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Well done: https://twitter.com/oren_cass/status/1230505794686373888 https://twitter.com/oren_cass/status/1230505794686373888 The guy identified the 4 big gove

Well done: https://twitter.com/oren_cass/status/1230505794686373888 https://twitter.com/oren_cass/status/1230505794686373888 The guy identified the 4 big government backed monopolies, all with government backed debt, which all now eat a majority of income. We've known since 1776 that the way prices come down is competition. You should know that it's illegal to open a hospital or college without government permission. It's illegal to build a building. It's so bad that in order to open a hospital in most states, any nearby hospital can protest you license application merely for being close to another hospital. Who in their right mind would give an 18 year old $100k for college? Nobody. That's why the government backs it and you can't default on it. Who backs your mortgage? The government. It goes on and on and on. There is no mystery here AT ALL if you studied economics. The answer is very simple, allow competition. Now to lay back and drown in the downvotes :-)

happytoexplain 7y ago
>Now to lay back and drown in the downvotes :-) Please consider omitting this self-fulfilling prophecy that implies you are some kind of underdog.
lidHanteyk 7y ago
I don't see why you should get downvotes. You should get schooled instead. For starters, you don't mean 1776. You mean one of the years from 1787-1789 when the Constitution was written and first used to instantiate our Federal Government. You certainly don't mean 1776 because the attempt to create the government in that year, the Articles of Confederation, was not at all the current government, and it barely lasted a decade, depending on how one measures it. Opening a hospital, or any kind of medical practice, is generally regulated. In particular, regulation is done by a dedicated guild of medical professionals. Similar regulation covers legal advice, with bar associations qualifying legal advisors. In both cases, there is a monopoly on service providers. Two observations are important here. First, despite the monopoly, alternative service providers exist in the marketplace; quacks, fly-by-night veterinarians, alternative medicines, homebrew pharmacology, WebMD, etc.; or for law, anything from a smart friend to r/legaladvice. Second, only one of these practices seems to have had a cost disease. Perhaps the cost disease is due to something else! In particular, perhaps it is due to the 1973 HMO Act. You are right to be irritated at the government, but wrong to focus your ire entirely there. HMOs are to blame, too; in fact, they are mostly to blame. Exercise for you: Rerun the previous paragraph's logic with mail and USPS, and double-check that it still holds. I don't know where you live, but around where I live, it's legal to build a building, but not inside city limits or on protected wetlands. If you have title to the dirt below, then you can build things above. You might want to consult with local authorities depending on exactly what you're building, but you can generally build it. (Go ahead, I dare you to rattle off all the things that can't be built.) Just like how banks can and do compete with Freddie and Fannie for securing loans to homeowners, there are plenty of private sources for student loans. Perhaps it is predatory cruel for the government to issue student loans; perhaps student loans are predatory and cruel in general, like payday loans or title loans, in which case we should outlaw them entirely. It sounds like you might have studied economics. In that case, surely you don't believe in the Efficient Market Hypothesis? Markets are clearly inefficient and there's good theoretical reasons to believe that it takes exponential time for an honestly-run market to find even one Nash equilibrium. Finally, who cares about economics? You ought to study history. In particular, remember Enron? [0] This is the sort of thing that makes your position look like that of a stupid libertarian standing in the water with his waders and wondering why there's no fish in the river for him. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
- bfieidhbrjr 7y ago
  The wealth of nations was published in 1776. Maybe I'm not the one that needs to study history.
  - lidHanteyk 7y ago
    Ah, you're one of those fools. When you're finished with history, try complexity theory [0]. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284 https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284
    - bfieidhbrjr 7y ago
      Le Sigh.

happytoexplain 7y ago

>Now to lay back and drown in the downvotes :-) Please consider omitting this self-fulfilling prophecy that implies you are some kind of underdog.

lidHanteyk 7y ago

I don't see why you should get downvotes. You should get schooled instead. For starters, you don't mean 1776. You mean one of the years from 1787-1789 when the Constitution was written and first used to instantiate our Federal Government. You certainly don't mean 1776 because the attempt to create the government in that year, the Articles of Confederation, was not at all the current government, and it barely lasted a decade, depending on how one measures it. Opening a hospital, or any kind of medical practice, is generally regulated. In particular, regulation is done by a dedicated guild of medical professionals. Similar regulation covers legal advice, with bar associations qualifying legal advisors. In both cases, there is a monopoly on service providers. Two observations are important here. First, despite the monopoly, alternative service providers exist in the marketplace; quacks, fly-by-night veterinarians, alternative medicines, homebrew pharmacology, WebMD, etc.; or for law, anything from a smart friend to r/legaladvice. Second, only one of these practices seems to have had a cost disease. Perhaps the cost disease is due to something else! In particular, perhaps it is due to the 1973 HMO Act. You are right to be irritated at the government, but wrong to focus your ire entirely there. HMOs are to blame, too; in fact, they are mostly to blame. Exercise for you: Rerun the previous paragraph's logic with mail and USPS, and double-check that it still holds. I don't know where you live, but around where I live, it's legal to build a building, but not inside city limits or on protected wetlands. If you have title to the dirt below, then you can build things above. You might want to consult with local authorities depending on exactly what you're building, but you can generally build it. (Go ahead, I dare you to rattle off all the things that can't be built.) Just like how banks can and do compete with Freddie and Fannie for securing loans to homeowners, there are plenty of private sources for student loans. Perhaps it is predatory cruel for the government to issue student loans; perhaps student loans are predatory and cruel in general, like payday loans or title loans, in which case we should outlaw them entirely. It sounds like you might have studied economics. In that case, surely you don't believe in the Efficient Market Hypothesis? Markets are clearly inefficient and there's good theoretical reasons to believe that it takes exponential time for an honestly-run market to find even one Nash equilibrium. Finally, who cares about economics? You ought to study history. In particular, remember Enron? [0] This is the sort of thing that makes your position look like that of a stupid libertarian standing in the water with his waders and wondering why there's no fish in the river for him. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

bfieidhbrjr 7y ago
The wealth of nations was published in 1776. Maybe I'm not the one that needs to study history.
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  Ah, you're one of those fools. When you're finished with history, try complexity theory [0]. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284 https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284
  - bfieidhbrjr 7y ago
    Le Sigh.