4 ms·

It is both immoral and incorrect to measure need based on who has the most liquidity.

arcticbull 7y ago
Or as we call it 'the US healthcare system'
quotemstr 7y ago
No it isn't. Are you against the idea of prices and money generally? If yes, that's been tried. Doesn't work. If no, why are you carving out a special case in your general acceptance of the price mechanism for this particular family of goods? Why is it okay to charge for food?
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  The opinion that charging people out the nose for basic necessities is a bad way to allocate resources isn't the same as being "opposed to money"
  - numbsafari 7y ago
    100% Correct. Money is still really important, but it’s dishonest and counterfactual to argue that mere access to liquidity can determine the clearing price for a market. We know it doesn’t. That’s why we have the Fed.
someguydave 7y ago
I’m assuming this is sarcasm. Can you propose an alternative method of measuring need?
- fatbird 7y ago
  The field of moral philosophy has extensive literature on exactly this subject. The NYTimes has an 'ask an ethicist' column. Every hospital has an ethics board with prepared guidelines on patient triage in times of crisis. That the accepted answer to this question has become "who has the most money?" is a victory for... well, the people with the most money, so I guess we can call this a sterling example of the effects of income inequality. The vast majority not only don't have the majority of the money; they don't even have the moral standing of "legitimate" need.
  - someguydave 7y ago
    The only alternative to “highest bidder wins” is “third party decides”. If people need charity, seeking that charity should be a private matter, not one enforced out the barrel of a gun by uninformed third parties.
    - fatbird 7y ago
      Except the whole point of human governance is to delegate that enforcement to a third party that is a just and neutral arbiter. Unless you want to revert to a state of nature and anarchy without laws or money, you're going to have that third party, and if you have it, then you have other options than "highest bidder", which is itself a value choice enforced on other, non-consenting citizens at the the point of a gun.
      - quotemstr 7y ago
        Too much delegation to a third party is called a command economy and history is full of examples of that approach not working, examples going all the way back to the palace economies of the ancient Minoans. The problem is that no third party has enough information or the right incentives to decide fully who should produce what when --- the problem is called "the calculation problem" and has a huge literature. Decentralizing resource allocation decisions using pricing is the only approach that's been shown to work.
        fatbird 7y ago
        There's a whole lot of daylight between unregulated capitalism and command economies.
- numbsafari 7y ago
  It's not sarcasm at all. Does one person with a million dollars in excess liquidity to spend on water represent a greater "need" than one million people with no liquidity to spare? Would it be moral for that person to buy more than they need, solely to inflate prices? Would the resulting spot price in the market be in any way a meaningful gauge of the actual need? Market prices are only one gauge, and they are pretty faulty, easily manipulated one at that. Next up, you'll probably tell me that story points are a solid basis for predicting delivery times and making decisions about resource allocation.
  - viklove 7y ago
    I think one of the facts many HNers struggle with is that the system that makes them wealthy is the same system that is starving people out and denying them access to healthcare. When you're a well-paid engineer you want to believe that you "earned" your position through hard work, but in reality its 90% luck. Some HNers even have their own successful business, and want to think that everyone below them is just lazy and doesn't deserve access to scarce resources. It's a much simpler way of looking at the world, so you can avoid looking in the mirror.
    - someguydave 7y ago
      Please propose a system of distributing goods that is more "moral" or "fair" than the "highest bidder wins".
      - viklove 7y ago
        Provide a UBI so half the population isn't locked out of bidding entirely. The problem with capitalism is that 1% of the population ends up mega-wealthy, and 50% of the population ends up dirt poor, literally unable to afford food. When that happens, the 1% shouldn't get to decide who gets to eat and who gets to starve (by choosing which ones to employ). There should be some form of basic income to ensure everyone has access to some goods, and they can decide which ones to pay more for, and which ones to forego. In the current situation, if a business owner decides to drop you on the ground, you're literally gonna starve to death in the next month.

Or as we call it 'the US healthcare system'

No it isn't. Are you against the idea of prices and money generally? If yes, that's been tried. Doesn't work. If no, why are you carving out a special case in your general acceptance of the price mechanism for this particular family of goods? Why is it okay to charge for food?

hannasanarion 7y ago
The opinion that charging people out the nose for basic necessities is a bad way to allocate resources isn't the same as being "opposed to money"
- numbsafari 7y ago
  100% Correct. Money is still really important, but it’s dishonest and counterfactual to argue that mere access to liquidity can determine the clearing price for a market. We know it doesn’t. That’s why we have the Fed.

someguydave 7y ago

I’m assuming this is sarcasm. Can you propose an alternative method of measuring need?

fatbird 7y ago
The field of moral philosophy has extensive literature on exactly this subject. The NYTimes has an 'ask an ethicist' column. Every hospital has an ethics board with prepared guidelines on patient triage in times of crisis. That the accepted answer to this question has become "who has the most money?" is a victory for... well, the people with the most money, so I guess we can call this a sterling example of the effects of income inequality. The vast majority not only don't have the majority of the money; they don't even have the moral standing of "legitimate" need.
- someguydave 7y ago
  The only alternative to “highest bidder wins” is “third party decides”. If people need charity, seeking that charity should be a private matter, not one enforced out the barrel of a gun by uninformed third parties.
  - fatbird 7y ago
    Except the whole point of human governance is to delegate that enforcement to a third party that is a just and neutral arbiter. Unless you want to revert to a state of nature and anarchy without laws or money, you're going to have that third party, and if you have it, then you have other options than "highest bidder", which is itself a value choice enforced on other, non-consenting citizens at the the point of a gun.
    - quotemstr 7y ago
      Too much delegation to a third party is called a command economy and history is full of examples of that approach not working, examples going all the way back to the palace economies of the ancient Minoans. The problem is that no third party has enough information or the right incentives to decide fully who should produce what when --- the problem is called "the calculation problem" and has a huge literature. Decentralizing resource allocation decisions using pricing is the only approach that's been shown to work.
      - fatbird 7y ago
        There's a whole lot of daylight between unregulated capitalism and command economies.
numbsafari 7y ago
It's not sarcasm at all. Does one person with a million dollars in excess liquidity to spend on water represent a greater "need" than one million people with no liquidity to spare? Would it be moral for that person to buy more than they need, solely to inflate prices? Would the resulting spot price in the market be in any way a meaningful gauge of the actual need? Market prices are only one gauge, and they are pretty faulty, easily manipulated one at that. Next up, you'll probably tell me that story points are a solid basis for predicting delivery times and making decisions about resource allocation.
- viklove 7y ago
  I think one of the facts many HNers struggle with is that the system that makes them wealthy is the same system that is starving people out and denying them access to healthcare. When you're a well-paid engineer you want to believe that you "earned" your position through hard work, but in reality its 90% luck. Some HNers even have their own successful business, and want to think that everyone below them is just lazy and doesn't deserve access to scarce resources. It's a much simpler way of looking at the world, so you can avoid looking in the mirror.
  - someguydave 7y ago
    Please propose a system of distributing goods that is more "moral" or "fair" than the "highest bidder wins".
    - viklove 7y ago
      Provide a UBI so half the population isn't locked out of bidding entirely. The problem with capitalism is that 1% of the population ends up mega-wealthy, and 50% of the population ends up dirt poor, literally unable to afford food. When that happens, the 1% shouldn't get to decide who gets to eat and who gets to starve (by choosing which ones to employ). There should be some form of basic income to ensure everyone has access to some goods, and they can decide which ones to pay more for, and which ones to forego. In the current situation, if a business owner decides to drop you on the ground, you're literally gonna starve to death in the next month.