Health Insurance versus Health Care

So you deny that communism and socialism are both authoritarianism?

My father was authoritative but try telling him he was a commy and you might not live to express that comment again.

Again, I am not saying that every authoritarian is a commie. But all commies are authoritarians, and socialists are mild authoritarians.

So what are you actually saying?

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to
protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial.
Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel
invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The
greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
- Justice Louis Brandeis

Is greater liberty always better? Well clearly not or we would let murderers go free. Well murders violated someone liberty, ended it completely. Similarly, a health insurance providers sometimes refuse treatment, health-care costs are often prohibitively high. Shall we let them go free or is some further regulation and government involvement necessary?

Nor do we let thieves go free.
And in the end there is little difference from the thief that robs you at gunpoint and the thief that promises you something, receives payment for it, and then refuses to provide it. And there is little difference between saying that "You didn't read the fine print" and saying "I had my fingers crossed behind my back the whole time".

Personally, I am for curtailing the freedom of murderers, thieves and liars. I would not fight nor argue for their liberty and I think that those who do are "without understanding".

Depends how you define "better".



So you see, jailing murderers is for the purpose of liberty.



It's not socialism to require companies to stick to their contracts. That's the very base of the free market. The more insight I get into the minds of people who are against the free market, the more I realize that they rarely bothered to find out how the free market actually works. I have yet to come across a opponent of the free market who properly understood it.

People who advocate free markets, like me, don't want unregulated markets. You know, like no regulation, anything goes, pirates and anarchy. We want a framework of laws and property rights and the state to protect those property rights, that's regulation in a sense. What we do not want is intervention, i.e. the government stepping in with it's coercive power to change the market to some outcome. Sadly that is often called 'regulation', equating everything that government does into one, whether it is safeguarding property rights or intrusive intervention. In the western world government are far to intrusive, therefore liberals often call for less intervention, small government, but we are not against regulation, for unregulated markets. There's regulation and there's intervention. The collectivists won the war of words in calling all government action 'regulation'. Thus when a financial mess like this one happens because of lack of 'regulation' (meaning government didn't do it's job of providing a free market framework), they can call for more 'regulation' (more government intervention).



Companies can only get away with making contracts with virtually unintelligible fine print, because they are so regulated. In a free market customers would flock to companies that provide clear and simple contracts. If hotels were as regulated as health care, the government would have to require them to have beds, but in the (relative) absence of regulation the free market takes care of that.



Then you are for the free market, just that you are not aware that that's what it is. Whether you are for income distribution as well is another matter, but government enforcing contracts is the most basic notion of capitalism. Ironically that's what big government fails to do.

Yes, it is good to get down to this, the reality of the matter. You have recognized that the problem is, at least in part, deregulation. We are really getting somewhere. I think we are beginning that discussion which is nearly impossible to have in the U.S. today. The fear of the corptocracy cannot be used an excuse to institute socialism. Nor can the fear of socialism used as an excuse for the corptocracy. Yet that is exactly the choice we are given. Socialism and corptocracy, Big government and Big Business. Rejecting the one should not mean advocating the other. Those on the so called "left" are not advocating Socialism when they rage against the corptocracy and those on the so called "right" are not advocating corptocracy when they rage against socialism.

Big Business and Big Government. The common problem is the Big. So I say kill the Bigs! No mercy for the Bigs! Death to all Bigs! And never side with one group of Bigs in hopes of defeating another group of Bigs because they are all the same and you are a fool and an idiot if you think otherwise. They are all just Bigs. Death to all Bigs! Every last one. But we must maintain the balance. For every government Big we slaughter we must slaughter also a business Big and for every business Big we slaughter we must slaughter also a government Big. We must maintain the balance or else the Bigs will win because the Bigs are all the same and pretending that they are not all the same is exactly their game.

Oh but when I say "kill" and "slaughter" I'm speaking metaphorically of course.

How would that look as a practical policy? What actions would we take?