4 ms·

If you’re baffled you can start with the concept that all that extra money being spent is going to specific people and organizations, who will work to preserve

by CPLX 7y ago

If you’re baffled you can start with the concept that all that extra money being spent is going to specific people and organizations, who will work to preserve it. It’s a textbook tragedy of the commons example.

danharaj 7y ago
It's not a tragedy of the commons if there's a specific class of people who control the resources who dictate what is politically possible.
scrollbar 7y ago
Can you elaborate more on your point about tragedy of the commons? Maybe I'm dense but it sounds a lot less like many commoners taking advantage of a common shared resource to the point of destruction. More like "corporate socialism", "regulatory capture", or "corruption"
- leetcrew 7y ago
  tragedy of the commons is not the best way of describing it. a large fraction of the US workforce works in healthcare (doctors, nurses) and related fields (insurance, pharma, etc.). they may have their gripes with the current system, but ultimately it pays their bills so they don't want to see too much of a change to the status quo. then you have most fulltime employees getting insurance through their employer. even the ones on shitty plans are somewhat protected from seeing the full costs because the employer doesn't usually disclose their share of premiums. I have a decent high-deductible plan that I pay zero premiums for; I have literally no idea how much it costs and no real way to find out (short of harassing our benefits manager). on top of this, you have the powerful institutions/individuals who are making real money of the situation and lobby to perpetuate it. the small subset of the population that isn't more or less apathetic faces an uphill battle to change anything.
kstenerud 7y ago
> It’s a textbook tragedy of the commons example. It's not tragedy of the commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons This is an example of an inefficient system with powerful stakeholders working to preserve the gravy train that's developed around it.
- CPLX 7y ago
  My analogy was that the pool of money available to fund health care was a “commons” and without being rationed by a government it would be exploited. Perhaps the better public policy jargon to use would be logic of collective action, in the sense that the profiteers are the special interest group and the rest of us are the diffuse group, but the concepts are pretty conceptually related in my opinion.

by CPLX 7y ago

danharaj 7y ago

It's not a tragedy of the commons if there's a specific class of people who control the resources who dictate what is politically possible.

scrollbar 7y ago

Can you elaborate more on your point about tragedy of the commons? Maybe I'm dense but it sounds a lot less like many commoners taking advantage of a common shared resource to the point of destruction. More like "corporate socialism", "regulatory capture", or "corruption"

leetcrew 7y ago
tragedy of the commons is not the best way of describing it. a large fraction of the US workforce works in healthcare (doctors, nurses) and related fields (insurance, pharma, etc.). they may have their gripes with the current system, but ultimately it pays their bills so they don't want to see too much of a change to the status quo. then you have most fulltime employees getting insurance through their employer. even the ones on shitty plans are somewhat protected from seeing the full costs because the employer doesn't usually disclose their share of premiums. I have a decent high-deductible plan that I pay zero premiums for; I have literally no idea how much it costs and no real way to find out (short of harassing our benefits manager). on top of this, you have the powerful institutions/individuals who are making real money of the situation and lobby to perpetuate it. the small subset of the population that isn't more or less apathetic faces an uphill battle to change anything.

kstenerud 7y ago

> It’s a textbook tragedy of the commons example. It's not tragedy of the commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons This is an example of an inefficient system with powerful stakeholders working to preserve the gravy train that's developed around it.

CPLX 7y ago
My analogy was that the pool of money available to fund health care was a “commons” and without being rationed by a government it would be exploited. Perhaps the better public policy jargon to use would be logic of collective action, in the sense that the profiteers are the special interest group and the rest of us are the diffuse group, but the concepts are pretty conceptually related in my opinion.