3 ms·
> 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
by 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...
- s1artibartfast 2y ago>If USA has expensive insulin and poor Bulgaria has cheap insulin and it works just as well, maybe you are doing something dumb. The insulin example always drives me nuts. The type of insulin you get in Bulgaria is also cheap in the US. In the US, you can get a months supply of generic off patent insulin at Walmart for $40. You can also get extremely fancy insulins for $1000, and $10,000 insulin pumps.