Skeptic Project

It doesn't make sense to put the government solely in charge of healthcare. That's like asking your employee if you can go to the doctor.

I'm having trouble explaining why it doesn't sound right. Maybe I'm just wrong or maybe its an irrational cultural principle I can't explain.

By being in charge of healthcare, are we talking about insurance, doctors, or both?

Perhaps government should just be in charge of regulating privately run insurance and doctors.

I meant insurance, sorry.

I am also not opposed to a "Medicare for all" type plan as long as the private insurance is still available for those who choose to use it.

"That's what I originally championed. I liked the idea of there being a government default option and the private option for those who wanted a better plan."

I like that idea. It ensures that private insurance still has competition and it ensures that those in the lower income brackets are not going without healthcare.

Falkner told me that Norway the Indiana of Europe. Plus, they love David Hasselhoff and Springsteen's Human Touch.

Something is wrong there.

It's mainly just a joke. Indiana, Hasselhoff's music, and Human Touch suck.

But Norway has Black metal!

What about this band?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6EFg5eWWlM

>> Self Responsibility is the answer in the long run

Yes, that's worked so well in the past. Self responsibility is all well and good when you don't make minimum wage, or when you're a child to poor parents. Ultra free markets are really great if you've got money, but really shitty if you're poor, which is why there aren't many (smart) poor people that are libertarians, and why almost all libertarians are white and privileged, and come from at least the middle class.

Ever been in dire poverty, Alton? If so, ever get sick? Maybe people who are in such situations should just be "innovative" or "get a better job."

Maybe you want to return to America prior to the labor movement, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone who wasn't rich.

If I'm jumping the gun on judging your beliefs here, please clarify, but I don't know anyone from reality that actually thinks total selfishness works better than at least some regulation.

I'm not arguing for total government control either.

How did you make the leap from regulation to centralized control over everything?

That post was ridiculous, sir.

When a central group regulates, they have control over what they are regulating. The more they regulate, the more they control. I said the less people need authority to step in to try to monopolize everything not that they control everything. I'm speaking in a hyperbole of what could happen. @Matt

On the currency thing again, though. If we agree from the common Anarcho-capitalist/Libertarian/Objectivist perspective that fiat currency is bad, how is one to get metals to back their new currency without having wealth already? The claim just seems like a catch all excuse for explaining why poor people can just pull themselves up by their boot straps and everyone can be well off.

True, but were they ever able to remotely come close to helping as many people as government programs?

I don't know since the population now is bigger than the population long ago. Plus, who's to say charities would of need to help a large number of people if people were allowed to be more responsible with a wide range of other services?

Often family and friends are also poor, this causes a lot of people to get loans at hugely high interest rates, making it almost impossible for them to get out of debt.

And even such families have those who know how to save for a rainy day for situations where someone or themselves may need this money later on. As for financial services, if people were allowed to be more responsible in providing them, don't you think the interest rates and availability of them would be more competitive for those who are poor or low income? In addition, add in responsible competitiveness with education and services, and this also has the potential for more jobs for these same people.

Yeah, we can all open banks

Yep, people can choose to start timebanks, LETS, etc., it doesn't have to be Wells Fargo, Chase, or a kind using U.S. dollars.

Why is it all or nothing?

Speaking in hyperbole, but the more they do it can lead to probably everything.

Do you have any knowledge what so ever what society was like before government intervention?

Speaking on the U.S. specifically, there was no income tax companies had to collect, companies with the biggest market share, lots of jobs, and with a product with a low price weren't split up, companies weren't using the government to keep bigger competitors out the market, the literacy rate was higher, and the truly desperate were helped mostly by private charities and churches who took an interest in seeing that anyone in trouble got out of it as quickly as possible.

I see where you're coming from, I've studied Anarcho-capitalism a lot, but I just don't get it. I don't see how it wouldn't go back to that.

I'm not coming from the Anarcho-capitalism route but more from the Social contract theory and Social Meta-need theory route even though the latter can contain anarchism and capitalism, but does not look at things like a free for all/having no order.

Again, I agree, but when it comes to government people have some say in it. They can vote on issues, they have at least some control. You have zero control what so ever over the say of a private company. I know, you can say "you don't have to shop there" but often that's not always that simple. I've heard people like Stefan Molyneux talk about how local monopolies of business simply wouldn't happen, but there's simply no real example of that happening in reality. Saying something wouldn't happen "just because" makes little sense. Furthermore, the ideas behind ultra freemarkets require everyone to be in tune with the philosophical ideas behind it, such as not using coercion, and often I see this goes along with the blank slate idea.

The problem with this route is a majority will impose their way on others via government in one way or another. With social contracting revolving around Social Meta-needs, you and others already agree on the fundamental guidelines for permitted and unpermitted actions in a society without imposing it on a minority, and you can have your own preferences for individual/business persons you want to interact with. Remember, businesses today is mostly institutionalized through government as corporatism when it suppose to really be individuals networking and interacting with each other. All "companies" don't have to be the same if they are allowed to responsibly operate on their own. You can have self employed companies, worker owned companies, P2P companies, and even a hierarchy similar to today's corporate structure ( I think most people would not choose this if there wasn't corporatism) today that are operating within the fundamental requirements for a society contractually. Even efficient monopolies that can emerge from a market sphere is a good thing since these group of individuals obtain success trough virtue of consumer choice rather than a majority imposing their will on others through law enforcement. Since people don't all have the same abilities and inheritance, it is expected where those that have the ability to produce more than others may have more wealth than others, but I don't see the wealth gaps being that extreme like today if people people become more responsible in a wide range of things, and if they don't do things institutionalized.