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The conservatives i've spoken to (and know personally) suggest that we should be gutting social programs like Unemployment because they're the reason why people

The conservatives i've spoken to (and know personally) suggest that we should be gutting social programs like Unemployment because they're the reason why people are demanding more money - it's too easy to get it "for free". Curiously, this has become a theme. Nearly a meme, honestly. In every major debate i've spoken to them about, say Gun control and school shootings - the answer is to double down. Not less guns, but more! Give teachers guns! etc. Now i'm not interested in having this debate here, on any front, but i am curious about this line of thinking. Is this "doubling down" observed by anyone else? If so is there something interesting at play? It feels odd to me that the response seems so frequently to dig in deeper. More guns. Less social protections. Less environmental protections. More oil. etcetc

jyrkesh 5y ago
I posted a similar question here[1]. I'm not a GOPer, but I do hold some fairly free market beliefs, so I wanted to answer your question about the general case. I think some of this thinking comes from the fact that there's been a lot of legislation in the past that attempts to solve market "failures" with more government regulation or subsidies, and that those promises have fallen short. In my mind, there are a lot of liberals in the US who say things like "if only the stimulus was larger" or e.g. after the "assault weapon" ban failed to demonstrably change gun violence in the US that we "just needed to ban MORE guns". For me, the big one on this is healthcare. I'm the first to admit that a single-payer healthcare system is my 2nd favorite system after a purely free market approach, but there's a lot of gaslighting going on that what we have today in the US is actually a free market approach. Liberals tell me that the free market failed, and that it's time to socialize healthcare. But from where I'm sitting, we've had massive governement intervention in healthcare for a century, and that intervention has made the market aspect of our system fail completely, govt subsidies for employer-provided insurance being the number one (inflates prices by increasing demand for lower-pri care, ties people to their employer for longer than they'd otherwise do), but also Medicare/Medicaid and the lack of insurance pools across state lines. This debate falls out most cleanly when you debate the Laffer Curve. Are we on the left of optimum, or the right? There's really no way for us to know for sure in a vacuum, but "doubling down" is the only approach that either side can really take in pushing increased or decreased tax rates. Obviously, I didn't flesh out all my positions here, and I don't mean to get into a debate on any of these things in particular. I'm just trying to help explain some of my own logic in response to your question. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778374
- pashamur 5y ago
  I posted an interview about the open-pricing surgery center of Oklahoma which actually goes into how a free market healthcare system would work. A free market system would make for even more uneven differentiation in health care quality - with some people not being able to receive care at all at the end of the day. Yes, on average we would have better health outcomes (same as most people would have better outcomes on average if you didn't require car insurance, since most people don't end up using it), but the few outlier cases would be significantly more tragic than they already are.
  - adkadskhj 5y ago
    Yea, i'm quite liberal but in my perspective it's not about what works best - but what's most moral. To me capitalism runs by greed, which isn't a bad thing, but you can't depend on greed to be inline with moral based outcomes. Competition might be best, but how often do companies decide that competition is not in their favor? Frequently it's gamed/etc. So my view is that anything that matters, like healthcare, should not be managed by capitalism. It can play a part, but something motivated by human good should be at the core of some decision making processes. Which capitalism is definitely not. Government has far to go, but capitalism has no place in moral based decision making. Imo.

jyrkesh 5y ago

I posted a similar question here[1]. I'm not a GOPer, but I do hold some fairly free market beliefs, so I wanted to answer your question about the general case. I think some of this thinking comes from the fact that there's been a lot of legislation in the past that attempts to solve market "failures" with more government regulation or subsidies, and that those promises have fallen short. In my mind, there are a lot of liberals in the US who say things like "if only the stimulus was larger" or e.g. after the "assault weapon" ban failed to demonstrably change gun violence in the US that we "just needed to ban MORE guns". For me, the big one on this is healthcare. I'm the first to admit that a single-payer healthcare system is my 2nd favorite system after a purely free market approach, but there's a lot of gaslighting going on that what we have today in the US is actually a free market approach. Liberals tell me that the free market failed, and that it's time to socialize healthcare. But from where I'm sitting, we've had massive governement intervention in healthcare for a century, and that intervention has made the market aspect of our system fail completely, govt subsidies for employer-provided insurance being the number one (inflates prices by increasing demand for lower-pri care, ties people to their employer for longer than they'd otherwise do), but also Medicare/Medicaid and the lack of insurance pools across state lines. This debate falls out most cleanly when you debate the Laffer Curve. Are we on the left of optimum, or the right? There's really no way for us to know for sure in a vacuum, but "doubling down" is the only approach that either side can really take in pushing increased or decreased tax rates. Obviously, I didn't flesh out all my positions here, and I don't mean to get into a debate on any of these things in particular. I'm just trying to help explain some of my own logic in response to your question. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778374

pashamur 5y ago
I posted an interview about the open-pricing surgery center of Oklahoma which actually goes into how a free market healthcare system would work. A free market system would make for even more uneven differentiation in health care quality - with some people not being able to receive care at all at the end of the day. Yes, on average we would have better health outcomes (same as most people would have better outcomes on average if you didn't require car insurance, since most people don't end up using it), but the few outlier cases would be significantly more tragic than they already are.
- adkadskhj 5y ago
  Yea, i'm quite liberal but in my perspective it's not about what works best - but what's most moral. To me capitalism runs by greed, which isn't a bad thing, but you can't depend on greed to be inline with moral based outcomes. Competition might be best, but how often do companies decide that competition is not in their favor? Frequently it's gamed/etc. So my view is that anything that matters, like healthcare, should not be managed by capitalism. It can play a part, but something motivated by human good should be at the core of some decision making processes. Which capitalism is definitely not. Government has far to go, but capitalism has no place in moral based decision making. Imo.