Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to "This argument isn't going to be settled here."

re: Foundations
TB — (archived)

How can I possibly deal with basics here? Ayn Rand took entire books to lay out the principles and underlying premises of her philosophy. I have to do it in a page or two.

And that's not the hard part.

My wife hangs her necklaces in a cabinet from wooden pegs. If you don't take them off the peg right, a dozen chains get tied into a rigid knot that would make Alexander drop his sword and sit down hard on the ground. It can take an hour to carefully tease the chains apart.

Your thinking on these kinds of things, while pretty much down the center line of our modern political culture, is the same kind of challenge.

Just the concept of "freedom to loot the taxpayer" is enough to make me throw my hands up in the air.

Pay close attention: Collectivism doesn't work.

I am concerned about nationalized health care not because I think it is evil, but because I think it will wreck both the economy and the advanced state of our health care in the West. I've showed the numbers. I'm tired of showing the numbers.

People imagine that once they turn it all over to the State that they're going to have the same professional doctors, the same chrome-covered equipment, the same march of medical progress. But by the magic of liberal faery dust, nobody will have to PAY for it. At least nobody we really like.

If I were to strip every CEO in the top 500 companies in the U.S. of every bit of their compensation, including stocks, salaries, you-name-it, and it cost the U.S. no more per person for medical care than it does Canada, that money would pay for a single-payer U.S. health system for about two days. When you talk to someone who thinks we can do this with "taxes on the rich," or "more cigarette and liquor taxes," you are talking to a fool.

I am tracking drugs that have a chance of making my wife whole again. "Big Pharm" is spending hundreds of millions developing these things. Put rigid price controls on their products, and see what happens. Good God, put price controls on ANYTHING and see what happens. I'm talking history and experience here, not philosophy.

I do not want "Yugo" health care, even if it's free for everyone. God help us, there are probably plenty of people who would not mind poverty, ineffectiveness, and grayness if all their most basic needs were met without thought or effort. I hope most Americans don't fall into that category just yet.

But who cares about the numbers, or the facts? Heck, all it takes is "political will" to perform miracles, right?

I'm beginning to believe that Magical Thinking is a major underpinning in the liberal makeup. It would explain why all the hackles go up when I start talking facts.

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