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A basic income is a great idea...it would also be a good idea to completely remove the profit motive from health care. A social safety net that includes a livin

A basic income is a great idea...it would also be a good idea to completely remove the profit motive from health care. A social safety net that includes a living wage, guaranteed higher education, and retirement is completely possible if you don't spend so much on defense and intelligence.

sp332 12y ago
You can't remove the profit motive from health care.
- bluthru 12y ago
  What do you mean? It's quite common.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Some technology will be too expensive to provide, or some procedure will require skills that are too rare. They will command high prices. And you can't find enough doctors, hospital administrators, drug researchers etc for a whole country without finding some greedy/rational ones who will do better work for more pay.
- zentiggr 12y ago
  Please expand on that - I personally think for-profit health care is one of the most ill-conceived ways of doing business I have ever heard of. Saving people's lives but only in ways that are investor-friendly?
  - sp332 12y ago
    You can reduce it, and you can try to amplify other motivations. But if you're developing a new drug, why wouldn't you market it to people who can pay you more for it? You can't save every life - no one is immortal. And in the decision of what care to give to which people, money will always be one factor. This is probably amplified in non-life-threatening situations since personal trainers and nutritional consultants will probably not be covered by collective health plans.
  - tdaltonc 12y ago
    healthcare innovation requires enormous investment. How should society pick healthcare problems to focus on, and how will we know a solution when we see it? The distributed price signal is an elegant mechanism for solving this problem and has worked to guide innovation in many other areas of human endeavour.
    - sp332 12y ago
      We can do better, though. For example, if poor people are hit harder by something, there might be less "price signal" than if a few rich people are sick.
johnward 12y ago
I'm no economist but at some point aren't we going to become so productive that there won't be enough need for workers. Are we maybe at that point now? If every single person wanted to work there would not be enough jobs to support that. So what happens in the future? Some people have jobs and are rich while the rest are in poverty and can't eat? I don't think society could function with that many people not having an income. If it came down to it and I had to kill you for my family to survive then I'd hate to tell you which one I would choose.
- ef4 12y ago
  This same argument has been repeated for literally centuries now, and it always turns out wrong in the long run. Imagine if we could run the entire world economy with only 5% of the workers. Pandemonium? No, it has already happened before. Agriculture was the whole economy, the rest was rounding error. Virtually all workers worked in agriculture. Now we produce all that and much more with something less than 5% of the workforce. Having no more work to do necessarily means that everybody already has everything they want. It's not a meaningful risk. Most of already do work so esoteric that our ancestors wouldn't possibly believe you could base a real economy around it. Yet here we are. Our descendants will do things that similarly boggle us.
  - johnward 12y ago
    Are you saying that we will continue to invent things to do in exchange for money? I feel like there has to be a point that you can't do that. I guess it would have been insane to think that people would be sitting in offices making comments on news forums most of the day.
  - scarmig 12y ago
    It turns out to be right, often enough. In the 19th century, for instance, there was a class of physical laborers whose numbers in the USA reached the tens of millions. But as technology--particular the combustion engine and fossil fuel refining--took off, they became surplus unusable labor that literally was more valuable being turned into glue, or letting them starve to death. Yeah, horses. "But it's different this time! Horses aren't people!" you say. Sure, things are always different. But you're burying the actual argument into the assumptions you're making: that people are infinitely moldable and infinitely trainable, and every person is capable of creating value in modern economies. It's not some logical contradiction for "people want more stuff" and for "the most useless, marginal workers can't provide value by participating in the economy" to both be true. Dismissing the second idea requires a bit more than a pat answer. Even excluding government policies like a minimum wage and required healthcare benefits, lots of people are simply too expensive to employ. Anytime you hire someone, it adds administrative costs. It adds management costs. And the more marginal the worker, the more they need to be managed and administered. At some point any value they could hypothetically provide is outweighed by the cost of employing and managing them and the risk that something they do could expose you to substantial costs, and it's simply cheaper to replace that labor with capital. In a capital rich environment, and in economies where complex organizations can fail catastrophically because of a single node failure, it's simply far too risky to employ a certain class of people. We already do that with many of criminal backgrounds, the physically disabled, and people with substantially reduced mental capabilities. New technology has simply expanded that unemployable class to include lots of people who just don't have much going for them, at least in terms of providing economic value that's legible to corporations and the State.
bmj 12y ago
guaranteed higher education How about "guaranteed job training?" That way, if you wish to pursue a career that does not require a post-secondary degree, you can prepare yourself for that career just as well as the white collar worked who spends four years studying post-modern poetry. N.B.: I have degrees in philosophy and writing, so I'm criticizing the study of the liberal arts.
crazy1van 12y ago
> it would also be a good idea to completely remove the profit motive from health care. If I had a fatal disease with no known cure, I want a system that makes whoever finds the cure filthy rich. That's my best chance at survival. If anything, I want a system with even more profit motive.
- moblahbl4hblah 12y ago
  If the world were as simple as the statement you made then sure...it isn't.
- tzs 12y ago
  Why would anyone care about curing your fatal disease if they are profit driven? They should be able to make more money working on widespread non-fatal problems, like erectile disfunction or baldness.
zo1 12y ago
Ah yes, the old "it'll work, we just need more money, promise!". We've been hearing that one since the beginning of the democratic form of governance. Guess you haven't looked at the recent graphs of US budget spending, otherwise you would have figured out that "more money" doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Hint: Most, if not all, the additional money gets eaten up by newly created bureaucracy.

sp332 12y ago

You can't remove the profit motive from health care.

bluthru 12y ago
What do you mean? It's quite common.
- sp332 12y ago
  Some technology will be too expensive to provide, or some procedure will require skills that are too rare. They will command high prices. And you can't find enough doctors, hospital administrators, drug researchers etc for a whole country without finding some greedy/rational ones who will do better work for more pay.
zentiggr 12y ago
Please expand on that - I personally think for-profit health care is one of the most ill-conceived ways of doing business I have ever heard of. Saving people's lives but only in ways that are investor-friendly?
- sp332 12y ago
  You can reduce it, and you can try to amplify other motivations. But if you're developing a new drug, why wouldn't you market it to people who can pay you more for it? You can't save every life - no one is immortal. And in the decision of what care to give to which people, money will always be one factor. This is probably amplified in non-life-threatening situations since personal trainers and nutritional consultants will probably not be covered by collective health plans.
- tdaltonc 12y ago
  healthcare innovation requires enormous investment. How should society pick healthcare problems to focus on, and how will we know a solution when we see it? The distributed price signal is an elegant mechanism for solving this problem and has worked to guide innovation in many other areas of human endeavour.
  - sp332 12y ago
    We can do better, though. For example, if poor people are hit harder by something, there might be less "price signal" than if a few rich people are sick.

johnward 12y ago

I'm no economist but at some point aren't we going to become so productive that there won't be enough need for workers. Are we maybe at that point now? If every single person wanted to work there would not be enough jobs to support that. So what happens in the future? Some people have jobs and are rich while the rest are in poverty and can't eat? I don't think society could function with that many people not having an income. If it came down to it and I had to kill you for my family to survive then I'd hate to tell you which one I would choose.

ef4 12y ago
This same argument has been repeated for literally centuries now, and it always turns out wrong in the long run. Imagine if we could run the entire world economy with only 5% of the workers. Pandemonium? No, it has already happened before. Agriculture was the whole economy, the rest was rounding error. Virtually all workers worked in agriculture. Now we produce all that and much more with something less than 5% of the workforce. Having no more work to do necessarily means that everybody already has everything they want. It's not a meaningful risk. Most of already do work so esoteric that our ancestors wouldn't possibly believe you could base a real economy around it. Yet here we are. Our descendants will do things that similarly boggle us.
- johnward 12y ago
  Are you saying that we will continue to invent things to do in exchange for money? I feel like there has to be a point that you can't do that. I guess it would have been insane to think that people would be sitting in offices making comments on news forums most of the day.
- scarmig 12y ago
  It turns out to be right, often enough. In the 19th century, for instance, there was a class of physical laborers whose numbers in the USA reached the tens of millions. But as technology--particular the combustion engine and fossil fuel refining--took off, they became surplus unusable labor that literally was more valuable being turned into glue, or letting them starve to death. Yeah, horses. "But it's different this time! Horses aren't people!" you say. Sure, things are always different. But you're burying the actual argument into the assumptions you're making: that people are infinitely moldable and infinitely trainable, and every person is capable of creating value in modern economies. It's not some logical contradiction for "people want more stuff" and for "the most useless, marginal workers can't provide value by participating in the economy" to both be true. Dismissing the second idea requires a bit more than a pat answer. Even excluding government policies like a minimum wage and required healthcare benefits, lots of people are simply too expensive to employ. Anytime you hire someone, it adds administrative costs. It adds management costs. And the more marginal the worker, the more they need to be managed and administered. At some point any value they could hypothetically provide is outweighed by the cost of employing and managing them and the risk that something they do could expose you to substantial costs, and it's simply cheaper to replace that labor with capital. In a capital rich environment, and in economies where complex organizations can fail catastrophically because of a single node failure, it's simply far too risky to employ a certain class of people. We already do that with many of criminal backgrounds, the physically disabled, and people with substantially reduced mental capabilities. New technology has simply expanded that unemployable class to include lots of people who just don't have much going for them, at least in terms of providing economic value that's legible to corporations and the State.

bmj 12y ago

guaranteed higher education How about "guaranteed job training?" That way, if you wish to pursue a career that does not require a post-secondary degree, you can prepare yourself for that career just as well as the white collar worked who spends four years studying post-modern poetry. N.B.: I have degrees in philosophy and writing, so I'm criticizing the study of the liberal arts.

crazy1van 12y ago

> it would also be a good idea to completely remove the profit motive from health care. If I had a fatal disease with no known cure, I want a system that makes whoever finds the cure filthy rich. That's my best chance at survival. If anything, I want a system with even more profit motive.

moblahbl4hblah 12y ago
If the world were as simple as the statement you made then sure...it isn't.
tzs 12y ago
Why would anyone care about curing your fatal disease if they are profit driven? They should be able to make more money working on widespread non-fatal problems, like erectile disfunction or baldness.

zo1 12y ago

Ah yes, the old "it'll work, we just need more money, promise!". We've been hearing that one since the beginning of the democratic form of governance. Guess you haven't looked at the recent graphs of US budget spending, otherwise you would have figured out that "more money" doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Hint: Most, if not all, the additional money gets eaten up by newly created bureaucracy.