What are called "free markets" by the various defenders of State Capitalism are parts of a system whereby the wealth of individual subjects is confiscated and redistributed upward to state-subsidized, -favored, and -protected corporations. These corporations in turn complain publicly that onerous regulation and taxation prevent them from succeeding as they otherwise might, although to any objective observer the state regulatory and tax structures are plainly designed to subsidize business, reduce the threat of lawsuit, gut the power of labor, etc.--privilege corporations over real individuals. These poor, overburdened corporate citizens must therefore lay everyone off, or pay them lousy wages, or cut their benefits, or overcharge their customers. When the corporate economy falters and the credit afforded their indentured servants, i.e. employees, dries up, individuals may begin to chafe slightly under the burden of having no actual, tangible personal wealth with which to purchase life's necessities, less yet the small luxuries that make life decent and worth living. They may rumble with inchoate demands that something be done to at least provide them with the bare necessities of contemporary life, and as they see their own wages stagnate and their own jobs become ever more precarious and temporary, they may look askance at certain insanely high levels of profitability in certain corporate circles.
Fortunately, there are shills!
This attitude was wrong in 2006. It is wrong now. High profits are excellent news. When corporate earnings reach record levels, we should be celebrating. The only way a firm can make money is to sell people what they want at a price they are willing to pay. If a firm makes lots of money, lots of people are getting what they want.In the case of health insurers, of course, many people are not getting what they need, and those who do purchase insurance are buying what is necessary at a price they are obligated to pay.
To the country, profit is a benefit. Record profit means record taxes paid. But put that aside. When profits are high, firms are able to reinvest, expand and hire. And profits accrue to the benefit of those who own stocks: overwhelmingly, pension funds and mutual funds. In other words, high corporate profits today signal better retirements tomorrow.
Another reason to celebrate profit is the incentive it creates. When profits can be made, entrepreneurs provide more of needed goods and services. Consider an example common to the first-year contracts course in every law school: Suppose that the state of Quinnipiac suffers a devastating hurricane. Power is out over thousands of square miles. An entrepreneur from another state, seeing the problem, buys a few dozen portable generators at $500 each, rents a truck and drives them to Quinnipiac, where he posts them for sale at $2,000 each -- a 300 percent markup.
Based on recent experience, it is likely the media will respond with fury and the attorney general of Quinnipiac will open an investigation into price-gouging. The result? When the next hurricane arrives, the entrepreneur will stay put, and three dozen homeowners who were willing to pay for power will not have it. There will be fewer portable generators in Quinnipiac than there would have been if the seller were left alone.
But let's not get ahead of the example. The catechism of state capital, reiterated above by Stevie Carter, holds that when businesses do well, they hire and expand. This is plainly not the case, as in the post-industrial economy real wages have declined, personal indebtedness has spiked, and low unemployment has been maintained by shifting a formerly middle-class workforce into low-wage "service industry" jobs. In order to prop up consumption, the system of state capital expanded credit instead of raising wages--in essence, reinventing the company store for the age of electronic commerce. Record profits at financial service industry firms, or energy conglomerates, or technology companies do not spark national trends of hiring and upward mobility. They are ultimately job-neutral or job-negative. Consider that now, as firms announce profits and the major stock exchanges see gains in their measuring indexes, unemployment continues to expand unabated, despite the extravagant claims of the Obama administration.
Carter's disaster-relief case is a fine example of this extortionist's game; there is no reason, of course, that a functioning public entity, a civic organization, a disaster-relief collective, a local government, hell, an insurer, what have you, can't buy its own generators at the wholesale cost of $500 and provide them free to community shareholders in times of catastrophe. The manufacturer and wholesaler are still making profits in this scenario. The only person cut out is the price-gouging middleman distributor who is taking advantage of a natural disaster to make a 300% profit (we should all be in such a business, with such margins!) and blackmailing those poor people by threatening to withhold future service if they don't pay up now. In other words, running a protection scheme.
There are, by the way, models of free exchange and property that address such iniquities.
41 comments:
Carter's entrepreneur is kind of a dick.
Yeah, but who's got a fucking million fucking dollars parked in the trunk of our car here?
You fucking know its been stolen.
the minarcho-socialist approves.
such a system must view labor, which has a negative impact on sacred profit, as below worthless.
the sale of one's labor with the expectation of any wage whatsoever in return, must seem an especially harmful form of gouging.
ps: our car, IOZ?
You choose (or have chosen to ignore or forget) to leave out the part about people choosing to live in hurricane prone areas. So when the shit hits the fan, we can all trot out our holy moral codes regarding profit vs. altruism.
Why must the area be "hurricane prone"? Why can't it be coastal Jersey or Rhode Island, hit only once every few decades?
In the meantime, let's stipulate the case--the area is hurricane prone. So? How does that obviate local responsibility for preparedness and the questionable ethics of carpetbagger profiteering on disaster?
I think you're confusing the scenario with a different argument, about national policies that force people in non-disaster-rife Pennsylvania to indirectly subsidize unnaturally low insurance rates for people in flood planes and coastal zones.
Of course, anyone who isn't pretty dumb would recognize that that is exactly the sort of policy objected to in the top-post. So, there's that.
"This is plainly not the case, as in the post-industrial economy real wages have declined, personal indebtedness has spiked, and low unemployment has been maintained by shifting a formerly middle-class workforce into low-wage "service industry" jobs."
This is unbelievably false. Real wages have declined in post-industrial economies? Are you telling me your real level of wealth would have been greater prior to the 19th century? Are you talking about cost of living adjustments? I'm exceptionally confused.
And since when is the role of the middle-man a 'price gouger?' If you want to walk to Atlanta to buy a bottle of Coke, be my guest.
in essence, reinventing the company store for the age of electronic commerce
Well put.
As for our economic genius... Well, let's just say he hasn't passed Econ 1010 yet. For instance:
To the country, profit is a benefit. Record profit means record taxes paid.
No, idiot -- profit is what's left AFTER taxes. The amount of profit has no direct bearing on the amount of taxes paid. Just ask any of those Fortune 500 companies who pay little or no tax every year.
The same thing applies to the other miracles he attributes to profits: they do NOT mean more investment, hiring, etc. These are COSTS of doing business. Every dollar spent on investment, labor, taxes, whatever is a dollar that is NOT profit.
Since I am at work, I do not have time to take apart this nonsense entirely. Suffice it to say he is pulling this shit out of his ass.
Econ 101, not Econ 1010. Duh.
I think I need more caffeine.
Jim, "post-industrial" refers to the period after America's industrial base began hollowing out - meaning factories going to low wage countries. The comparison is not to pre-industrial economy, but to the period immediately preceding the migration. The fault line is generally set in the 1970s, so not comparing 17th century wages to today, but comparing real wages in the decades prior to 1970 and after. Note the qualifier "real" wages, i.e. wages pegged to inflation. And yes, working wages have been declining during that time.
IOZ, you're an entertaining fella but don't know a damn thing about economics. If civic organizations were providing the needed supply in a crunch, the "profiteer" wouldn't find buyers at his markup. It would be just swell if I could get the goodies I want by praying for them, but unfortunately such an omnipresent omnipotent omniscient omnibenevolent god doesn't exist, so instead I buy them from people who provide them for a profit using what I earn from people who profit from employing me. An "extortionist" threatens that disaster will occur, but (as far as we know) nobody can cause hurricanes. Carter's example doesn't involve a professional who plans on staying in the business, so I don't know where the hell you got your "future service" bit from. He's selling shit RIGHT NOW, and charging what he can get for it, just like the grocery store I buy my Cheatos from (oh no, the extortion!). The often-demonized "middlemen" serve a vital economic function of connecting consumers to the supply, and will pretty much always emerge, even in a POW camp with an economy based on Red Cross rations. It would be great if you could "cut out the middlemen" by providing the same function (and the internet helps do that), but until then that function will be in demand and profit accordingly.
The catechism of state capital, reiterated above by Stevie Carter, holds that when businesses do well, they hire and expand. This is plainly not the case, as in the post-industrial economy real wages have declined, personal indebtedness has spiked, and low unemployment has been maintained by shifting a formerly middle-class workforce into low-wage "service industry" jobs.
Can you say non-sequitur? "Hire and expand" means taking on more employees, so at a macro-scale we'd expect to see low unemployment, and that's just what we see when the economy is doing well and profits are up. When profits go down (as typically happens during recessions) unemployment goes up. Nowhere did your catechism say anything about real wages or indebtedness. Also, the highest paid jobs around are "service sector". Manufacturing and agriculture are some of the least pleasant jobs.
Record profits at financial service industry firms, or energy conglomerates, or technology companies do not spark national trends of hiring and upward mobility.
Yeah, it results in hiring at said firms. If other firms are losing money, they probably won't hire people. And what's so special about the "national" unit? I thought you were an anarchist, so what's that artificial boundary got to do with anything? The total hiring in the nation will be the sum of it in all the firms (loosely defined) in the nation, just as with the total hiring in a town, state, bioregion or hemisphere.
Justin,
Thanks for clarification regarding the time period, but I still don't think it's true. I dont think that real wages should be confused with inflation adjusted wages- this merely equalizes a dollar amount without taking into account that many goods have become cheaper in real terms. I think that an inflation adjusted 1970s wage would have more actual purchasing power today than it did in the 1970s. I don't think we should confused real variables with nominal variables with a different unit of measurement.
An "extortionist" threatens that disaster will occur, but (as far as we know) nobody can cause hurricanes.
If we equivocate on the word disaster, this is only nonsense, as opposed to complete nonsense. Extortion is the demand of payment in lieu of (threatened) harm. Not having electricity is considerable harm. The extortionist is probably not the proximate cause of the harm in this example, and will thus escape legal liability, but (a) the structural elements of extortion are all presented in the same manner, which was IOZ's only point, (b) omission can be causation, (c) it sure as hell is coercive, and (d) causation is a slippery, slippery beast (see, e.g. the fact that you have no duty to rescue a drowning swimmer...unless you enter the water...).
Supplying life necessities at an astronomical cost is a "vital economic necessity" only if you view the capitalist economy as the coercive shift of wealth from the many to the few, as I do. But I doubt that's what you intended.
Jim: I do think real wages ought to be compared to inflation adjusted wages, because....they're the same thing.
ie. If you have a nominal raise of 5%, and inflation is 4%, you have a "real" wage increase of 1%.
And yes, some things are cheaper, but sadly, other things are more expensive. Both of these things are included in inflation calculations.
G,
I understand the shorthand real/nominal wage relationship. But I don't think that's my point. Yes, the definition of 'real' is 'inflation-adjusted' but I don't think this is the same thing as *real* wealth.
Example: A Chevy Caprice cost $4,819 in 1975. In 2008 inflation adjusted dollars (as close to present as I could get) this is $15404.29. This is about a standard rate for a car today, but what you are actually receiving for your dollars is much less. I bet the 1975 car doesn't have the gas mileage, safety features, stereo, acceleration, climate control etc. of the modern car.
Inflation adjustment is only half of the value of 'real' wealth. Think of all the opportunities to buy something that simply did not exist in 1975. Internet? How much has that improved your life?
I think, on a list of things that have gotten more expensive and things that have gotten less expensive, you would be hard pressed to find that real wealth has decreased.
Jim,
This is a "there are television in the ghetto today, therefore they are not really poor" discussion - I only say that because all the considerations and ways of looking at the economic comparisons of past to present have been tread and retread sufficiently elsewhere.
Cutting back to the original comment...
""This is plainly not the case, as in the post-industrial economy real wages have declined, personal indebtedness has spiked, and low unemployment has been maintained by shifting a formerly middle-class workforce into low-wage "service industry" jobs."
This is unbelievably false. Real wages have declined in post-industrial economies? "
You are calling out IOZ's characterization of the decline of real wages, which have a specific meaning, and the rise of debt "false." On both account's, IOZ statement is not "unbelievably false." Real wages, which have a specific definition of wages compared to inflation, have stagnated or declined for several decades. At the same time, consumer debt has piled up to finance a standard of living (what you call real wealth.)
The extortionist is probably not the proximate cause of the harm in this example
Just "proximate"? He wasn't the cause of any harm at all. The harm pre-existed the extortionist, who only went into business because the harm existed. And if there was no such thing as hunger, farmers wouldn't bother growing food. If not provided electricity is a harm, then ALL of us who aren't in the energy business are guilty of harm. God have mercy on our souls! There are other people who were in the extortionist's position and could have bought generators to drive across to another state and sell them, but not everybody is interested in doing that. Have they caused less harm by choosing not to extort? No, if anything they would have lowered prices for consumers (and profits for the otherwise lone extortionist) if they had done likewise.
Supplying life necessities at an astronomical cost is a "vital economic necessity"
It is the supply of the necessities that is vital, and if it could be gotten otherwise that would be just dandy. But in these disasters, the supplies don't exist until the extortionist brings them there. And the reason they bothered to do that was profits.
I should add that in my earlier comment, I ignored the issue of firms borrowing money. In that case they can hire and expand in the absence of profits, but the reason lenders are willing to give them money is the expected future profits used to pay their debts. Profits are the cost of raising capital.
"The catechism of state capital, reiterated above by Stevie Carter, holds that when businesses do well, they hire and expand. This is plainly not the case, as in the post-industrial economy real wages have declined, personal indebtedness has spiked, and low unemployment has been maintained by shifting a formerly middle-class workforce into low-wage "service industry" jobs."
this just doesn't compute with my experience at all. we're always looking for more work and more better people. though if I had my druthers I would eliminate entirely the EPA, US ARMY CORPS, Chapter 105, DEP, and so on. each of these and their respective bureacracies contribute to a vast waste of my time.
TGGP, your winding discourse ably demonstrates why causation is not so easy to pin down.
Man needs something, or faces death. Something is abundant, but no one will supply it. What causes his death? The lack of something in the first place, or the refusal to supply it?
not so easy, is it?
And I must say, "hey, thats how the market works!" is not much of a rebuttal to the claim that the market sometimes functions in an undesirable, coercive, and morally deplorable manner.
Yes, it's easy. It's the lack of something that causes death. A refusal to supply without a lack is irrelevant. Furthermore, that "something" was not abundant. In the hypothetical there was a shortage until the extortionist brought generators over. If the extortionist did not exist is the situation at all improved? Not one fucking iota.
I can see that the hurricane was deplorable (even though, "hey that's how hurricanes work"). But that pre-existed the market. The market alleviated a problem it didn't cause. How is that deplorable? Do you think, as I joked, that ALL of us who have not supplied generators have behaved in a deplorable manner? Because I can't understand how not supplying a generator at all is better than supplying one at a high price.
I was making my own hypothetical, which cannot be answered with "QED". As a rule, if you think causality can be readily determined, in any situation, you've not thought about it enough.
The only way anyone can justify selling necessities to desperate people at astronomical prices is by evaluating the market in a complete moral vacuum, which is both an analytical model unique to laisse faire economics and the rotten core of the enterprise.
We can answer hypotheticals with QED and readily determine causality (assuming you accept the concept) all the time. I have one apple, then find another. How many do I have? 1+1=2, QED. The second apple was on the ground before I grabbed it. What caused it to leave the ground? Me picking it up, I intervened to change its state. If you want formalized version you can read Judea Pearl.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "a complete moral vacuum" here. I'm comparing two different possibilities, one with an action and one without it and deciding which is worse (while that step is subjective, you seem to agree that it is worse for people to die for lack of something). It's possible that you do not think merely improving a bad situation is good enough. Assuming goodness is transitive, then those who do even less must be at least as guilty if not moreso. I don't know your position on that, which is why I keep asking if all of us who do not supply generators are guilty. You still have not answered. I do not think there are any objective moral truths, they don't pay rent, so if you answer my question in the affirmative its possible that you have a logically consistent set of beliefs that I can't disprove. I just don't think you will answer it that way.
We are talking past each other on causation. I proposed a separate hypothetical, which is not amendable to QED, or any sort of causality resolution. Just try.
You are plainly not deciding which is worse, quite to the contrary. You are using this example to justify the market as a desirable state of affairs. Just war is better than unjust war, but that doesn't make it desirable. It doesn't even pull it from the list of worst possible things ever to happen to human beings. At the end of teh day all you can prove is that poverty and coercion is better than death, which is like, great, but completely impotent to demonstrate how this situation is not like extortion, much less is desirable.
I have not answered your question because it obfuscates the issue. Read your last post ("deciding which is worse") in conjuction with the first ("vital economic function") - you've shifted the goal posts.
I've been focusing on Carter's hypothetical, since that's what we started out discussing.
I don't think being ravaged by a hurricane is a desirable state of affairs. I find it quite undesirable. If the extortionist was causing hurricanes (like a protection racket causes broken windows and fires), then we can compare a situation with hurricanes and without to decide which is worse. Because he doesn't, we are instead comparing a situation after a hurricane with or without the extortionist. A hurricane plus an extortionist can still be a quite bad state of affairs (compared to one without a hurricane, I assume), but if a hurricane without the extortionist is sufficiently worse then we can say the middleman has provided a vital economic necessity.
Let's change the hurricane to Fat Tony. If Fat Tony just burns down your place without asking for money (for the hell of it, or he just doesn't like you) that's bad. If he agrees not do so in exchange for money, that's a better state of affairs. It's still worse than the situation without Fat Tony. Since he introduced both the threat and means of avoiding it, we can conceptually bundle the two together into one act of extortion which we will consider a net negative. In contrast, it makes no sense to bundle together the middleman with the hurricane because the middleman did not cause the hurricane any more than you or I did.
Example: A Chevy Caprice cost $4,819 in 1975. In 2008 inflation adjusted dollars (as close to present as I could get) this is $15404.29. This is about a standard rate for a car today, but what you are actually receiving for your dollars is much less. I bet the 1975 car doesn't have the gas mileage, safety features, stereo, acceleration, climate control etc. of the modern car.
Well, that's just great. Those families that are being foreclosed out of their homes can take solace in the fact that the car they will soon be living in will have a much nicer stereo system.
Did someone at University of Chicago actually get tenure for thinking this shit up?
Those families that are being foreclosed out of their homes can take solace in the fact that the car they will soon be living in will have a much nicer stereo system.
when arguing with someone, trying to compare apples with apples is a helpful guideline; this is just bringing a raw steak to the fruit platter, duders.
i mean, fuck cars and all - driving is lame - but at least try to address the original point. or try to be funny. or both. or neither.
TGGP's argument is all too common, and wrong. The CPI is allegedly crafted to take into account changes in productivity based upon a standard basket of goods that, like the stocks comprising the Dow Jones Average changes over time. When wages, adjusted by the CPI are lower today than, say 1975, rest assurred wage earners have lost ground (this is called 'taking it in the shorts') despite the incredible "wealth" of their 48" flat screens. This loss is relative, but in social relations, that's what counts.
Nearly all economists agree that labor wages have stagnated in real terms since the 1970's. The claim on future output (that's REAL wealth to you TGGP) obtainable by wages has fallen since the 80's. The conservative claim that adopting conscious policies distributing income upward will "raise all boats" is indeed as hollow as it is cynically incorrect. One could go on about how market theory postulates that rewards should accrue to inputs with higher productivity, but that has not happened in the case of increasing labor productivity.
Example: A Chevy Caprice cost $4,819 in 1975. In 2008 inflation adjusted dollars (as close to present as I could get) this is $15404.29. This is about a standard rate for a car today, but what you are actually receiving for your dollars is much less. I bet the 1975 car doesn't have the gas mileage, safety features, stereo, acceleration, climate control etc. of the modern car.
Great. Now stack that up against the fact that you could buy a decent little house in 1975 for $17,000 (ave. wages $9,000/yr.)
I couldn't tell if anyone really picked up one of the more interesting points here. Earnings may be up, but across the board, revenues (top-line earnings - i.e. what you make on sales) are down about 20% or so. How do you have earnings look good, whilst actual revenue is tanking? Companies cull people. I use cull because that is what it is. Employees are just cattle (chattle?). So once you've culled back to the minimum and cut all other costs, what do you do then? These are all one-off sort of cost cuttings. If revenue picks up, then everything will be ok. Hiring however is NOT expected to pick-up over the next several years. Why? Because productivity is going up, so why hire more people if the company could get more earnings and senior manager's big bonuses with a smaller number of people? And I haven't even gone into what happens if revenue continues to tank. Sort of a wash/rise/repeat cycle.
And Anonymous 1:46 - you're spot on. Buying a house on 2.5 times salary is infinately more affordable than a house that is well over 3.5 times salary.
I'm sick of being profiled, you fuck!
True that the middleman did not cause the hurricane disruption.
But if politicians supported by the middleman block the restoration of electric grid (think of the damage to ecology!) while the middleman comes and offers his 300% marked-up ware that is not kosher. Call it extortion, theft, fraud, abuse, whatever. That is bad.
And so with the gub'mint. It does not MAKE you sick on purpose (well, exceptions do exist), but through regulation and licensing blocks cheaper (and most likely not as good) health services from coming into being. Meanwhile Fat Tony smilingly offers you - the best money can get, no question - his overpriced ware.
The Christians
It's already been addressed, but I see no real defense in being an exploiter of a tragedy rather than causing the tragedy. How many crimes are committed out of at least a little opportunism? Are they the better, for that?
I know that the upper middle class are convinced we live in Jetsonia, but for all the iPods in the world, our houses are made worse and worse, more and more quickly, with less regard for any utility. And my car, yes, has a CD player. And all its power windows are broken because I don't want to waste money fixing them and--my, what progress!--you can't buy a car with manual windows anymore. And let's not talk about emissions and the like; the cars I see on a daily basis are followed by a plume of blue smoke.
I don't think I'm being a primitivist. I know what parts of the modern world allow me and my sort to live, but I have to tell you: aside from personal computers, which are neat, and toilets, which are essential, a lot of this stuff doesn't empower anybody, or even improve their lives. It's a bunch of disposable toys. The future has been a lot less futuristic than originally predicted.
Please, someone tell me that we don't have to increase Grandma's Social Security check this year because today's computers have more gigahertz than last year's models.
Because I never get tired of hearing that one.
Anonymous, I believe you have me confused with Jim. I didn't make any argument about how labor wages have changed over the long run.
Anonymous aka The Christians is getting closer to the Kevin Carson narrative (which I thought it a bit odd for IOZ to cite, since Carson's major point about the problems of the Coasean firm do not apply to this class of extortionist). If the extortionist has broken our legs before arriving with crutches for sale (to use a Carsonian turn of phrase), that's another story. Carter's hypothetical didn't delve into the root problem of why there was not adequate backup, but its based on actual incidents and so we can ask whether the real extortionists kept the power system vulnerable. I have some reasons to doubt that. Being from out of state, they are less likely to have involvement with the politics of the affected area. They don't know in advance which cities will be hit by hurricanes, which makes it harder to concentrate support. The same logic can also make it reasonable for cities not to have reserve generators. If if is the federal government that is at fault, then the point about them being from out of state is less relevant.
If we were to drop the individualist lens we might say that as a class they support these politicians and benefit as a class, even if the individual supporter gets little return on the effort he himself invests. Indeed, there is little evidence that voters behave as if they were individually self-interested. Rather, they vote "sociotropically" for what they think is good for whom they think good ought to be done for.
I know less about broader forms of political support, though if we accepted Bryan Caplan's theory of "rational irrationality" we would expect more self-interested behavior when it comes to more costly forms of support than voting.
For what it's worth, John Lott thinks that campaign spending has little effect on outcomes but is correlated with underlying support (which is why self-financed billionaires generally fail) and has no detectable effect on the votes of Congresscritters, concluding that it's sociotropic like voting. It is my guess that most readers are not that interested in the differences between the two parties relative to why we have two shitty major parties that always win. A lack of funds could prevent outsider candidates who would behave differently from having a shot.
Regarding health, I've recently taken an interest in the theories of Robin Hanson, who seeks to explain why health care has no benefits on the margin but keeps consuming a larger share of our resources. His take is that people don't actually seek out high quality low cost medical care. A single-payer system which rations the amount of care by dictate will not reduce health outcomes, because the additional care wasn't helping anyway. Kevin Carson actually does work for a non-profit hospital in Alabama and likely has more to say on that specific topic.
Cuneyt: causing a crime (of the non-victimless variety) when you have the opportunity thanks to a tragedy would be an additional tragedy, right? I am disputing that the extortionist is causing an additional tragedy, rather than not ameliorating it as much as possible. If a person has a duty to ameliorate a tragedy to some extent, then you could indict the extortionist on that charge. However, I don't see how every non-extortionist who didn't supply generators isn't even more guilty. It seems to me that by taking advantage of the situation the connection between a particular extortionist and the tragedy is made salient to people, and so if the extortionist had not involved themselves at all nobody would be upset with them. But this is an even worse outcome.
@ Jim -- wow, you are good at distraction. In case you didn't know, Jimbo... Coca-Cola is bottled all around the USA. I live in a tiny town in western Montana and we have a Coke bottler here. OOPS. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Jimbo.
@ TGGP -- Oh no, the Holy Hosannahs of Economics! Gimme a break. "Economics" is nothing but socialism from a money-spending perspective. Unfortunately for you and the other worshipers of the Naked Emperor known as "economics," IOZ's little example is accurate. Time for you to take a powder, bucko.
errata -- @ TGGP -- I meant to say "Economics" is nothing but sociology from a money-spending perspective.
Guess I have socialism on the brain.
There is famously "Robinson Crusoe economics". Is there "Robinson Crusoe sociology"?
Actually, one common internal criticism of economics is that they often DON'T talk about money and pretend it doesn't exist. "Economic imperialism" is the economic way of thinking invading into areas other than cattalactics. I'm going by Nisbett filtered through E. O. Wilson, but in its origins sociology takes a very different attitude toward reductionism (from whom all blessings flow) and science than economics.
His take is that people don't actually seek out high quality low cost medical care. A single-payer system which rations the amount of care by dictate will not reduce health outcomes, because the additional care wasn't helping anyway.
No one seeks out high quality/low cost healthcare because no one advertises high quality/low cost health care. There are free clinics, but people typically try to avoid the hassles involved with visiting one and most people have extremely low opinions of such places. As such, they are also not advertising that they are "high quality": merely that they are free. Nor do you see many specialists offering free services. Free PCP level care I've seen. I've never seen a free cardiology or neurology office, no offense.
There are other problems also: "lower cost medical care" is likely still very prohibatively priced for most without insurance. There's the issue of conditioning as well - do people really want to go to a budget doc instead of a more well known one? This is their lives you're talking about.
do people really want to go to a budget doc instead of a more well known one?
That's just it. And remember that it's PUBLIC signals of quality (or really, high status) not PRIVATE ones. If it was just about health, both would be just as good. But the same logic doesn't work if its about "showing that you care".
does ne1 want to hold hands
well things are fuck up everywhere.
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