Continuing the above, After changing the posting time so they appear in sequence:
Now if government got out of healthcare & education right here, right now, things would be chaotic for the first few years. But not as bad as you'd suppose. In the long run though, medical & education costs would go down. & the quality would remain at the same level or go up.
You make the bald assertion because you can't support it. What would make capitalists, whose entire management philosophy is
MAXIMIZE PROFITS, lower prices? We keep hearing abou improvements in efficiency. That translates to lower costs. Yet even though inflation is under control and the general good calls for price reductions for the unemployed millions, prices have not been reduced. Reality puts the lie to your assertions.
I'm thinking the quality of education especially so. Look around you now - a private school with no federal & little state oversight usually has a better educational program for its students than a state run, federally funded & standardized school.
And why? Because unassisted schools are wealthy. They can pay for the best programs, the best teachers, the best support materials. And if you're thinking of home schooling, ask yourself whatthe teacher-to-student ration is when the teacher are responsible for their own children and no one else.
As for the worries about the poor & underprivileged in our society, they are always going to be an area of concern as long as currency is used for the majority of transactions. But private institutions would spring up to provide assistance to those who need it. They wouldn't be as encompassing or generous as the federal government is now, but they'd be enough to ensure that at least a basic level of education was available to the poor. & trust me, if people contribute money to a girl with a website who asked for donations to get out of credit card debt, people will contribute to a private charity to provide for education.
Another naked assumption…this time the assumption is that people will have the excess income to make such donations when the cheap labor capitalists run all.
It's really strange that you don't recognize you can only entertain these Libertarian fantasies because we've been protected by the government to what little degree we have been for the last two centuries.
But there are other areas that must be addressed simultaneously in order to see a ral benefit, otherwise it's like privatizing the power companies in California but still setting a maximum price they can charge.
The medical malpractice insurance rates are way too high in some areas, owing to frequent & sometimes frivilous litigation & extravagant awards to plantiffs. Teachers' unions are problematic when trying to get rid of a teacher who doesn't do a good job. Medicines such as penicilin that should be available to the public are strictly regulated. I could go on but it wouldn't be enough to simply get the government out of direct involvement with medicine & education, it'd take removing them from the peripheral issues that affect medicine & education as well.
Can you say how this can be done without terminal disruption? I don't think it possible.
Prove me wrong, if you can.
& it would further help if we got rid of that damn protection racket called the federal income tax.
The heart of the cheap labor movement's complaint.
See, while you are correct that any form of govenrment could work if it remained uncorrupted, the problem is keeping it uncorrupted. Ours is corrupt as hell, but it was designed to be functional despite human nature. Socialism looks great on paper, but it doesn't take into account human nature (at least the models that have been tried) & so it never works out well for long.
Privatization of damn near everything will work & it'll work better than a government run operation. There are a few exceptions (city water for example) but medicine & education aren't exceptions.
How can you complain about human nature in one breathe then depend on it by preaching the virtues of privatization in the next? Don't you see the contradiction there?
Oh, here's a novel idea - education is & always will be a parental responsibility. If a kid makes it into college on an athletic scholarship but can't make it through the front page of a paper, I don't blame the schools. I blame the parents who willing neglected their obligation to see to their kids education. So the fear of a non-government school system creating high illiteracy rates is only valid if we are speaking solely of orphans.
Universal literacy is new as well.
And it took government support of education. Before the Civil War, it simply didn't exist.
Prove me wrong if you can.
I just don't see government as the best & only solution to problems. In fact I see it as contributing to the problems even when it attempts to help.
You make the error of thinking the choice is between bad government and no government.
