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The author almost, but not quite, reached the point where they realize they contradict themselves: Claiming that socialized healthcare would cure cancer, but no

• Telemakhos 3y ago
  There are two unexamined assumptions in the article: first that the “we” in “we can solve everything” is synonymous with “government,” and next that “we” know the correct answers. The former is a very twentieth century notion. The identification of government with society (“we”) went hand in hand with the idea that government should have power in every domain of human life and co-opt or liquidate every competing authority like academia or media or church. Here, it’s that “we” the government should take over healthcare (although regulatory approval of a cancer treatment was cited as one obstacle) and fiber-laying instead of leaving those to non-governmental authorities. Carl Schmitt in the early twentieth century had a great term for such a totalizing government: the Totalstaat. It’s not clear, however, that a Totalstaat is actually a good idea. Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind—-and it’s not clear that a government seeking to expand its power into previously non-governmental domains will serve its own interests best by solving problems rather than by providing treatments that abate problems without solving them. Treating a problem expands a state’s authority while preserving the problem as a reason for further government action; solving a problem would end that authority by ending the reason for it. Winning a war, for example, used to remove the need for a standing army until the twentieth century saw the invention of a “cold war” and “war on terror” and a perpetual standing army to treat the unsolved problem of a lingering threat. It’s not clear that this increase in government power was a good thing. Secondly, the idea that “we” (government) “know” the answers is hubris. The author claims that “we” know it would be good to send everyone to college for free, but is that actually best for everyone? Or does that just turn college to more high school, lower the quality of education, waste a lot of people’s time, slow down the creation of families and negatively impinge on demographic trends, etc? “Knowing” the solution presupposes knowledge of second-order effects, and people are generally very bad at that. Thinking that a total state “knows” the best solutions to problems is a good way to impose lots of (potentially negative) second-order effects without much recourse to do anything about it, since this total state has all the authority and no longer has competing authorities to check its hubris.
  • littlestymaar 3y ago
    > Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: several of them publicly expressed their shame to see such a rich country failing to fulfill this very basic human need when their super poor communist country of origin had no such problem. Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare.
    • insickness 3y ago
      Citing a totalitarian government as the solution to homelessness supports the original commenter's claim rather than detracts from it.
      • littlestymaar 3y ago
        If a totalitarian state that doesn't care about its people at all and cannot even manage to properly feed its population can do it, then surely the biggest economy in the world can do it too.
        • insickness 3y ago
          The true conditions of poverty in North Korea are shrouded in secrecy, with reports of famine, starvation, and human rights violations. The extent of homelessness is unknown, but defectors' stories don't paint a good picture. Homelessness affects children ("Kotjebi") and elderly individuals, often abandoned due to an inability to support them. The government denies their existence, and homeless individuals are rounded up, their destination unknown. https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/ https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/
    • moring 3y ago
      > Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare. I think you are making the same mistake as the author of the article. Can you describe the steps necessary to solve homelessness, without resorting to "steps" that simply describe a condition that won't be fulfilled, such as "people have to..." or "the government has to..."? Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?
• yetihehe 3y ago
  > Claiming that we could lay fiber cable to every house, but not how to actually do it. This one is pretty simple if you can accept 98% as "every house". Reality is that not every house needs fiber. I fully agree with the rest of your comment.
  • jhbadger 3y ago
    Also, the US basically solved an earlier version of this with the 1936 Rural Electrification Act. In 1936, many rural communities and farmhouses in the US had no electricity while it was standard in towns and cities for decades. It was decided that having electricity was just something everyone should have access to and we were willing to pay the price to make that happen. Eventually it even made sense economically besides morally because many rural areas eventually became suburbs. We could do the same with fiber. It's not some utopian idea.
    • yetihehe 3y ago
      We are doing that with fiber in Poland. Just got mine in on christmas in small town, construction was subsidized by EU.