Hacker News Reader

Comment by xenophanes | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the 560 billion for "income security" a social services thing? Isn't it giving money to people who don't have jobs, or make very little money? So that's quite a lot of money in the welfare/social services category.

And personally I'd count social security and medicare in the same sort of category. It's the government spending a ton of money inefficiently providing services that should be provided by the free market, and saying this helps people.

It's good to help people, but it's not the right role for Government, which isn't very good at it.

On the other hand, the military spending may be a lot of money, but at least it's in one of the areas the free market has the hardest time with -- it's spending money in an area where the Government actually has some expertise and some business doing anything.

View on HN

How does the free market provide services to people who have no money? I agree it's good to help people but we have social security and other social programs exactly because there was no help when people needed it. I don't think anything has changed since. It's probably gotten worse.

The free market does not provide forcible wealth redistribution.

Most Government social services are not designed to be efficient wealth redistribution and nothing more. They do other stuff like get involved with medicine or retirement. There is no good reason for that.

Even if you advocate forcible wealth redistribution, that is no justification for most Government social services. It'd only be justification for having one single program that gives no-strings-attached money to poor people straight out of the federal budget.

I think taking people's money by force is bad.

Wait - so you don't think any government social services are worthwhile? You don't have any faith at all in 100 years of social progress?

I believe the reason that we have as many social services programs as we do is because this country has learned that helping out the poorest of our citizens significantly raises the productivity, happiness, and health of the country as a whole. Public health programs that keep those below the poverty line vaccinated prevent outbreaks of dangerous diseases. Unemployment insurance helps those who have lost their jobs get back on their feet before they become homeless and less likely to become employed, or desperate enough to commit crimes. Reduced-price meals for poor students ensure that they are focused on their studies rather than on trying to feed themselves, and therefore more likely to get the most benefit out of their education. The entire idea behind healthcare reform is the idea that if we work to insure every citizen, it will benefit all of us in the end by keeping us healthier, and hopefully driving down costs as a result.

I don't like my money being taken by force either, but to think that the free market would provide any meaningful wealth distribution without being directly forced to is just naive.

> Wait - so you don't think any government social services are worthwhile?

Correct. You shouldn't be surprised, this is the basic libertarian view, and it's not rare at YC.

> You don't have any faith at all in 100 years of social progress?

What progress? I don't see progress in social services programs. So, correct, I guess. I do see "social progress" in the sense of, say, people having less fist fights, but I don't think Government is responsible for that.

As to the rest, it basically says you aren't a libertarian, aren't a free market advocate, and don't want to be. It does not engage with libertarian ideas, or criticize them, or say anything new. It just repeats things libertarians have heard a thousand times, and refuted a thousand times. If you want to know more about libertarianism or free markets you can google them, but I don't think you do.

In very short what you have said is, "Government programs are useful" which does not address the issue of whether they are efficient or wasteful relative to the free market alternatives that could exist instead (remember TANSTAAFL).

I'd be interested in hearing what the free market alternatives would be for some of these programs (such as universal vaccination). I'm not saying they aren't possible, but I have a hard time coming up with a business plan that doesn't rely on charity (which is also inefficient, although I'm not sure how it fares relative to government).

You can find free market alternatives for many issues in the book

_The Machinery of Freedom_ by David Friedman

As to vaccines, I wonder what proportion of the population wouldn't be willing to pay for their own vaccines. For any vaccine that we make 300 million of it's gonna be cheap, so the unwilling people would either be very poor or have some philosophical objection to vaccine (weird religious view, anti-science, etc).

So the problem is only the size of, say, one million vaccinations.

Existing big drugs companies today voluntarily give away substantial amounts of free medicine to poor people. My friend is a recipient. They do it to create good will and word of mouth and that kind of reasoning. I imagine if no one else was willing to do it, and one company stepped up and provided vaccines for poor people for a high profile disease, thus staving off a public health risk, it'd make them look so much better than the other companies it'd pay for itself.

Or maybe that wouldn't work. It takes creativity to solve these problems. I don't see anything that makes this problem, in principle, more difficult than a variety of others. Also, it's not like the Government is offering a good solution. The Government's approach is to not find a way to do it for a profit, and not find a way to persuade people to do it voluntarily, and instead just to do it by force.

This mention of efficiency reminds me of the time when the energy market in California was de-regulated and the result was sky-rocketing costs and rolling black-outs.

America's free-market healthcare system is extremely inefficient. We pay roughly twice that of the UK (as percentage of GDP) and all the indicators (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc), are roughly the same.

In the last two years, in the face of the stock market crash, Social Security has remained solvent and stable. If it had been privatized, as Bush wanted, it not only would have made wealthy bankers more wealthy (redistribution of wealth upwards, which tends to happen in free markets) by infusing the stock markets with billions, but it would have sent Social Security into the gutter with the rest of the pensions and 401Ks.

In fact, lack of regulation in the markets, aka more free, lead to the great recession and the 10% unemployment that we find ourselves in.

I could go on about the inefficiencies of the free market, and there are equally many cases where purely social programs also fail. In the end, the middle path -- a mix of free makets and socialism, a mix of laissez faire and regulation -- works best.

America does not have a free market health care system. It has extremely large market distortions. While you are blaming the current state of affairs on the free market, I am blaming it on Government. What I advocate is not being tested out, and what you advocate isn't being tested out either, so we can't just look at the results to see who is right.

One of the market distortions in health care is tax subsidies for employer provided health care plans.

You blame recession on the free market. But how can that be? We don't have a free market. We have huge market distortions in all sorts of key areas. Those are more than capable of causing recessions.

Of course there is no purely free market anywhere in the world. Just as there is no pure socialism. My point is that free market reforms (i.e. deregulation and privatization) have lead to inefficiencies (and so have social programs).

If you're hoping for a completely free market, that's like wishing for the second coming of Christ. I think a pragmatic mix of free and social markets makes more sense.

I blame the recession on a more-free market, not a purely free market. The banking industry needs more regulation.

Finally, there are many reasons for our healthcare mess and government is but a small part. For example, A big reason healthcare in America is employer-based is, back in the 50's, auto, steel, and other huge companies were afraid of union power and government meddling, so they said "we'll take care of the health of our employees." They opted for a more-free market (not purely obviously) approach.

I guess my biggest problem with your point is the fact that you say:

> The free market does not provide forcible wealth redistribution.

The fact that you draw this distinction seems to imply that you simultaneously concede that some redistribution of wealth is necessary, but also believe that this distribution can be possible without forcible intervention.

If this is not your position, I apologize. But if it is, I think it's naive at best. If the recent economic crisis has shown us anything, it is that, without force, not a penny will be pried from the hands of the financial institutions and corporations that control most of this country's wealth, let alone redistributed.

Non-forcible wealth redistribution is voluntary charity. I am not opposed to charity. I am also not making any claims about how much charity will be provided in a free market society. I don't assume there will be plenty, or any, though I actually would expect some, look at Bill Gates.

I do not consider any wealth redistribution necessary which people can't be persuaded to do completely voluntarily. What charity is good to do is a very controversial matter, but fortunately I don't have to get into that to oppose the use of force against rich people.

Persuade people to donate, and if you can't, don't assume you're right and they're wrong about the best use of their money.

Hope that's clear.

Social security provides money, which is about as efficient as it gets. Are you positing that private pension benefits are somehow spent more efficiently?

As far as whether it helps people, it unquestionably does. Maybe it hurts other people (those who pay taxes), but that income transfer would not likely happen under private plans. So it is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

How is the revenue from social security different from that of other federal taxes (esp. income)?

Yes, private pensions have different rules and regulations about when to put money in, take it out, etc. For one thing, social security forces you to contribute. If you would rather spend your money on something else (in general, or just this month), you can't. Sometimes that hurts people who are trying to make rent. Sometimes it's inefficient b/c they could have used the same money for something better. Private pensions, if they get nothing else right, at least are voluntary.

> As far as whether it helps people, it unquestionably does. Maybe it hurts other people (those who pay taxes), but that income transfer would not likely happen under private plans.

SS is a big income transfer from blacks and hispanics because they don't live long enough to collect much. It's a modest income transfer to women and the poor.

You're missing the point. Go ahead and cut income security entirely. You'll slash some incredibly popular (and useful) programs, and you'll save less than one social security.

Again, we can't keep slashing at the smallest parts of the budget and hoping to shrink the deficit. It's nothing more than political theater, designed to appease a vocal minority who don't have a sufficient understanding of the problem.

I'm saying that 560 billion, for one category of social services, is not a small part of the budget.

Of course I would like to slash at social security too.

What do you purpose to do with the millions of elderly people who rely on it? It's easy to cut budgets on paper but there's a very real moral and ethical cost. Social security is a life or death issue for the elderly.

We could phase it out without reducing benefits for people who have already paid a lot into it or are already getting paid benefits.

There may be better and faster plans too, I don't know, but this one would work without hurting anyone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com