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One more followup. I don't think we should be organizing our society in such a way that "staying alive" is considered a "benefit" that is largely at the whim o

One more followup. I don't think we should be organizing our society in such a way that "staying alive" is considered a "benefit" that is largely at the whim of employers who can revoke that "benefit" at any point. The corporate world has bugged me for years with the "get a good job with good benefits!" then people somehow thinking they "deserve" those "benefits" from an employer. The employer relationship has amplified the brokenness of the insurance systems in place (however useful they may have originally been). I've got a similar bugbear with the word "scholarship" as a shorthand for "money" when... there's usually nothing "scholarly" about it. Yes, it's typically used for attending a university with nominally scholastic aspects to it, but "getting a scholarship" because... you hit a baseball X number of times, or what not... the language bugs me more than anything (as with "benefits").

eadmund 2y ago
> I don't think we should be organizing our society in such a way that "staying alive" is considered a "benefit" that is largely at the whim of employers who can revoke that "benefit" at any point. One’s employer literally pays one the money one uses to feed, clothe and shelter oneself. And — in the U.S. — often the money one uses to insure oneself against certain risks. Employers don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts, of course: they want one’s labour. In exactly the same sense, one doesn’t labour out of the goodness of one’s heart: one wants that money, insurance and other benefits. Likewise, the farmers who grow food, the truckers who transport it, the grocers who stock it, the tailors, the weavers, the cotton growers, the builders, the electricians, the plumbers: everyone trades what he has for what he wants more, and in every single one of those trades everyone gets better off. Your employer is richer with your work than if it just kept your salary and benefits, while at the exact same time your are richer with your salary and benefits than if you kept your work. Likewise for all the other participants in the economy. Your proposal appears to be single-payer health insurance. If you pay doctors more than you should, your proposed economy will get more doctors and less other things than it should; if you pay them not enough, you will get a shortage of doctors and too many other things. You don’t know how much is fair to pay a doctor (neither do I). We don’t know how much is a fair price for a painkiller. None of us knows how much a heart operation should cost. None of us can make the right call for someone else when a procedure is worthwhile or not.

eadmund 2y ago

> I don't think we should be organizing our society in such a way that "staying alive" is considered a "benefit" that is largely at the whim of employers who can revoke that "benefit" at any point. One’s employer literally pays one the money one uses to feed, clothe and shelter oneself. And — in the U.S. — often the money one uses to insure oneself against certain risks. Employers don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts, of course: they want one’s labour. In exactly the same sense, one doesn’t labour out of the goodness of one’s heart: one wants that money, insurance and other benefits. Likewise, the farmers who grow food, the truckers who transport it, the grocers who stock it, the tailors, the weavers, the cotton growers, the builders, the electricians, the plumbers: everyone trades what he has for what he wants more, and in every single one of those trades everyone gets better off. Your employer is richer with your work than if it just kept your salary and benefits, while at the exact same time your are richer with your salary and benefits than if you kept your work. Likewise for all the other participants in the economy. Your proposal appears to be single-payer health insurance. If you pay doctors more than you should, your proposed economy will get more doctors and less other things than it should; if you pay them not enough, you will get a shortage of doctors and too many other things. You don’t know how much is fair to pay a doctor (neither do I). We don’t know how much is a fair price for a painkiller. None of us knows how much a heart operation should cost. None of us can make the right call for someone else when a procedure is worthwhile or not.