In response to a problem (high prices) caused by government intervention (the regulations and the subsidies), the left (including the British “Economist” magazine, which I have a particular hatred for as it is a “false flag” entity as it claims to be free market) demand yet more government intervention – yet more regulations and subsdies.

It must be made clear that the end game of the Obama Administration is not “Britain”.

Certainly not – as the United States already had government hospitals (the county hosptials are just like N.H.S. ones) and regulations on such things as health insurance are already far WORSE in most States of the United States than they are in Britain.

The long term, but deliberate and planned, aim of the Obama Administration and its allies is the total extermination of all independent health cover in the United States. This is part of their desire to eliminate all aspects of independent nonpolitical Civil Society.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is bad enough, but President Barack Obama is something much, much worse.

Like many other people I have tried as best I can to warn people about what Barack Obama is – but far too many people still do not fully understand.

The fact is that a combination medical robotics and individually controlled medical information systems derived from military medical systems that are now coming into widespread use will make it easy for people to take control of their own healthcare. This will breakdown not only the whole US insurance system but will eventually destroy the NHS as well.

I would also add that if you use the terms “rationing” and “allocation” interchangably you lose the “fear value” of the former. People understand that “rationing” (as generally defined) leads to long lines, shortages, cheating by the politically powerful, and general ineffeciency and unfairness. We need to exploit that (entirely rational) fear in the fight against the expansion of socialized medicine. Making statements such as “the price system is a rationing system as well” are not at all helpful; in fact, they are actively harmful to the cause.

Rationing is typically used during times of war or when some other “scarcity” is seen to exist. But the whole philosophy of economics of any kind exists because scarcity is omnipresent – it is why economics exists in the first place. So pricing (as one economic form) exists as a means to allocate certainly, but so would taking a load of seed corn and dividing per capita be an allocation as well. Basically rationing IS allocation, and vice versa, whether in times of relative plenty or more severe scarcity. Another way to look at it is why do we ever allow for Civil allocations that we typically call rationing in its narrow sense? It only leads to the desire for those who con people during greater scarcity to use such functions all the time.

If nothing else, I would say that using the words rationing and allocation interchangebly heightens the fact that, regardless of semantics, resources are either free flowing or they commandeered and handed out by those with the guns. And when production lags (in the long term), those with the guns use them to spur on flagging production.

It stands that command economies coerce and free economies do not. Command economies tend to attract self interested thugs who take what they please while free markets are filled with self interested people who must meet consumer demands.

Command economies live and die by the choices of a few, free markets is the culmination of every last person’s behavior and the value systems native to them. Debates rage as to what will produce a better outcome. And both might be right at different times, over certain ranges of time. But one uses force and the other doesn’t.

I believe in the long run forced transfer breaks the continuum of behaviors turned into production turned into other behaviors turned into consumption and round and round it goes. Forced transfer, in the long run, leads to economic misallocations and a population of people disconnected from real equity as their behaviors (and the values behind them) don’t materialize into anything that is theirs. In the long run, State intervention, regardless of the founding tenets that created the State, turns into a function that benefits the few and the connected and the rest are middle to low level slaves/serfs.

I’d rather have a lifestyle that equates to the 1850′s and be free and be the possessor of my life and my labor, than live in a utilitarian society filled with meaningless advancements. I make no concrete assertions about what a free market economy will bring about. I personally believe that under a free market some things would be more advanced and others less so. But people would be free – completely free. Without pure economic freedom, one is just a degree a slave, mentally and physically. And, again, when the long run misallocations come home to roost, the proportion of slavery grows.

In the US we have seen taxation of the average middle class person expand. At the same time the accrual basis debt has skyrocketed so that my wife and I are saddled with roughly a $500,000 portion of this accrual basis debt while currently paying 45% of our income in taxes (with more forced payments via regulation that likely is another 2-3%). So we are half slaves as is, with a huge estimate of how much more our taxes would have to go up to meet the unfunded entitlements as defined so far. And the slavery grows as more is extracted and choices are swept away with whatever scraps are left to us.

Redundant as it is, I would rather have less than I have now (in name only) because I “owe” so much more than my current net worth is. What has been left to me by the Masters is confiscatable at any time. I own nothing. I am allowed to lease my house and my clothes and my car. I have no real equity. My future labor is already liened upon for well over 50%. And now the talk is equalizing even more than we have so far. I would rather have less than I do in theory if I know that it is MINE. I would rather have a system of freedom and self possession that is inferior to a system that has an artificial abundance for a brief period and nothing of consequence to show for it that is mine. Essentially, I would rather have 90% of the short term optimal that a command economy MIGHT produce with a chunk that is outright mine than to have the 100% optimal for a short period and nothing beyond that.

Not exactly true, Brad. Both are allocation systems, to be sure, but the term “rationing” is typically used to refer to the distribution of resources by political means. Aside from its inherent unfairness (political actors will always find ways to “game the system”), rationing loses the feedback loop provided by a market system. As prices rise, a market system automatically encourages thrift and the search for alternatives while simultaneously stimulating an increase in supply; falling prices squeeze out excess capacity. None of that happens with rationing; all you ever get is shortages (and generally lower quality). That’s true whether the commodity is butter or health care.

I am old enough to remember the first commerical GUI computer. It was Apple’s LISA, and it cost IIRC, about $10,000. What would have happened if the government told us that information (like good health) belongs to everyone, and so Apple should be subsidized to make the LISA “free” as the point of sale?

Well, I think we would still have LISA, and it would still cost $10,000, or more. But it would still be (as we now know) a very clunky slow computer, not nearly good enough to get the internet running. It was the market that produced the modern laptop — faster, smaller, and cheaper in a true sense.

The same is true of health care. Make it free? It’ll never be cheap, and we will never see a cure for cancer.

The “right” to anything, with the exception of air and water, originates not by simply existing or stumbling upon a need or a want – it is part and parcel of the process of living and behaving. If everyone is entitled regardless of prior choices and behaviors, then you will have nothing but consumers and no producers. When this begins to become reality, it is part of the motivation behind the slavery command economies eventually resort to over and over and over again.

Most libertarian-esque sorts rightly call social programs ponzi schemes. Thus far the consumers of such programs have lagged behind the producers. That is going to change very soon, and likely invert so that there are more entitlee/consumers than there are producers. And instead of admiting to the slight of hand and undoing the system, it is endeavoring to be begin the final process to “hardline-ism”.

What peeves me is how there is decades of sound philosophical/economic arguments such socialization and yet the left MSM and the White House dismiss it as “rowdyism” and “misinformation”.

I am afraid if these people proceed to ram this through it is going to set off a firestorm in the US. The way things are situated right now I don’t see the outcome, whatever it is, is going to be a boon for liberty. The day will be won by hardliners of the left or right when the fire dies down.

Somebody, somewhere, formulates that calculus. I doubt it’s a single person – it’s a committee, I’m sure.

Now, what should we call them? They decide (effectively) how long patients will live. IOW, they decide when patients will die.

“Death Panel” is not the least-descriptive name I could come up with. It describes what they are (a panel) and what they deal in (death, and the time of its coming).

You could see where Governor Palin might pick that as a good working title for the concept she is trying to describe.

llater,

llamas

If I’ve remembered that right, you can see why Sarah Palin gets nervous. But as you say, Jonathan, such rationing is unavoidable.

Sorry, haven’t got time to google for links