Hacker News Reader

Comment by mibbitier | Hacker News Reader

Not really the same IMHO.

Giving people access to healthcare and fire protection doesn't create any bad incentives. You can't 'use' healthcare for monetary gain.

Giving people food, money etc, gives people incentives to not bother working.

Also I would say that a national health service ensures that the public is 'healthy'. Which affects us all, as diseases are transmitted etc. Just as the fire services ensures fires don't spread and burn down all the houses.

The same isn't true of giving people food.

View on HN

Well, there's no limit to how much healthcare you can use, though. Hanson[1] suggests Americans already buy too much healthcare, and in the US, healthcare still costs most people something through copays, etc. So, I think it's quite arguable that giving people free healthcare can create bad incentives, if not limited some other way.

I also am not sure it makes sense to lump together healthcare (which includes a lot of long-term preventative care like vaccines and lifestyle advice) and fire protection (which is mostly emergency damage control). A better analogy might be if the government provided free fire insurance covering everything citizens own -- actually, the US does this sort of thing with hurricanes and floods, so there's a fairly exact analogy, and it seems clear that it does create bad incentives to build and rebuild in hurricane-prone and low-lying areas.

[1] http://hanson.gmu.edu/CutMed.htm

> Giving people food, money etc, gives people incentives to not bother working.

I find this kind of attitude totally bizarre. People do not stop having output just because they have food security. The notion that giving away food is bad because of work is a very capitalistic idea that actually serves to perpetuate hunger and starvation.

Giving people food and welfare, makes them dependent on the state. Once you're dependent, you have no incentive to progress through your own hard work.

Giving handouts does far more harm than good. It keeps people down.

Once you're dependent, you have no incentive to progress through your own hard work.

You mean, except for all the good incentives like achievement, mastery, purpose, learning, and contribution to a community that actual successful professionals are motivated by, rather than the motive against starvation that you seem to believe is the only reason anyone gets up in the morning?

Giving people food, money etc, gives people incentives to not bother working.

Well yeah, but according to this kind of economistic thinking, paying a guy $40/hour instead of $20/hour encourages him to work half as many hours. Giving people anything for any reason, including as trade/payment, can always be construed as encouraging less work-ethic.

And likewise, withholding anything or inflicting any suffering or punishment can always be construed as encouraging work-ethic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com