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> Those are all expensive because of government constraints There are even more government constraints in Europe, China, Japan. The real estate sector, healthc

> Those are all expensive because of government constraints There are even more government constraints in Europe, China, Japan. The real estate sector, healthcare, education etc are not out of hand in those places like they are in the US. > the profit-seeking free market is unable to drive prices down The profit-seeking free market is unable to drive prices down because driving prices down is anathema to profit-seeking. > See this famous chart for the receipts -- which things government interferes with A blog post from Randians in contrast to actually existing reality does not an argument make. Let me reiterate: There are more government constraints everywhere else around the world. Nowhere else those critical sectors are out of hand.

jcampbell1 4y ago
I ended up in a hospital in Urumqi China. It was the most capitalist thing I have ever experienced. You put money on a card and pay for services individually… the nurses all had a card reader. $35 for a CT, $6 IV penicillin, (repeat 6 times), $20 see an ENT, $5 for Augmentin. Government matches the amount paid, and poor people get a card that is very discounted. Family members typically moved the patient since orderlies were an additional charge.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  it is frankly amazing that you took the reality of the government paying for half of all medical coverage, paying for most of it for poor people, and regulating low prices for such care (well below America from your examples) as “capitalism works!” What the hell?
  - jcampbell1 4y ago
    Progressive taxation and subsidies are completely within the realm of capitalism. It is regulation and government provision of services that push the system outside the competition benefits of capitalism. The Chinese system is straight up Austrian economics capitalism. The prices weren’t regulated. The CT machine was a hand me down. The place operated with basically no management. It worked like a food court in Singapore.
    - oivey 4y ago
      You said the government paid half the costs with even more for poorer people. When did Rothbard advocate for that?
      - jcampbell1 4y ago
        The government isn’t interfering with the factors of production. The healthcare system has market based incentives. The Chinese system is no money means no western healthcare. Western healthcare didn’t really exist in China until the 90s. It grew from nothing organically through market forces. If the US switched to the Chinese system for healthcare, the socialist minded people would cry themselves to death.
        ok_dad 4y ago
        > The government isn’t interfering with the factors of production. > The Chinese system Are you saying the Chinese government does not interfere with the factors of production in their country? I was under the impression China was a hybrid of a centrally-controlled economy, and if so that absolutely does mean they interfere! Please correct me if I am wrong, because I would love to learn how China does the free market better than the USA and how we can change the USA to be more like China in this aspect.
    - coliveira 4y ago
      > The Chinese system is straight up Austrian economics capitalism. So why are we fighting the Chinese? Let them take over and bring this so famous Austrian economics now!
    - unity1001 4y ago
      > Progressive taxation and subsidies are completely within the realm of capitalism They are not. They make social democracy. A transition system from capitalism to socialism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy#Political_party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy#Political_par... It was literally developed by socialists (in late 19th century it meant the same with 'communist') and advocated in the First Socialist International at the end of 19th century. To top that, it was the president of the first socialist international who revealed the new system. Every single plan and method that you equate with 'capitalism' above, comes from that advocacy. In the cold war era when Western countries were also using social democracy, the cold war propaganda allowed people to get self-deceived into thinking that all of those were the fruits of capitalism. But Reagan & co knew what was what. They spent no time in discarding all those pesky socialist practices and bringing back good old fashioned capitalism. The dystopian hellhole that you are experiencing today is capitalism itself. Well, obviously there is still some ways to go until child labor, 14 hour workdays, total removal of labor protections, abolition of weekend vacation, social security etc are completed, but hey - they sure will get rid of those pesky socialist stuff in no time.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Plus $35 for a CT. I had to have on a couple of years ago and my insurance paid something like 8 grand (and that was the discounted what we actually pay rate)
    - robocat 4y ago
      > 8 grand Open market prices in a first world country (New Zealand) are much less: https://www.aucklandxray.co.nz/Home+Links/Price+List.html https://www.aucklandxray.co.nz/Home+Links/Price+List.html https://radiology.co.nz/services/ct https://radiology.co.nz/services/ct https://broadwayradiology.co.nz/our-services/ct-scanning https://broadwayradiology.co.nz/our-services/ct-scanning There is a lot of reasons for variation, but I thought you might be interested in what the private free market price might be. Aside: when I visited Shenzhen in China years ago, it felt like the most hyper-capitalist place I have ever been.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > It was the most capitalist thing I have ever experienced > Government matches the amount paid, and poor people get a card that is very discounted. How is government paying healthcare in a country that regulates prices so heavily that the cost of healthcare operations and medicine literally amount to dimes, is anything capitalist.
- jessaustin 4y ago
  ...most capitalist thing... Consumer choice about which products and services get purchased isn't a feature of "capitalism". Perhaps one could say it was a "free market" situation, but only if different nurses charged different amounts... Perhaps this is just a well-regulated industry in which the regulations aren't written by capitalists? Did you see any concentration camps in Urumqi?
  - jcampbell1 4y ago
    The forced reeducation prisons were built after I was there. I did spend some time talking to locals, and they were justifiably paranoid. There had been some recent terrorism and they sensed blowback was coming to ordinary citizens. There was also a sense that Chinese gentrification was unlikely to benefit them. I think it would have been better if the autonomous regions had been left alone, but that option disappeared in the west due to natural resources, and from the Chinese perspective “Free Tibet” means NATO weapons in Tibet. That is why they built an absurdly expensive railway to Lhasa. The CCP is incomprehensible from an American perspective, but painfully practical and predictable from a Chinese perspective.
repsilat 4y ago
Real estate isn't bad in most places in the US. In most places it's easy and cheap to build, and houses are large and comfortable. The expensive places (San Francisco, Manhattan) are expensive because of government interference, and there are places in Europe just as dysfunctional in different ways -- waiting lists for rentals, undersupply and poor quality because of rent control etc. In the US healthcare is regulated like crazy, entirely broken by government intervention. Probably other places have governments that have broken their systems less badly. I won't argue that systems with some private actors involved are necessarily better than those that have none at all. And as for education, America's private and charter schools are better than its public non-charter schools even controlling for funding and student quality. And it has among the best tertiary education in the world, and yeah it's not a bad thing that the students who can afford to pay for it have to pay their own way. (American tertiary education costs are largely means-tested.) As for the rest of the argument, I think the fact that nobody can afford to buy a television because we're all being gouged by unregulated, excessively profitable technology manufacturers is the best demonstration of your point. Everyone can at least agree with you that competitive pressures never lower prices.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > The expensive places (San Francisco, Manhattan) are expensive because of government interference There isn't any megapolis on the planet that does not have 'government interference'. That's what makes millions over millions of people in a tight place actually be able to live and work. > In the US healthcare is regulated like crazy, entirely broken by government intervention. Prices. You need to regulate prices. Irrelevant regulation doesn't do anything about prices.

jcampbell1 4y ago

I ended up in a hospital in Urumqi China. It was the most capitalist thing I have ever experienced. You put money on a card and pay for services individually… the nurses all had a card reader. $35 for a CT, $6 IV penicillin, (repeat 6 times), $20 see an ENT, $5 for Augmentin. Government matches the amount paid, and poor people get a card that is very discounted. Family members typically moved the patient since orderlies were an additional charge.

ok_dad 4y ago
it is frankly amazing that you took the reality of the government paying for half of all medical coverage, paying for most of it for poor people, and regulating low prices for such care (well below America from your examples) as “capitalism works!” What the hell?
- jcampbell1 4y ago
  Progressive taxation and subsidies are completely within the realm of capitalism. It is regulation and government provision of services that push the system outside the competition benefits of capitalism. The Chinese system is straight up Austrian economics capitalism. The prices weren’t regulated. The CT machine was a hand me down. The place operated with basically no management. It worked like a food court in Singapore.
  - oivey 4y ago
    You said the government paid half the costs with even more for poorer people. When did Rothbard advocate for that?
    - jcampbell1 4y ago
      The government isn’t interfering with the factors of production. The healthcare system has market based incentives. The Chinese system is no money means no western healthcare. Western healthcare didn’t really exist in China until the 90s. It grew from nothing organically through market forces. If the US switched to the Chinese system for healthcare, the socialist minded people would cry themselves to death.
      - ok_dad 4y ago
        > The government isn’t interfering with the factors of production. > The Chinese system Are you saying the Chinese government does not interfere with the factors of production in their country? I was under the impression China was a hybrid of a centrally-controlled economy, and if so that absolutely does mean they interfere! Please correct me if I am wrong, because I would love to learn how China does the free market better than the USA and how we can change the USA to be more like China in this aspect.
  - coliveira 4y ago
    > The Chinese system is straight up Austrian economics capitalism. So why are we fighting the Chinese? Let them take over and bring this so famous Austrian economics now!
  - unity1001 4y ago
    > Progressive taxation and subsidies are completely within the realm of capitalism They are not. They make social democracy. A transition system from capitalism to socialism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy#Political_party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy#Political_par... It was literally developed by socialists (in late 19th century it meant the same with 'communist') and advocated in the First Socialist International at the end of 19th century. To top that, it was the president of the first socialist international who revealed the new system. Every single plan and method that you equate with 'capitalism' above, comes from that advocacy. In the cold war era when Western countries were also using social democracy, the cold war propaganda allowed people to get self-deceived into thinking that all of those were the fruits of capitalism. But Reagan & co knew what was what. They spent no time in discarding all those pesky socialist practices and bringing back good old fashioned capitalism. The dystopian hellhole that you are experiencing today is capitalism itself. Well, obviously there is still some ways to go until child labor, 14 hour workdays, total removal of labor protections, abolition of weekend vacation, social security etc are completed, but hey - they sure will get rid of those pesky socialist stuff in no time.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Plus $35 for a CT. I had to have on a couple of years ago and my insurance paid something like 8 grand (and that was the discounted what we actually pay rate)
  - robocat 4y ago
    > 8 grand Open market prices in a first world country (New Zealand) are much less: https://www.aucklandxray.co.nz/Home+Links/Price+List.html https://www.aucklandxray.co.nz/Home+Links/Price+List.html https://radiology.co.nz/services/ct https://radiology.co.nz/services/ct https://broadwayradiology.co.nz/our-services/ct-scanning https://broadwayradiology.co.nz/our-services/ct-scanning There is a lot of reasons for variation, but I thought you might be interested in what the private free market price might be. Aside: when I visited Shenzhen in China years ago, it felt like the most hyper-capitalist place I have ever been.
unity1001 4y ago
> It was the most capitalist thing I have ever experienced > Government matches the amount paid, and poor people get a card that is very discounted. How is government paying healthcare in a country that regulates prices so heavily that the cost of healthcare operations and medicine literally amount to dimes, is anything capitalist.
jessaustin 4y ago
...most capitalist thing... Consumer choice about which products and services get purchased isn't a feature of "capitalism". Perhaps one could say it was a "free market" situation, but only if different nurses charged different amounts... Perhaps this is just a well-regulated industry in which the regulations aren't written by capitalists? Did you see any concentration camps in Urumqi?
- jcampbell1 4y ago
  The forced reeducation prisons were built after I was there. I did spend some time talking to locals, and they were justifiably paranoid. There had been some recent terrorism and they sensed blowback was coming to ordinary citizens. There was also a sense that Chinese gentrification was unlikely to benefit them. I think it would have been better if the autonomous regions had been left alone, but that option disappeared in the west due to natural resources, and from the Chinese perspective “Free Tibet” means NATO weapons in Tibet. That is why they built an absurdly expensive railway to Lhasa. The CCP is incomprehensible from an American perspective, but painfully practical and predictable from a Chinese perspective.

repsilat 4y ago

Real estate isn't bad in most places in the US. In most places it's easy and cheap to build, and houses are large and comfortable. The expensive places (San Francisco, Manhattan) are expensive because of government interference, and there are places in Europe just as dysfunctional in different ways -- waiting lists for rentals, undersupply and poor quality because of rent control etc. In the US healthcare is regulated like crazy, entirely broken by government intervention. Probably other places have governments that have broken their systems less badly. I won't argue that systems with some private actors involved are necessarily better than those that have none at all. And as for education, America's private and charter schools are better than its public non-charter schools even controlling for funding and student quality. And it has among the best tertiary education in the world, and yeah it's not a bad thing that the students who can afford to pay for it have to pay their own way. (American tertiary education costs are largely means-tested.) As for the rest of the argument, I think the fact that nobody can afford to buy a television because we're all being gouged by unregulated, excessively profitable technology manufacturers is the best demonstration of your point. Everyone can at least agree with you that competitive pressures never lower prices.

unity1001 4y ago
> The expensive places (San Francisco, Manhattan) are expensive because of government interference There isn't any megapolis on the planet that does not have 'government interference'. That's what makes millions over millions of people in a tight place actually be able to live and work. > In the US healthcare is regulated like crazy, entirely broken by government intervention. Prices. You need to regulate prices. Irrelevant regulation doesn't do anything about prices.