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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (52025)	3/6/2008 1:13:13 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 540841

A big problem is that when you suck profit out of a system, you are by definition taking money out of the system to distribute to other people Ignoring for a moment the benefits of the profit motive, and just looking at profit as total waste, the profit of insurance companies isn't high enough to explain the differences in health care costs between the US, and Canada, Japan, or the EU countries. Profit systems almost never give you the best product at the best price- not for long, anyway In general, they are more likely to do so than other systems. Whether or not health care insurance is some sort of exception is widely argued, but even most of the people arguing for a socialized health care insurance system don't generally argue for socializing everything (and mostly don't argue even for a directly socialized medical care system, they expect to keep the profit here, they just want to take it out of insurance)

To: epicure who wrote (52025)	3/6/2008 6:56:01 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540841

If you look at food, what capitalism gets you is the crappiest product companies can get away with, for which they can either generate demand, or trick the consumer in to buying using false claims, or heavy advertising. Here's a mind experiment for you. What food products do you think we would get if the voters decided the product line rather than the for-profit companies? How would the products they vote for be different from the ones they now buy?

To: epicure who wrote (52025)	3/6/2008 12:13:17 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 540841

Markets supply a lot of "crap food" because that's what a lot of people want. Markets are good at giving people what they want. But people (such as you) also want healthier foods, and markets in food make them available. An enormous variety of food types are available, because markets, at least sufficiently large markets with customers with diverse demands are also often very good at providing variety. If people vote on food, or vote for politicians who select foods, or vote for politicians who appoint bureaucrats who select foods how is the food supply going to be any better? People will still vote for what they want, and the voting won't be as responsive or likely to produce as diverse results as the market. There is enough demand for healthier food now that I suppose you would get healthy options from your government approved menu, but you would have much fewer choices, and you would still have all the crap you complain about, unless the food choices are assigned in an authoritarian way, and then you get a black market for the crap. The whole idea smacks of totalitarianism.