Freedom

So many liberals talk about freedom. They claim that conservatives, neocons especially, want to take away freedoms. They call them fascists, totalitarians (the latter of which is not true, by the way), whatever. But liberals want to take away freedom, too. They just want to take away a different freedom; that is, economic freedom.

Conservatives want stricter social, moral standards, but support free market capitalism, or at least a less regulated market. Liberals, on the other hand, are socially progressive, but, because they know nothing about economics, believe the only way to achieve economic fairness is through lots of regulation over the market. The radicals are socialists and communists, which means no economic freedom whatsoever.

Were these liberals to take an economics course, read some Adam Smith, whatever, they would learn that the free market does quite a nice job of achieving economic fairness (loosely defined) without hindering freedoms. Take health care, for example. Most liberals support socialized medicine. I agree that health care is an urgent issue, and that it is our moral obligation to ensure that the 44 million people, roughly 1/6 of the population, living without coverage get it. However, this can be achieved without socialized medicine, a hinderance on the free market. Let's say the government gives all 44 million uninsured Americans some money, and this money is only to be used to purchase coverage. The instant that a government official comes out and says that 44 million people are about to enter the market for insurance at the same time, the insurance companies will go nuts. They'll do anything they can to get as many of those customers as possible, because it means more money for them. And once they've got those customers, competition will keep coverage for low-income families affordable, because no company wants to lose their customers to another company.

So, you can see that all it takes is a little indirect action on the part of the government, not really interfering with the market, to get healthcare insurance for the millions of uninsured Americans. This works much like how the Federal Reserve affects interest rates. A change in the FFTR/FFR by the Fed is a very unnoticeable thing, really. It is just a change in the rate that banks loan to one another on overnight loans, changed indirectly by the buying or selling of securities at the New York Fed. The Fed doesn't actually change the rates, they just affect the money supply through the buying and selling of securities in the free market, resulting in banks raising or lowering their rates. This is just like what could be done with the healthcare crisis; a small, indirect action by the federal government results in a huge change without reducing economic freedom. Now that's efficient.

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the reason i said that is because there is no simple solution to it. Going "less everything" is a simple way of doing it, but if we look at other places int he world as well as historical situations where such a policy had been led, it did no good.
I don't have wonderful ideas, but for an industrialized nation like the united nations to try and compete with countries like china on the labour market etc. is just retarded. Instead the US should focus some of the resources it got, and take advantage of that, improve their level of comparative competitiveness. This can be done by a) reducing regulation/taxation, which would lead to lower prices, thus more export (but less money in the government coffers). or b) improving quality, production methods, and handling of resources, be these human or material.
Now, this is where i personally thing that there are some things a state is good at handling, better than just "lol companies" of course it should be run with as little beaurocracy as possible, which is very doable with todays electronic systems etc. and therefor i think that deregulating everything and reducing taxes is a bad idea, as this would leave no money for the state to do what it should. And if we're not going to reduce taxes, at least not drastically, then what we need to focus on is option b) of improving of competitiveness.


I havn't said what i believed the state is the best at running, of course, everything is not the option, a state-run institution very easily ends up in a huge beaurocratic mess. But i think such things as education, elementary, high school, and college should be free, the police force and fire-fighters, the army, and a certain degree of social health care (possibly a negative tax system combined with aid for people who are very ill but can't afford treatment) and this should be available for all as well. Things such as which medicine to use for health care, what weapons to use for the police force, where to buy trucks for firefighters and whatever could be done by having the lowest bidder get the offer. Having systems that avoid curroption on the 'floor'-level is also important, this could be things like not paying doctors a percentage of the price of the medicine they prescribe, similar situations could arise, but i can't think up examples atm. Make sure that there is no economic incentive to not do ones best