5 ms·

> Because money is just a tool for allocating resources. > often devolves into rationing Just to expand upon what you're saying a bit; most people don't view t

by jack_h 2y ago

> Because money is just a tool for allocating resources. > often devolves into rationing Just to expand upon what you're saying a bit; most people don't view things in such terms which I think is unfortunate. You often see discussions about waiting times in single payer healthcare systems and cost in more free-market systems. The fact of the matter is that if demand is greater than supply you must ration the supply somehow. Prices are one way but not the only way. Waiting lines, by need, randomly, etc... are all valid rationing mechanisms as well. What I've noticed is that when people don't view this is a resource allocation problem they are able to always see the greener grass somewhere else. They see the lack of treatment of a person or group of persons as a failing of their system where those people would have received treatment in a different system that uses a different rationing mechanism. The issue is that in a different system there would still be people who don't receive treatment, they would just be different people. By not viewing it as a resource allocation problem I think it gives the appearance that there is a perfect solution and that its just political will halting its implementation.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> if demand is greater than supply you must ration the supply somehow. This is logic of post-2008 fail-capitalism instead of 1970’s and China’s aspirational, problem solving capitalism. You don’t address shortages of healthcare, housing or food with an elegant and fair system to decide who starves and dies. You expand supply to make sure no one has to. You examine supply chain and figure out the bottlenecks. For example China has started mass producing MRI machines, that’s one way you adress a problem.
- liontwist 2y ago
  > who starves and dies. It’s not a binary decision. Healthcare is a gradient of treatment options and outcomes. The concept you are missing is called economizing which includes substituting services, adjusting time preferences, sharing, expanding network of providers, etc. > post-2008 fail-capitalism You mean the one where government agencies were taking the risk of bad mortgages from sellers? We don’t have anything close to a capitalist market in healthcare or finance.
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    Well we did have TrueCapitalism in the FreeBanking era where all banks could issue their own currency and they would go bust every Tuesday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking
    - liontwist 2y ago
      From your own article: > Although the period from 1837 to 1864 in the US is often referred to as the Free Banking Era, the term is a misnomer in terms of the definition of "free banking" above. Free Banking in the United States before the Civil War refers to various state banking systems based on what were called "free banking" laws at the time. These laws made it necessary for new entrants to secure charters, each of which was subject to a vote by the state legislature with obvious opportunities for corruption. These general banking laws also restricted banks' activities in important ways.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  Nobody dies in China? News to me!
- jack_h 2y ago
  > This is logic of post-2008 fail-capitalism instead of 1970’s and China’s aspirational, problem solving capitalism. No, this is reality. It does not matter if you're working under capitalism, socialism, communism, mercantilism, or some as yet unknown system since economics is the “study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses.” You cannot deny resource scarcity anymore than you can deny natural selection or gravity. To do so leads to a lot of tragic consequences. > You don’t address shortages of healthcare, housing or food with an elegant and fair system to decide who starves and dies. Food is an excellent example to use. In order to guarantee that no one goes hungry, or is well fed, or whatever metric you want to use how much food should be produced? Please find a way for this seemingly simple solution to not devolve into rationing by some mechanism. > You expand supply to make sure no one has to. You examine supply chain and figure out the bottlenecks. By expanding supply of healthcare you are taking resources away from somewhere else. Everyone can become a doctor and the nation will have very cheap and plentiful healthcare. Of course no one will be building houses, repairing roads, generating electricity, making MRI machines, refining helium, building the equipment to do the above, or countless other economic activities required for society as we know it to exist. There are limited resources, people, and time. You can’t do everything all at once. > For example China has started mass producing MRI machines, that’s one way you adress a problem. How do you know how many MRI machines you need? How do you know if you have too many? What about doctors, nurses, gloves, defibrillators, etc… Prices are actually a mechanism that communicates where more resources need to be allocated and where less are needed. What you’re talking about sounds more like central planning or some subset of it.
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    > expanding supply of healthcare you are taking resources away from somewhere else This is totally wrong. It takes 5 years to get planning approval in UK, it takes 1 year in France. Tunnelling costs are 3x higher in Uk than in europe. Building a tram takes 3 times less. Lower Thames crossing has been in planning for 15 years and we have spent 300 million on lawyers, more than Norway has spent on building an actual tonnel of comparable size. If UK has economy of France but infrastructure worse than Poland, maybe we are doing something dumb. If USA has expensive insulin and poor Bulgaria has cheap insulin and it works just as well, maybe you are doing something dumb. You can expand supply of housing in UK without damaging other sectors of economy: introduce statutory right to add an extra story on your op if your house. Remove green belt protections, introduce 1 month limit on review of any planning application, after which it is automatically granted if valid objection is not found. Introduce a single planning portal and standardise software for planning applications across the whole country instead of every Shropshire and Wolverhampton having their own practices. Purchase perpetual license for such software as a country and make it freely available to every citizen. Introduce favourable mortgages for self-building. Produce detailed, pre-approved designs for standardised homes and bulk purchase materials or modular components for them. Organise mass production of high-speed trams and make them available to local government with favourable, pre approved finance terms, so that larger areas of housing are accessible by high speed transport. All of the above is implemented in different countries around the world, whether it’s France, China or someone else. References: https://www.britainremade.co.uk/building_transport_in_britain_doesn_t_have_to_be_this_hard https://www.britainremade.co.uk/building_transport_in_britai... https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/britains-infrastructure-is-too-expensive https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/britains-infrastructure-is-too...

by jack_h 2y ago

ClumsyPilot 2y ago

> if demand is greater than supply you must ration the supply somehow. This is logic of post-2008 fail-capitalism instead of 1970’s and China’s aspirational, problem solving capitalism. You don’t address shortages of healthcare, housing or food with an elegant and fair system to decide who starves and dies. You expand supply to make sure no one has to. You examine supply chain and figure out the bottlenecks. For example China has started mass producing MRI machines, that’s one way you adress a problem.

liontwist 2y ago
> who starves and dies. It’s not a binary decision. Healthcare is a gradient of treatment options and outcomes. The concept you are missing is called economizing which includes substituting services, adjusting time preferences, sharing, expanding network of providers, etc. > post-2008 fail-capitalism You mean the one where government agencies were taking the risk of bad mortgages from sellers? We don’t have anything close to a capitalist market in healthcare or finance.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  Well we did have TrueCapitalism in the FreeBanking era where all banks could issue their own currency and they would go bust every Tuesday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking
  - liontwist 2y ago
    From your own article: > Although the period from 1837 to 1864 in the US is often referred to as the Free Banking Era, the term is a misnomer in terms of the definition of "free banking" above. Free Banking in the United States before the Civil War refers to various state banking systems based on what were called "free banking" laws at the time. These laws made it necessary for new entrants to secure charters, each of which was subject to a vote by the state legislature with obvious opportunities for corruption. These general banking laws also restricted banks' activities in important ways.
School-Cotton 2y ago
Nobody dies in China? News to me!
jack_h 2y ago
> This is logic of post-2008 fail-capitalism instead of 1970’s and China’s aspirational, problem solving capitalism. No, this is reality. It does not matter if you're working under capitalism, socialism, communism, mercantilism, or some as yet unknown system since economics is the “study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses.” You cannot deny resource scarcity anymore than you can deny natural selection or gravity. To do so leads to a lot of tragic consequences. > You don’t address shortages of healthcare, housing or food with an elegant and fair system to decide who starves and dies. Food is an excellent example to use. In order to guarantee that no one goes hungry, or is well fed, or whatever metric you want to use how much food should be produced? Please find a way for this seemingly simple solution to not devolve into rationing by some mechanism. > You expand supply to make sure no one has to. You examine supply chain and figure out the bottlenecks. By expanding supply of healthcare you are taking resources away from somewhere else. Everyone can become a doctor and the nation will have very cheap and plentiful healthcare. Of course no one will be building houses, repairing roads, generating electricity, making MRI machines, refining helium, building the equipment to do the above, or countless other economic activities required for society as we know it to exist. There are limited resources, people, and time. You can’t do everything all at once. > For example China has started mass producing MRI machines, that’s one way you adress a problem. How do you know how many MRI machines you need? How do you know if you have too many? What about doctors, nurses, gloves, defibrillators, etc… Prices are actually a mechanism that communicates where more resources need to be allocated and where less are needed. What you’re talking about sounds more like central planning or some subset of it.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > expanding supply of healthcare you are taking resources away from somewhere else This is totally wrong. It takes 5 years to get planning approval in UK, it takes 1 year in France. Tunnelling costs are 3x higher in Uk than in europe. Building a tram takes 3 times less. Lower Thames crossing has been in planning for 15 years and we have spent 300 million on lawyers, more than Norway has spent on building an actual tonnel of comparable size. If UK has economy of France but infrastructure worse than Poland, maybe we are doing something dumb. If USA has expensive insulin and poor Bulgaria has cheap insulin and it works just as well, maybe you are doing something dumb. You can expand supply of housing in UK without damaging other sectors of economy: introduce statutory right to add an extra story on your op if your house. Remove green belt protections, introduce 1 month limit on review of any planning application, after which it is automatically granted if valid objection is not found. Introduce a single planning portal and standardise software for planning applications across the whole country instead of every Shropshire and Wolverhampton having their own practices. Purchase perpetual license for such software as a country and make it freely available to every citizen. Introduce favourable mortgages for self-building. Produce detailed, pre-approved designs for standardised homes and bulk purchase materials or modular components for them. Organise mass production of high-speed trams and make them available to local government with favourable, pre approved finance terms, so that larger areas of housing are accessible by high speed transport. All of the above is implemented in different countries around the world, whether it’s France, China or someone else. References: https://www.britainremade.co.uk/building_transport_in_britain_doesn_t_have_to_be_this_hard https://www.britainremade.co.uk/building_transport_in_britai... https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/britains-infrastructure-is-too-expensive https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/britains-infrastructure-is-too...