My Right Answers
Thursday, 4 September 2008 by Jacob TomawI asked your thoughts on Health Care (is it one word or two BTW) and Education as Rights. Here are my answers:
Have heath care and education always been rights?
If so, why were they were not mentioned at the founding, in the new deal, or great society?
If not, when and how did they become rights?
These are not Rights. A Right cannot place demands on others. I have the Right of life, but that cannot force others to feed, clothe, or shelter me. I have the Right of liberty, but that cannot force others to allow me to do things to them or their property. Having a Right of education or health care would mean I can force others to educate me or treat me or pay for either.
Why are they not treated as rights by most people today?
Here I committed the error of using people when I meant Americans. I don’t know about other cultures or civilizations. However, in America I don’t think most people think we should force doctors or teachers, at the point of a gun, to serve patients or students. We will have to see in near future to what degree Americans believe that government should force us to pay for these things. It is not clear a majority does yet. The rest of the Western Civilization also does not seem to think doctors and teachers should be forced directly, but do support force via taxes.
What level of health care and education should be provided to meet the right?
Those who support the Rights say they only support a “basic” level. I have no idea what that means. Everything that I consider Rights, I do to the fullest extent. Stopping only when it forces someone else to do something.
I think everyone is going to have a different interpretation of what is basic. The mechanism we have for best providing for a wide range of outcomes is the market.
To me these seem to be different the other rights and people might reject their services, is that OK?
First, you will be forced to pay no matter what. The system just does not work if people are not forced to pay.
Second, I would like to say this is like Social Security, you could just not cash the checks. However, it is fundamentally different. These plans are supposed to make the Union better by bringing us all up to the basic level. The strongest effect from them is only seen when everyone is benefiting. If we have a group of sickly dullards out there, America looses. There are already truancy laws on the books. I imagine there would be similar laws if you miss a check-up or forgo a vaccine.
Do we have other rights, which are more universally accepted, that require similar costs to be imposed on everyone?
We usually call these entitlements and I think of that as a bad word.
Do we have any rights that government does not guarantee?
Yes, they are infinite in number but simple in their protection. I am able to justly defend my own right without government. Rights existed before government. Through history we have found that it is best to mold institutions to preserve these Rights. Their preservation is why we set up our government. Our government’s original, but no longer followed, purpose is to promote the preservation of my infinite rights.
Tyler then asked some more questions:
If a universal health care system and education system were in place, and was set up so that you could opt-in or out, do you not think this would benefit the country as a whole?
I do not know and it cannot be known. We cannot not know all the effects such a system would have. Not because the people in charge are not smart enough, but because it is not possible. If you disagree, I recommend The Road to Serfdom.
If you do think it would benefit, but don’t want your taxes going to it, do you have this strong of a fight against the wasteful spending that the government is doing?(iraq, oil subsidies, bridges to no where, pork barrel spending..etc)
Those things make me sick also. These things come about because of the incentives the system presents to pols and bureaucrats. It is not a matter of having different people in charge, but of having a different system. I don’t know how we fix the system or what system we would replace it with in order to prevent these things from occurring. James Madison thought he had created a system that had a chance at working. He, Jay, and Hamilton presented some very compelling arguments why this would work. And it does work, as long as we mostly agree on what working it, and we don’t. I think the Founders may have miscalculated to what extent Americans would not agree on the goals of Government.
And lastly, Is it not worth it to lose money on health care and education since it’s an investment (imagine we are in that idealistic world where these programs are actually set up and run properly) that will pay dividends in the future?
Two points:
1) We have no way of knowing if it will pay dividends in the future as I point out above.
2) Utopia is not an option and I think utopia is the only place this would work. However, not everyone would find this as utopia. Some might think it is utopia to force people to pay for these prefectly executed programs. Force does not exist in my utopia.
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September 5th, 2008 at 9:53
As I read responses to what I wrote, I think i’d like to clarify how I used the word ‘right’. I consider them rights of living in a civilized society. The idea that people would take what I said as meaning a god given right, didn’t cross my mind. This isn’t anyone else’s fault but my own, as that is a more common way of using the word. A better word would have been ‘privilege’ .
Just like having a police department, fire department, roads, water, sewage systems…etc. These public services may not be a defined right of man - from the bible, Thomas Paine or our founding fathers. However, they are privileges of living in a civilized society, and in my opinion play a key part in keeping it a civilized society.
“We will have to see in near future to what degree Americans believe that government should force us to pay for these things. It is not clear a majority does yet. ”
I agree. I think it will be interesting to see how the public responds to both candidates proposed solutions. Both have problems (imo). Hopefully the media will ask tough questions instead of just jumping on what they can sensationalize.
“The mechanism we have for best providing for a wide range of outcomes is the market.”
I disagree. The market is based on profit. If it’s not profitable, it won’t be done. It’s why a lot of pharmaceutical companies spend more money on marketing than research.
Long term investments in basic research/health care is one of the best investments society can make. Companies aren’t in it for the long term or the discoveries they can’t control.
The market wouldn’t have allowed Jonas Salk to develop the polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh. Nor would the vaccine have been given out to public. Because of this government involvement, our society was able to wipe out (essentially) polio.
Under a market system, this would not be done.
“I imagine there would be similar laws if you miss a check-up or forgo a vaccine.”
Slippery slope arguments can be made to support both sides of the discussion. I imagine that a lot of people won’t pay for health care (can’t or choose not to spend their money) while a lot of people won’t be able to get health care (due to pre existing conditions). As a whole it makes society more susceptible to disease and outbreak. This could lead to a society of fortress-ified communities to keep the massive numbers of sick out of their community. I also imagine that it would create a society that hides any potential illness for fear of having your health care company drop you or raise rates so high you can’t afford it.
“I do not know and it cannot be known. We cannot not know all the effects such a system would have. Not because the people in charge are not smart enough, but because it is not possible. If you disagree, I recommend The Road to Serfdom.”
I agree that it cannot be known. However, their have been a number of countries which have tried to take The Road to Serfdom complete market approach. They usually involve a form of corporate totalitarianism. See what the chicago boys did to Chile and what Sachs did to post communist Russia/Poland/Bolivia. These countries suffer from large amounts of corruption, huge spikes in unemployment (above the 20% mark), suicide and disease.
Just to clarify my stance. These topics always come back to the socialistic society vs capitalistic society. Their are awful examples of both systems. I don’t want a society that is 100% of either. I believe that they both will end up as a corrupt states of tyranny. I think we need aspects of both to to try to keep each in check. I will admit that is easy to say, tough to actually implement. To try to even get answers to these would require topic by topic debates. And while I think would be a very fun thing to have (to a degree), I also think it would be painful to do in a blog..heh.
One last thing - I really hope I’m not annoying/bothering anyone and I hope that I haven’t offended anyone. I love these types of conversations. There is a lot in this world that I don’t know, and it’s great to learn more about why people believe what they do.
One more last thing - I really look forward to your comments on the RNC. While I was able to watch some of it, I was unable to watch Thursday night.
One more one more last thing - What version of wordpress are you on? Your server was being rebooted this morning and as I refreshed the http sever came back before the mysql server. From the WP db connection error page, it looked like you were on an older version. If that’s the case, I really recommend you giving WP 2.6 a try. The new backend interface is much nicer and seemed a little more RAM friendly.