QUOTE]Originally posted by crazy canadian
Without gov't, where are your roads?
In some areas, like roads, where government has had control for a very long time, we often can't imagine good free market solutions. We fall into the trap of "I can't think of how the market would solve this, which must mean that the market "can't" solve this".
The market, of course, is more imaginative than we can ever be,
since it is a composite of many minds, not just ours. The market has a great deal to "say" about roads, since most of them were private in the early days of the United States.
Yes, there were some toll roads back then, just as there would
undoubtedly be today. However, most roads were built and maintained by those who lived beside them. The businesses, homes, and farms built them for their own use and that of their customers or visitors, dividing the cost between themselves. In a libertarian society, I suspect that most business highways would operate this way too.
In St. Louis, neighborhoods are taking back their roads. Over 1,000 streets have been deeded back to separate neighborhood associations which are formed for that purpose. Those living on the road charge visitors nothing, but do restrict travel by closing off the street or expelling vagrants. Needless to say, crime is much lower on these private streets. Condo communities operate similarly except that their roads are built privately and remain private.
Where are your hospitals?
Socialized medicine, in any form, rarely helps people with expensive medical needs adequately. In Canada, heart patients die waiting for surgery, so those who can afford it come to the U.S. for treatment. In Britain, kidney dialysis is rarely approved for people over 55 years of age. The reason is simple: when government promises to take care of every little sniffle, everyone clamors for more of the 'free' service instead of dealing with simple medical needs themselves. As a result, medical resources must be rationed. By sacrificing one expensive patient, many more people with modest needs can be satisfied. From a political standpoint, this type of triage maximizes votes.
In the U.S., if a person with expensive needs manages to get care, Medicaid will not fully reimburse the health care providers. One of the hospitals I queried estimated that 80% of its shortfall was due not to deadbeats, but to partial payments by Medicare/Medicaid. To remedy this situation, hospitals charge those with private insurance more for their services. This increases the cost of insurance, and fewer people can afford it. When these people get ill, they turn to Medicare/Medicaid and the cycle repeats itself. Some doctors have become so frustrated with the paperwork, underpayments, and the liability that they incur for mistakes in coding their forms, that they will no longer take Medicare/Medicaid patients. Eventually, people with 'government' insurance will have a long wait to see a doctor that will work with the accompanying bureaucratic nightmare and may, like those in socialized systems, die in the interim.
A better solution would be to get the government out of health care at all levels so that costs and insurance plummet. My estimates suggest that we could see price decreases as great as 80%. Almost everyone could afford to be insured and have access to catastrophic medical treatment when they needed it.
Rare instances where an uninsured individual was not able to pay for care would still occur. However, health care providers would be more likely to take such charity cases if the cost of doing so was made more reasonable by getting government out of health care. An appeal to community charitable organizations might be sufficient to pay the lowered costs of marketplace health care as well.
Medicare/Medicaid is like putting a bandage on a hemorrhage. In the long run, it simply masks the true problem. Instead of treating the symptoms of high health care costs, let's cure the underlying disease -- government intervention!"
Where are your schools?
It has been well documented that private education outperforms public education in a wide variety of areas. Education should be privatized and attendance should be optional. There would be ways for the poor to receive an education. "Stay at home" parents (an other respected adults) may teach local children at home for a very small fee if parents so choose to send their children there. Cable stations that give a full educational curriculum and cost little more than HBO would probably become very popular. With such support, a child could learn at home or attend a school where cable instruction allowed teachers (or even parents) to focus on helping struggling students. Even without any extra support, poor children are likely to get vastly improved education at almost no cost. Private scholarships and grants would continue to exist. Local businesses give gifts to schools that do well in educating future prospective employees.
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Just because government has done something does not mean that it had to do something or that it should continue to do that thing. So many things that government does today can be done (often better) by the private sector. Government should do little more than protect people against fraud and violence.
When my mom was alive and living with me, while she had 24 hour nursing, a hospice volunteer came at least once a week for her and the family.
