Comment by xenophanes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xenophanes | Hacker News Reader

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> 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).

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.

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.

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