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Another step: Affordable housing for everyone. How many people can't risk not having a place to live if they loose their income? Another step: Affordable food
by LesZedCB 11y ago
Another step: Affordable housing for everyone. How many people can't risk not having a place to live if they loose their income?
Another step: Affordable food for everyone. How many people can't risk not having food to nourish their bodies?
People won't start ventures if people aren't safe from coerced payment to producers of these commodities in order to survive.
How long will we as a society keep playing whack-a-mole trying to stop the symptoms while the disease is looking us right in the face? The problem with healthcare isn't necessarily that it's expensive, it's that it's a privately owned industry, and therefore free to gouge out prices. Internationally, health care is nowhere near as expensive as it is in the US.
The same thing happens with housing. Gentrification is a real problem that prices people out of their own homes. There are more unoccupied houses than there are homeless people. Housing/development corporations are also privately owned and price people out of living affordably.
- padobson 11y agoHousing, education and healthcare are strange markets. The argument against nationalization is huge, monopolistic bureaucracies eliminate efficiencies that markets naturally create. But what happens when the market creates an environment where a huge, monopolistic bureaucracy makes the purchasing decisions regarding homes and education (commercial lenders) and healthcare (insurance companies)? What's the practical difference between your insurance company/mortgage lender forcing life-changing decisions on you, and the government doing the same? Only a small percentage of people can afford to pay 100% cash for housing, higher education, and healthcare. In a natural market, industries like this shouldn't be able to exist. So what's wrong with these markets? Why does the median house cost ~$200k[0], but the median net worth is below $150k[1]? How can a market survive if most people can't afford what its selling, but they're buying it anyway? You could also argue that over-regulation is part of the reason these costs are driven so high (nobody should have to pay $50 for an aspirin), but it's equally clear that market forces also gave overwhelming influence to these monopolistic bureaucracies. It seems to me that the answer is either to nationalize the middle-man bureaucracies, giving everyone equal access to the services they pay for, or make the middle-man bureaucracies illegal - forcing the actual providers (hospitals, colleges, home builders/sellers) to subject their prices to real market forces. I'd be fine with either, but none of the middling solutions so far have been effective. [0]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/median-home-price-2014_n_4957604.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/median-home-price-2... [1]https://www.creditdonkey.com/average-american-savings-statistics.html https://www.creditdonkey.com/average-american-savings-statis...
- LesZedCB 11y agoI prefer collectivization instead of nationalization. I agree that huge monopolies aren't going to be great. I would support a federated organization of local hospitals and care facilities. Private ownership or management of hospitals by people who aren't members of the community they serve doesn't really make sense to me. Same thing for housing. Why should some corporation that doesn't even live in the area or have a vested interest in making sure it is in harmony with the local community have control over the living situations of the people who are affected by it?
- mjevans 11y agoI prefer the idea of a nationalized provider of last resort. If the market is so efficient, why does it fear competition from a government entity?