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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (24350)	7/25/2012 5:37:44 PM
From: Lane3	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

We have legislatures at ever level rejiggering things on a constant basis. I addressed that. They rejigger to try to mitigate the problems, often making things worse or merely temporizing, but they don't back off and redo. Their decisions are far more vetted, front page of the newspaper, public meetings, massive hand wringing on even minor issues. Those make sure that all the players are happy, not that the program will work. Part of the reason programs won't work is that they are kludgy because they try to satisfy myriad and conflicting interests as opposed to directly and efficiently addressing the problem. Is one problem with government that they don't take ENOUGH risk because they're under the public microscope? I agree with you on that one. They don't take risk as much because they don't want to make anyone unhappy. They get heat if they make a mistake but also if they do it right but some folks don't like it. No win. Which is all the more reason to do only what is necessary and keep their paws out of the rest. And if you step back from the meme and the prejudice and look at the thousands of positive things governments do, and do VERY well, essential and discretionary, you'll see that we're getting our money's worth. We are not getting our money's worth if we pay for all the crap both in taxes and in lost productivity on top of paying for the positive things.

To: Road Walker who wrote (24350)	7/28/2012 3:13:52 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

Things like this are anything but rare... happen every day:http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=28291887 and in that case, the company making the decision is the one that paid the price, and in the future they can make different decisions. Very different from imposing a new entitlement (which is very hard to repeal no matter how bad it turns out, except perhaps if it goes so far as to present utter ruin to the country), and imposing 3000 pages of new law (and maybe 100 times that much in regulation), that will restrict peoples ability to make other choices in ways that no one can fully understand.

To: Road Walker who wrote (24350)	7/28/2012 3:31:35 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

And I would posit that government makes far fewer mal investments. Their decisions are far more vetted, front page of the newspaper, public meetings, massive hand wringing on even minor issues. I personally make a dozen private sector P&L decisions every day. By my own estimate 10-15% are brain dead wrong and cost very real money. 10 to 15% would probably be a great record for the government. Sure government programs do get more media attention and publicity (not always, but on a whole there is no doubt of the extra attention), but more political attention, and in particular more attention from rent seekers and those looking to get their piece, isn't necessarily a force to improve policy. When you make your decisions, you know it can affect your bottom line, and you have some idea of how it can effect it. And if you screw up badly enough you won't get to make as many of those decisions any more. Voters are often rationally ignorant, and when they do know, when they do see some information the publicity brings out, its often about how government is going to give money to some group. If they are in that group, or even if they like that group, they are likely to support it, whether it actually does any good, often never enters in to the picture. And if the result clearly is screwed up, well then they just need more power and money to "fix it".