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As a non-American, what I find mostly surprising are these two things: 1) that a society that mostly believes that a system of private businesses competing in

As a non-American, what I find mostly surprising are these two things: 1) that a society that mostly believes that a system of private businesses competing in a free market is the be all and end all of optimal resource allocation end up having the most expensive health care, higher education and apparently, prison system in the world; that this fact does not trigger more thought and discussion; 2) that despite incarcerating people being more expensive than sending them to Harvard, you still favor punishment over prevention and rehabilitation, having the highest incarceration ratio in the world.

throwaway13337 8y ago
1. None of the things you listed are anywhere near a free market in the US. You've created a compelling argument against government intervention, actually. 2. I agree with the second point. The US government officially does, too. Prison should be about rehabilitation and not retribution. It's just that the government doesn't act like it agrees.
- fxj 8y ago
  If this is a compelling argument against gouvernment intervention, then why does it work so much better in europe where all three sectors are state-owned? The best example is switzerland, where the costs are a fraction of the costs in the U.S ( and which is not a "socialist" country at all).
  - pfisch 8y ago
    Switzerland doesn't lead the world in pharmaceutical development. Our health system has been captured by special interests specifically because we have let it grow so big. Whenever I bring up this point I see downvotes. What I would love instead is a counter example of a country whose largest economic sectors do not capture the government and then have a huge hand in dictating policy in those sectors. Our government intervention in the education market with student loans is just an awful system that encourages prices to continue to rise.
    - CaptainZapp 8y ago
      Switzerland doesn't lead the world in pharmaceutical development. Uhh, Roche? (which also owns Genentech) Novartis?
    - benj111 8y ago
      I think you're getting downvotes because the 2 aren't mutually exclusive. You can lead the world in pharma and have it captured by special interests. Infact I would say its almost inevitable. Now that's not to say that your point about it being bad isn't legitimate.
  - fxj 8y ago
    Top pharmaceutical companies with revenue greater than $10 billion Rank Company 2016 USD billions 1 Johnson & Johnson NYSE: JNJ 71.89 2 Roche SIX: ROG 50.11 3 Pfizer NYSE: PFE 52.82 4 Novartis NYSE: NVS 48.52 Number 2 and Number 4 are swiss companies.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      How is this relevant? 2 and 4 can still have most of their revenues from where 1 and 3 have them (e.g. not by blood-sucking the Swiss society).
      - dagw 8y ago
        The US accounts for roughly 50% of Roche pharmaceutical revenue, so pretty much.
    - benj111 8y ago
      They don't sell just in Switzerland though, they sell worldwide, most of their money is probably made in the US.
    - dagw 8y ago
      A lot of J&J's revenue comes from non-pharmaceutical businesses. If you rank by pharmaceutical R&D spending instead Roche comes out ahead of J&J. If you rank by revenue from pharmaceutical sales Pfizer is nr 1 with Novartis and Roche 2 & 3
    - refurb 8y ago
      That’s just the legacy of acquisitions. A lot of Roche’s revenue (40%) comes from Genentech, an American company they acquired 10 years ago.
  - anilakar 8y ago
    When someone complains that a free market does not work because it's not truly free, I always remind them that communism failed because it wasn't true communism. /s
    - vkhorikov 8y ago
      Except that you can point to cases where free market does work.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        So, just like you could point to cases where socialism did work? (E.g. changing the equality laws for men and women, rapidly industrializing an agrarian Russia, leading China to top global economy from a century plus slump, letting Cuba have a top notch and cost effective hospital system, and so on)
        oarsinsync 8y ago
        As a sibling comment has pointed out, infrastructure is a good example. UK train networks are a superb example of something that did work great until privatised. The NHS is a good example too, but it requires one to look under the hood and see how many functions have been outsourced to private companies over the last ~20 years.
        vkhorikov 8y ago
        Every single one of what you listed is either FUD or not an accomplishment of socialism. Specifically: - Cuba's hospitals are not top notch, to say the least. - Russia did the rapid industrializing but it already was on this way before the revolution and would be much better off should the socialist revolution never occurred. - The equality laws for men and women are not due to socialism. - China enjoyed the economic rise because they freed the marked not because they tied it, it's the opposite of socialism.
        coldtea 8y ago
  - tomp 8y ago
    AFAIK healthcare (insurance companies and many hospitals) are private in Switzerland.
  - solidsnack9000 8y ago
    Healthcare isn’t state owned, or even single payer in Switzerland. Everyone pays for their own insurance. The rate they pay is fixed by the state but all the assets — the insurance companies, the hospitals, the insurance policies — are in private hands. In Germany none of that stuff is state owned, either. This is one of the strangest things about the healthcare debate in the United States: we frequently contrast our system with “public” systems that are actually well regulated private systems.
    - fxj 8y ago
      It is called gesetzliche Krankenversicherung in Germany https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetzliche_Krankenversicherung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetzliche_Krankenversicherun... and is 100% state-controlled.
      - lentil_soup 8y ago
        it is not 100% state-controlled. A lot of the fees and cost are indeed state-controlled as in set by the state, but the actual insurance companies, clinics, etc are private.
        fxj 8y ago
        It is a little bit more complicated: The budget of the "gesetzliche Krankenkasse" is set by the gouvernment. So yes, it is not owned by the state, but in reality it is completely controlled by the state. There are, however, private insurance companies in germany which are free to do what they want. Everybody under a certain salary limit has to be insured by the "gesetzliche" and only if they earn more than a certain amount they can leave it and have a private insurance or none at all. There are many discussions whether this system should be changed to a state onwed only system, because it would be more efficient. http://www.spiegel.de/thema/gesundheitsreform_deutschland/ http://www.spiegel.de/thema/gesundheitsreform_deutschland/
      - solidsnack9000 8y ago
        Thank you for the reference. The insurance companies — die Krankenkassen — are indeed state controlled and there are careful and very specific regulations regarding their funding and expenditures. Everyone is obliged to be in one and they are all expected to provide certain basic services. That’s not the same thing as being state owned. Everyone has to be in one but there isn’t only one. Some are connected to regions and some to major industrial consortiums, like Audi. It’s a small distinction, perhaps — but falsity proves anything. If it’s not state owned, it’s not, and we might as well not obscure debate about the US healthcare system with untruth.
- silvestrov 8y ago
  So why isn't it a free market in the USA when free markets is clearly seen as the way things should be? Why doesn't lack of free market trigger a demand for reform of the sectors but only hand-waving excuses/acceptance? When credit card companies in Europe started to price gouge with high fees the EU responded by putting a cap on fees. Why does the US government not respond by putting a cap on prices for hospital treatments? In Denmark when the doctor sends you to the drug store with a prescription for e.g. pain medication, the drug store is required by law to tell you about cheaper alternatives (with the same active ingredient) even if they do not stock the cheap alternative. We simply do not accept being locked into a corner by medical companies. https://min.medicin.dk/Generelt/Nyheder/50 https://min.medicin.dk/Generelt/Nyheder/50
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    Might as well ask why there isn’t peace on earth given that’s clearly seen as the way things should be. Not always easy to achieve.
    - shandor 8y ago
      But he gave concrete examples other countries have done to achieve the very things he mentioned. Why would you dismiss those obviously working solutions by hand-waving about world peace?
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
        Different countries, different politics and constraints, different challenges.
        ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
        Operating a prison seems pretty similar. Costs are food, housing and security. It's not like our prison costs more because our cultural values require us to treat the prisoners substantially better than countries Canada.
  - 8y ago
- coldtea 8y ago
  >1. None of the things you listed are anywhere near a free market in the US. A, the "no true Scotsman". The main thing (except insistence on dogma) free market adherents have with leftists (and their similar: "Stalinism/Maoism/Pol-Potism/Tsaucescuism/Titoism/DDR-ism/etc wasn't real socialism" defense).
fxj 8y ago
I think the problem is that all three sectors that you cite, health care, higher education and prison system, there is no free market but they are oligopols where only a small number of big players can lever their weight and keep others out.
- CraigJPerry 8y ago
  Is that not just a "no true Scotsman" argument? "there is no free market but they are oligopols" There used to be 12 private prison companies in 2000 but it appears there are only 3 now. The start of the journey was privatization of prisons. This is where that path has currently led. It is what it is, ergo free market didn't work?
  - SeanDav 8y ago
    Even in free markets, Oligarchies and Monopolies are a thing. No system is perfect - potential lack of competition in niche areas is one of the weaknesses of a free market system.
    - benj111 8y ago
      Agreed. But we choose a free market or whatever because we believe it will produce the best outcome. If it doesn't work as envisioned then we can either tweak it until it does work, or throw it out and start again, the worst option is to leave it alone, especially as we know it works elsewhere. There seems to be a view that free market v socialism is a binary choice. Its a continuum, and both pure socialism and pure free market are equally bad. No country follows either path 100%.
  - wallace_f 8y ago
    The problem is private prisons openly lobby, and secretly collude, with the government to increase their profits. This is also why insulin is expensive (the discoverers and patent holders made their patents freely available long ago). It's regulations which keep insulin, and other drugs, protected from competition and therefore can be expensive... Really, there are endless stories about this. The gov vs private debate is kind of academic when the reality is a lot of the problem comes down to collusion and cheating from both of them.
golergka 8y ago
> optimal resource allocation This is a strange assumption. As a free market proponent and almost a libertarian, I don't base my argument on "optimal resource allocation", neither care that much for it; I assume that most economically right-wing people don't pursue this as a main goal either, and rather see it as a nice side effect.
- jordanbeiber 8y ago
  Just a bit of defense to this assumtion: When it comes to privatizing stuff that really should be handled by a welfare state the “optimal resource allocation” argument comes up frequently though. And it completely misses the point of supporting a welfare state. It’s of course not about being optimal with resources, it’s about providing the best standard of life to as many individuals as possible. Do this and the number of incarcerated will most likely drop. It’s all a big game of balance, the way I see things.
  - golergka 8y ago
    > it’s about providing the best standard of life to as many individuals as possible Which is also a nice thing to have but definitely not the main objective for people on "my" political side. Main argument for privatising stuff is not being optimal or not: it's the principle of making the government, which is the only entity with monopoly on violence, as weak and as small as possible. Think about it as a microkernel (I must admit that I don't know enough about kernel development, so this analogy is very crude). Even if moving different services from the kernel to user-space would hurt perfomance, it's still a good security practice: this lost efficiency is worth, even if the advantages are "abstract" and not clear from the get-go.
    - benj111 8y ago
      Would you support some kind of quasi governmental organisation to administer prisons? Independent but answerable to the government, (like the Fed). That would seem to address small govt concerns whilst avoiding the problems of the free market.
freyir 8y ago
I think I see what you’re saying. We should send all criminals to Harvard. We’ll save money, and they’ll become productive members of society.
- jordanbeiber 8y ago
  In a way, yes, but society should be formed to proactively deal with this. After the fact, it’s a bit late.
  - freyir 8y ago
    I see. So instead of the SATs, we could administer a psychological test to detect antisocial tendencies. We’ll send the worst of the bunch straight to the Ivey Leagues. That will teach them.
    - jordanbeiber 8y ago
      Well there seems to be a lot of anti-social tendencies in the US judging from the number of incarcerated individuals. Perhaps there are mechanics in place that goes a bit deeper? Are humans born stictly social or anti-social, and will anything accentuate these effects in the life of an individual? Research is quite clear on this matter I believe, but of course there will always be exceptions.
    - verytrivial 8y ago
      The comparison is of course only an illustration that suggests the question: It is the right allocation of resources to support incarceration and all that it entails, or should that resource be re-balanced to suffocate the causes of crime? Hint: It is nearly always poverty. That an Ivy league school is utterly out of reach for the average inmate throws in the stark contrast the fact that the State somehow manages to find the same amount of money per head for incarceration. The question is which cycle to you, as a society, want to feed? That is the one that will grow. Reference to the "Nordic" experience shows what a long-term shift in focus looks like.
- coldtea 8y ago
bko 8y ago
Re 1: In regards to health care, US public spending on health care is similar to that of other western countries, although it does spend more on private. Make of that what you will but saying that the US doesn't spend on public healthcare is just incorrect. > While the U.S. has similar public spending, its private sector spending is triple that of comparable countries [0] Same is true about public eduction > In 2014, the United States spent $12,300 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 29 percent higher than the OECD average of $9,600. At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $29,700 per FTE student, which was 81 percent higher than the OECD average of $16,400. [1] Private prisons house a small portion of California inmates: > The California State Prison System is administered by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Division of Adult Institutions, which had 136,000 inmates as of 2014. The state of California also relies on private and leased prisons. The number of California prisoners in private out of state facilities is around 8,763 and 4,170 are housed in leased facilities within the state. [2] [0] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart/u-s-similar-public-spending-private-sector-spending-triple-comparable-countries/#item-start https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart/u-s-similar-public... [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_California
- icedchocolate 8y ago
  Re: Healthcare, that’s not true. The US spends more on health care per capita than many systems with free healthcare (Australia, UK, Canada). You pay the most and receive the least. Like the previous commenter, I am increasingly surprised that this system is still supported, instead of one that costs less and provides more (e.g. the fact that states bargain with drug companies individually, rather than federally, means you pay much more for drugs).
  - bko 8y ago
    > I am increasingly surprised that this system is still supported, instead of one that costs less and provides more So you're for decreasing the amount of public spending on health care in the US?
Udik 8y ago
> end up having the most expensive health care, higher education and apparently, prison system in the world; that this fact does not trigger more thought and discussion; I'm thinking that a defining quality of Americans is their propension to spending. Saving money is just not something they seem to think about- it's not what you save that is important, but the total amount of money circulating in the economy. There are little incentives to make things less expensive, there are more incentives to consume as much as possible, both for privates and for businesses. It's wasteful, but contributes to make the economy stronger (even if the resulting society is more unequal and harder for those who earn less).
muse900 8y ago
Good point. You have to think the scale though. US is not the same as e.g Sweden and can't be the same. The amount of benefits you get in Scandi countries or Europe in general against the US are massive. At the same time you have to think that the US is a country of 330m people compared to an average EU country of 10-20m people. In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. The appointment queues go up to years for a simple thing in London. (I had a meniscus tear and they appointed me to see an orthopaedic in a year after I was diagnosed. Just to see him. While its understandable that emergency issues are getting bumped up the ladder, mine which was a non-emergency felt like a bummer when I heard the orthopaedic wont see me for a whole year just to see at which stage I am at. That includes doing some scans to see my stage which the GP won't know unless he is some kind of magician. Yes again he can check if the leg is hammered around the knee to bump up how of an emergency it is.) Generally speaking I think the main issue is that the US is such a large country that can't work the same as EU countries. That goes for everything, from benefits, to working schedules to prison systems etc.
- oarsinsync 8y ago
  > In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. The appointment queues go up to years for a simple thing in London. Agreed. In addition to that, private health insurance is extremely cheap in London compared to the USA, and you can see a GP or specialist the same day if you have this. That doesn't mean it's not extremely unfair to those that can't afford private health insurance, as treatment should be needs based, not finance based, but it's also difficult to campaign against when you're a beneficiary of a broken system.
- mrsuprawsm 8y ago
  >In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. This is largely a consequence of chronic underfunding, a deliberate political choice by the Conservative party.
  - leetcrew 8y ago
mrosett 8y ago
I agree with the other comment - all of those have extensive government interference. The tax deductibility of employer health plans is at the root of a lot of problems with the cost of healthcare in the US. It's also worth noting that despite the tremendous waste, at the very high end the US has no equal in healthcare or universities. That might not matter to the average customer though.
- hhmc 8y ago
  At least for universities this isn't correct. Oxford and Cambridge are just as high calibre as the top US institutions.
closeparen 8y ago
Healthcare, higher education, and corrections have the strongest public policy involvement and are also the most dysfunctional; that is not incompatible with the ideology at all. You could say it’s a self fulfilling prophecy or a deliberate conspiracy to undermine trust in public institutions (this is more or less openly acknowledged in “starve the beast”) but it’s not a contradiction.
ams6110 8y ago
> health care, higher education and apparently, prison system These things are generally not considered to be operating in a free market. All are highly regulated and receive massive government funding or subsidies.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
You're missing the point. Prison, in the U.S., is a place to keep people that a certain segment of society doesn't like and would prefer to keep oppressed.
iamgopal 8y ago
Prevention should also apply to health care system but that we overlook in the name of freedom of choice.

throwaway13337 8y ago

1. None of the things you listed are anywhere near a free market in the US. You've created a compelling argument against government intervention, actually. 2. I agree with the second point. The US government officially does, too. Prison should be about rehabilitation and not retribution. It's just that the government doesn't act like it agrees.

fxj 8y ago
If this is a compelling argument against gouvernment intervention, then why does it work so much better in europe where all three sectors are state-owned? The best example is switzerland, where the costs are a fraction of the costs in the U.S ( and which is not a "socialist" country at all).
- pfisch 8y ago
  Switzerland doesn't lead the world in pharmaceutical development. Our health system has been captured by special interests specifically because we have let it grow so big. Whenever I bring up this point I see downvotes. What I would love instead is a counter example of a country whose largest economic sectors do not capture the government and then have a huge hand in dictating policy in those sectors. Our government intervention in the education market with student loans is just an awful system that encourages prices to continue to rise.
  - CaptainZapp 8y ago
    Switzerland doesn't lead the world in pharmaceutical development. Uhh, Roche? (which also owns Genentech) Novartis?
  - benj111 8y ago
    I think you're getting downvotes because the 2 aren't mutually exclusive. You can lead the world in pharma and have it captured by special interests. Infact I would say its almost inevitable. Now that's not to say that your point about it being bad isn't legitimate.
- fxj 8y ago
  Top pharmaceutical companies with revenue greater than $10 billion Rank Company 2016 USD billions 1 Johnson & Johnson NYSE: JNJ 71.89 2 Roche SIX: ROG 50.11 3 Pfizer NYSE: PFE 52.82 4 Novartis NYSE: NVS 48.52 Number 2 and Number 4 are swiss companies.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    How is this relevant? 2 and 4 can still have most of their revenues from where 1 and 3 have them (e.g. not by blood-sucking the Swiss society).
    - dagw 8y ago
      The US accounts for roughly 50% of Roche pharmaceutical revenue, so pretty much.
  - benj111 8y ago
    They don't sell just in Switzerland though, they sell worldwide, most of their money is probably made in the US.
  - dagw 8y ago
    A lot of J&J's revenue comes from non-pharmaceutical businesses. If you rank by pharmaceutical R&D spending instead Roche comes out ahead of J&J. If you rank by revenue from pharmaceutical sales Pfizer is nr 1 with Novartis and Roche 2 & 3
  - refurb 8y ago
    That’s just the legacy of acquisitions. A lot of Roche’s revenue (40%) comes from Genentech, an American company they acquired 10 years ago.
- anilakar 8y ago
  When someone complains that a free market does not work because it's not truly free, I always remind them that communism failed because it wasn't true communism. /s
  - vkhorikov 8y ago
    Except that you can point to cases where free market does work.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      So, just like you could point to cases where socialism did work? (E.g. changing the equality laws for men and women, rapidly industrializing an agrarian Russia, leading China to top global economy from a century plus slump, letting Cuba have a top notch and cost effective hospital system, and so on)
      - oarsinsync 8y ago
        As a sibling comment has pointed out, infrastructure is a good example. UK train networks are a superb example of something that did work great until privatised. The NHS is a good example too, but it requires one to look under the hood and see how many functions have been outsourced to private companies over the last ~20 years.
      - vkhorikov 8y ago
        Every single one of what you listed is either FUD or not an accomplishment of socialism. Specifically: - Cuba's hospitals are not top notch, to say the least. - Russia did the rapid industrializing but it already was on this way before the revolution and would be much better off should the socialist revolution never occurred. - The equality laws for men and women are not due to socialism. - China enjoyed the economic rise because they freed the marked not because they tied it, it's the opposite of socialism.
        coldtea 8y ago
- tomp 8y ago
  AFAIK healthcare (insurance companies and many hospitals) are private in Switzerland.
- solidsnack9000 8y ago
  Healthcare isn’t state owned, or even single payer in Switzerland. Everyone pays for their own insurance. The rate they pay is fixed by the state but all the assets — the insurance companies, the hospitals, the insurance policies — are in private hands. In Germany none of that stuff is state owned, either. This is one of the strangest things about the healthcare debate in the United States: we frequently contrast our system with “public” systems that are actually well regulated private systems.
  - fxj 8y ago
    It is called gesetzliche Krankenversicherung in Germany https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetzliche_Krankenversicherung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetzliche_Krankenversicherun... and is 100% state-controlled.
    - lentil_soup 8y ago
      it is not 100% state-controlled. A lot of the fees and cost are indeed state-controlled as in set by the state, but the actual insurance companies, clinics, etc are private.
      - fxj 8y ago
        It is a little bit more complicated: The budget of the "gesetzliche Krankenkasse" is set by the gouvernment. So yes, it is not owned by the state, but in reality it is completely controlled by the state. There are, however, private insurance companies in germany which are free to do what they want. Everybody under a certain salary limit has to be insured by the "gesetzliche" and only if they earn more than a certain amount they can leave it and have a private insurance or none at all. There are many discussions whether this system should be changed to a state onwed only system, because it would be more efficient. http://www.spiegel.de/thema/gesundheitsreform_deutschland/ http://www.spiegel.de/thema/gesundheitsreform_deutschland/
    - solidsnack9000 8y ago
      Thank you for the reference. The insurance companies — die Krankenkassen — are indeed state controlled and there are careful and very specific regulations regarding their funding and expenditures. Everyone is obliged to be in one and they are all expected to provide certain basic services. That’s not the same thing as being state owned. Everyone has to be in one but there isn’t only one. Some are connected to regions and some to major industrial consortiums, like Audi. It’s a small distinction, perhaps — but falsity proves anything. If it’s not state owned, it’s not, and we might as well not obscure debate about the US healthcare system with untruth.
silvestrov 8y ago
So why isn't it a free market in the USA when free markets is clearly seen as the way things should be? Why doesn't lack of free market trigger a demand for reform of the sectors but only hand-waving excuses/acceptance? When credit card companies in Europe started to price gouge with high fees the EU responded by putting a cap on fees. Why does the US government not respond by putting a cap on prices for hospital treatments? In Denmark when the doctor sends you to the drug store with a prescription for e.g. pain medication, the drug store is required by law to tell you about cheaper alternatives (with the same active ingredient) even if they do not stock the cheap alternative. We simply do not accept being locked into a corner by medical companies. https://min.medicin.dk/Generelt/Nyheder/50 https://min.medicin.dk/Generelt/Nyheder/50
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Might as well ask why there isn’t peace on earth given that’s clearly seen as the way things should be. Not always easy to achieve.
  - shandor 8y ago
    But he gave concrete examples other countries have done to achieve the very things he mentioned. Why would you dismiss those obviously working solutions by hand-waving about world peace?
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      Different countries, different politics and constraints, different challenges.
      - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
        Operating a prison seems pretty similar. Costs are food, housing and security. It's not like our prison costs more because our cultural values require us to treat the prisoners substantially better than countries Canada.
- 8y ago
coldtea 8y ago
>1. None of the things you listed are anywhere near a free market in the US. A, the "no true Scotsman". The main thing (except insistence on dogma) free market adherents have with leftists (and their similar: "Stalinism/Maoism/Pol-Potism/Tsaucescuism/Titoism/DDR-ism/etc wasn't real socialism" defense).

fxj 8y ago

I think the problem is that all three sectors that you cite, health care, higher education and prison system, there is no free market but they are oligopols where only a small number of big players can lever their weight and keep others out.

CraigJPerry 8y ago
Is that not just a "no true Scotsman" argument? "there is no free market but they are oligopols" There used to be 12 private prison companies in 2000 but it appears there are only 3 now. The start of the journey was privatization of prisons. This is where that path has currently led. It is what it is, ergo free market didn't work?
- SeanDav 8y ago
  Even in free markets, Oligarchies and Monopolies are a thing. No system is perfect - potential lack of competition in niche areas is one of the weaknesses of a free market system.
  - benj111 8y ago
    Agreed. But we choose a free market or whatever because we believe it will produce the best outcome. If it doesn't work as envisioned then we can either tweak it until it does work, or throw it out and start again, the worst option is to leave it alone, especially as we know it works elsewhere. There seems to be a view that free market v socialism is a binary choice. Its a continuum, and both pure socialism and pure free market are equally bad. No country follows either path 100%.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  The problem is private prisons openly lobby, and secretly collude, with the government to increase their profits. This is also why insulin is expensive (the discoverers and patent holders made their patents freely available long ago). It's regulations which keep insulin, and other drugs, protected from competition and therefore can be expensive... Really, there are endless stories about this. The gov vs private debate is kind of academic when the reality is a lot of the problem comes down to collusion and cheating from both of them.

golergka 8y ago

> optimal resource allocation This is a strange assumption. As a free market proponent and almost a libertarian, I don't base my argument on "optimal resource allocation", neither care that much for it; I assume that most economically right-wing people don't pursue this as a main goal either, and rather see it as a nice side effect.

jordanbeiber 8y ago
Just a bit of defense to this assumtion: When it comes to privatizing stuff that really should be handled by a welfare state the “optimal resource allocation” argument comes up frequently though. And it completely misses the point of supporting a welfare state. It’s of course not about being optimal with resources, it’s about providing the best standard of life to as many individuals as possible. Do this and the number of incarcerated will most likely drop. It’s all a big game of balance, the way I see things.
- golergka 8y ago
  > it’s about providing the best standard of life to as many individuals as possible Which is also a nice thing to have but definitely not the main objective for people on "my" political side. Main argument for privatising stuff is not being optimal or not: it's the principle of making the government, which is the only entity with monopoly on violence, as weak and as small as possible. Think about it as a microkernel (I must admit that I don't know enough about kernel development, so this analogy is very crude). Even if moving different services from the kernel to user-space would hurt perfomance, it's still a good security practice: this lost efficiency is worth, even if the advantages are "abstract" and not clear from the get-go.
  - benj111 8y ago
    Would you support some kind of quasi governmental organisation to administer prisons? Independent but answerable to the government, (like the Fed). That would seem to address small govt concerns whilst avoiding the problems of the free market.

freyir 8y ago

I think I see what you’re saying. We should send all criminals to Harvard. We’ll save money, and they’ll become productive members of society.

jordanbeiber 8y ago
In a way, yes, but society should be formed to proactively deal with this. After the fact, it’s a bit late.
- freyir 8y ago
  I see. So instead of the SATs, we could administer a psychological test to detect antisocial tendencies. We’ll send the worst of the bunch straight to the Ivey Leagues. That will teach them.
  - jordanbeiber 8y ago
    Well there seems to be a lot of anti-social tendencies in the US judging from the number of incarcerated individuals. Perhaps there are mechanics in place that goes a bit deeper? Are humans born stictly social or anti-social, and will anything accentuate these effects in the life of an individual? Research is quite clear on this matter I believe, but of course there will always be exceptions.
  - verytrivial 8y ago
    The comparison is of course only an illustration that suggests the question: It is the right allocation of resources to support incarceration and all that it entails, or should that resource be re-balanced to suffocate the causes of crime? Hint: It is nearly always poverty. That an Ivy league school is utterly out of reach for the average inmate throws in the stark contrast the fact that the State somehow manages to find the same amount of money per head for incarceration. The question is which cycle to you, as a society, want to feed? That is the one that will grow. Reference to the "Nordic" experience shows what a long-term shift in focus looks like.
coldtea 8y ago

bko 8y ago

Re 1: In regards to health care, US public spending on health care is similar to that of other western countries, although it does spend more on private. Make of that what you will but saying that the US doesn't spend on public healthcare is just incorrect. > While the U.S. has similar public spending, its private sector spending is triple that of comparable countries [0] Same is true about public eduction > In 2014, the United States spent $12,300 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 29 percent higher than the OECD average of $9,600. At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $29,700 per FTE student, which was 81 percent higher than the OECD average of $16,400. [1] Private prisons house a small portion of California inmates: > The California State Prison System is administered by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Division of Adult Institutions, which had 136,000 inmates as of 2014. The state of California also relies on private and leased prisons. The number of California prisoners in private out of state facilities is around 8,763 and 4,170 are housed in leased facilities within the state. [2] [0] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart/u-s-similar-public-spending-private-sector-spending-triple-comparable-countries/#item-start https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart/u-s-similar-public... [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_California

icedchocolate 8y ago
Re: Healthcare, that’s not true. The US spends more on health care per capita than many systems with free healthcare (Australia, UK, Canada). You pay the most and receive the least. Like the previous commenter, I am increasingly surprised that this system is still supported, instead of one that costs less and provides more (e.g. the fact that states bargain with drug companies individually, rather than federally, means you pay much more for drugs).
- bko 8y ago
  > I am increasingly surprised that this system is still supported, instead of one that costs less and provides more So you're for decreasing the amount of public spending on health care in the US?

Udik 8y ago

> end up having the most expensive health care, higher education and apparently, prison system in the world; that this fact does not trigger more thought and discussion; I'm thinking that a defining quality of Americans is their propension to spending. Saving money is just not something they seem to think about- it's not what you save that is important, but the total amount of money circulating in the economy. There are little incentives to make things less expensive, there are more incentives to consume as much as possible, both for privates and for businesses. It's wasteful, but contributes to make the economy stronger (even if the resulting society is more unequal and harder for those who earn less).

muse900 8y ago

Good point. You have to think the scale though. US is not the same as e.g Sweden and can't be the same. The amount of benefits you get in Scandi countries or Europe in general against the US are massive. At the same time you have to think that the US is a country of 330m people compared to an average EU country of 10-20m people. In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. The appointment queues go up to years for a simple thing in London. (I had a meniscus tear and they appointed me to see an orthopaedic in a year after I was diagnosed. Just to see him. While its understandable that emergency issues are getting bumped up the ladder, mine which was a non-emergency felt like a bummer when I heard the orthopaedic wont see me for a whole year just to see at which stage I am at. That includes doing some scans to see my stage which the GP won't know unless he is some kind of magician. Yes again he can check if the leg is hammered around the knee to bump up how of an emergency it is.) Generally speaking I think the main issue is that the US is such a large country that can't work the same as EU countries. That goes for everything, from benefits, to working schedules to prison systems etc.

oarsinsync 8y ago
> In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. The appointment queues go up to years for a simple thing in London. Agreed. In addition to that, private health insurance is extremely cheap in London compared to the USA, and you can see a GP or specialist the same day if you have this. That doesn't mean it's not extremely unfair to those that can't afford private health insurance, as treatment should be needs based, not finance based, but it's also difficult to campaign against when you're a beneficiary of a broken system.
mrsuprawsm 8y ago
>In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. This is largely a consequence of chronic underfunding, a deliberate political choice by the Conservative party.
- leetcrew 8y ago

mrosett 8y ago

I agree with the other comment - all of those have extensive government interference. The tax deductibility of employer health plans is at the root of a lot of problems with the cost of healthcare in the US. It's also worth noting that despite the tremendous waste, at the very high end the US has no equal in healthcare or universities. That might not matter to the average customer though.

hhmc 8y ago
At least for universities this isn't correct. Oxford and Cambridge are just as high calibre as the top US institutions.

closeparen 8y ago

Healthcare, higher education, and corrections have the strongest public policy involvement and are also the most dysfunctional; that is not incompatible with the ideology at all. You could say it’s a self fulfilling prophecy or a deliberate conspiracy to undermine trust in public institutions (this is more or less openly acknowledged in “starve the beast”) but it’s not a contradiction.

ams6110 8y ago

> health care, higher education and apparently, prison system These things are generally not considered to be operating in a free market. All are highly regulated and receive massive government funding or subsidies.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

You're missing the point. Prison, in the U.S., is a place to keep people that a certain segment of society doesn't like and would prefer to keep oppressed.

iamgopal 8y ago

Prevention should also apply to health care system but that we overlook in the name of freedom of choice.