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I said MOST free market. I never claimed it operated under ideal conditions. The fact is still though that most other health care systems in the west are consid

I said MOST free market. I never claimed it operated under ideal conditions. The fact is still though that most other health care systems in the west are considerably LESS market oriented than the US. A more free market oriented approach than today would just make the US system even worse. Health care is not a natural market. There is too much information asymetry, and wrong incentives at play. As for standards, you seem to have a rather naive idea of how government makes standards. Usually it will heavily involve industry. It is not like government just dreams up arbitrary shit. As for example of lack of standards. I remember when living in the US having to deal with 4 different incompatible cell phone standards. I remeber arguing with an American on how it was better to standarize on GSM. He made your point that the market would eventually produce a much better standard than GSM. Except by the time the US market got anywhere we were already moving over to 3G. Sorting stuff out in the market is often simply way too time consuming when technology moves at the current pace. Anything with banking and finance in the US seems to sorely lacking standards. But I am sure things must have improved since I lived there 15 years ago. Then there was no standard for electronic bills, sending payment to other bank accounts electronically, simple stuff like the formatting/layout of a paper bill.

sfRattan 8y ago
> As for standards, you seem to have a rather naive idea of how government makes standards. Usually it will heavily involve industry. It is not like government just dreams up arbitrary shit. I'm not sure how you draw 'naive idea of how government makes standards' from my post. I specifically point out that the government mostly does not make standards... Non-governmental industry/professional organizations agree on standards and then the government (maybe, and sometimes usefully) adopts them. Often, the (admittedly bureaucratic) teams of professionals establishing standards by committee within these non-governmental organizations are merely formalizing and documenting work already done by individuals and companies. My point is that the state is not a creative (driving) force. It follows after the people who know what they are doing... if it is working well and if it needs to participate in a standardization process at all (usually as it relates to commerce). Maybe that is all naive, but your quoted sentence above is not engaging with what I wrote. GSM/CDMA were competing standards, and their coexistence was largely an artifact of Sprint & Verizon-forerunners switching to digital systems at a time when CDMA was a newer and (debatably) better technology. Let me point out that the standardization process was corporate-led, government-following as I have described: 3GPP (created GSM) was an old AT&T/Nortel partnership which European public/private-ish telecoms eventually joined, and which governments later legislated into force as you describe. I'll agree that American banks have (and still do) drag their feet about adopting new digital standards, though what you describe (moving money between accounts) hasn't been a problem in my adult lifetime. I'm not sure why government needs to actively legislate the layout or formatting of a paper bill/invoice. In a common law system, a bill is just some (among other) evidence of a transaction/contract in the event of a dispute. Fraudulent bills are already against the law, and what constitutes fraud (including deceptive/hostile formatting) is extensively defined by common and case law (precedent). Bills over a certain amount (I think $500 or $600) require standardized accompanying IRS forms (further evidence of the contract/transaction). The standards are there, but maybe not recognizable to someone coming from a civil/Napoleonic law system, which is most of the not-formerly-British world, and where such things would need to be legislated in extensive detail.

sfRattan 8y ago

> As for standards, you seem to have a rather naive idea of how government makes standards. Usually it will heavily involve industry. It is not like government just dreams up arbitrary shit. I'm not sure how you draw 'naive idea of how government makes standards' from my post. I specifically point out that the government mostly does not make standards... Non-governmental industry/professional organizations agree on standards and then the government (maybe, and sometimes usefully) adopts them. Often, the (admittedly bureaucratic) teams of professionals establishing standards by committee within these non-governmental organizations are merely formalizing and documenting work already done by individuals and companies. My point is that the state is not a creative (driving) force. It follows after the people who know what they are doing... if it is working well and if it needs to participate in a standardization process at all (usually as it relates to commerce). Maybe that is all naive, but your quoted sentence above is not engaging with what I wrote. GSM/CDMA were competing standards, and their coexistence was largely an artifact of Sprint & Verizon-forerunners switching to digital systems at a time when CDMA was a newer and (debatably) better technology. Let me point out that the standardization process was corporate-led, government-following as I have described: 3GPP (created GSM) was an old AT&T/Nortel partnership which European public/private-ish telecoms eventually joined, and which governments later legislated into force as you describe. I'll agree that American banks have (and still do) drag their feet about adopting new digital standards, though what you describe (moving money between accounts) hasn't been a problem in my adult lifetime. I'm not sure why government needs to actively legislate the layout or formatting of a paper bill/invoice. In a common law system, a bill is just some (among other) evidence of a transaction/contract in the event of a dispute. Fraudulent bills are already against the law, and what constitutes fraud (including deceptive/hostile formatting) is extensively defined by common and case law (precedent). Bills over a certain amount (I think $500 or $600) require standardized accompanying IRS forms (further evidence of the contract/transaction). The standards are there, but maybe not recognizable to someone coming from a civil/Napoleonic law system, which is most of the not-formerly-British world, and where such things would need to be legislated in extensive detail.