To you, who at your tender age are trying to convince me that 'governments must exit health care', that 'competition, the free market, and trade between rational men' is the only way to move forward, and that 'asking health care providers to charge lower rates in social programs is tantamount to slavery and violence', I say this:
Have you ever wondered about the philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and dare I say it, the economics, of violence? Interesting to consider that many have argued your position to be a form of “structural violence”, and this is not a moral statement, it is an anthropological and sociological one. Some have argued that “policies” are simply the rules of engagement.
2 comments:
ask Haiti, most of Africa, aboriginal Canada, and the six-year old kids chained to sewing machines in Asian sweat shops how well "competition, the free market, and trade between rational men" has worked out for them.
Clauswitz says that war is politics by other means, or politics brought to it most extreme (yet logical) conclusion. Therefore he might argue that politics, and the market, (and by extension, warfare) are only a softer (or, in the case of war, more structured) form of the kind of violence that would have seen a hunter-gatherer tribe attack or banish the weak.
p.s. Dick Cheney is not a rational man, and that's where this person's argument breaks down. Like Adam Smith's famous "invisible hand", the assumption that underlies this view is that psycopathic/sociopathic people are not going to get their hands on power, that the market is somehow immune to corruption, perversion, and so on.
In this case, I would argue that someone who has a vested interest in health care providers NOT charging lower rates (i.e. this person's ability to get very rich or not) is engaging in an act of willful naiveite.
It's easy to trust in the goodwill of rational men and the endless awesomeness of the free market when it makes you personally wealthy. In fact, from a standpoint of personal or moral rationalization/justification, this trust in the goodwill of the market becomes necessary. At the risk of oversimplifying, it's what allows one to sleep at night.
I could go on all day...
Post a Comment