already try something like that?
I could try to raise the minimum wage for scientists, and cap the salary of singers and baseball players—didn’t the Communists already try something like that?
The free market doesn’t think or feel—it just represents what society wants. Apparently, we just love baseball and Madonna, and scientists like Jonas Salk are boring.
If you think this should change, how would you propose to do it?
What if your proposed changes ended up with my neighbor being unable to attend Madonna concerts, would that be fair?
One more thing I think people forget when considering some people with high salaries, is that these high-paying jobs have less chance of success.
–If I strive to learn how to play soccer and become a well-known professional player, the odds are stacked against me. I might hurt myself trying, I might be not quite as good as the players on the other team, and there must be literally hundreds of other good soccer players “applying” for the same job as I am. I’ll be taking a chance at being rich, with a good chance of being penniless. Maybe a 1% chance (or less!) at making millions.
–If I strive to be a cook ad McDonald’s, there’s a good chance I’ll get the job immediately after filling out an application and having a short interview with the manager. The cooking style at McDonald’s is such that any reasonable person can do it correctly, and be a “successfull” cook, although it doesn’t pay well. It doesn’t pay as well as David Beckham’s job, but I probably have a 99% guarantee of success.
It’s kind of like choosing how to invest your money. You could put it in a basic savings account which has essentially no risk, is very convenient, but pays little interest. Or, you could invest in a very risky stock which might pay a whole lot.
Just like most of us put our money somewhere in between a savings account and the stock market, most of us also choose and strive for a career somewhere between minimum-wage line cook and millionaire soccer player.
No it wouldn’t be fair to improve your neighbors life by stopping her from going to a Madonna concert.
“Jonas Salk—>Johnny Cash—>Madonna—>Athlete of the Moment.”
That pretty well sums up my point. When athlete of the moment outranks Jonas Salk, clearly there is something terribly astray.
End of thread
No, it doesn’t follow based on what you desire. If more people are willing to give their money to the Athlete of the Moment, then why is something astray?