US Healthcare reform

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buttermilk is unhealthy.


fish is very healthy, though.


eat fish and rice every day and you'll live to be 100.

eat fish and rice every day and you'll live to be 100.

Now, these comments are nothing short of incredible. The Post Office has been on the loser list for many decades. Most recently, it has been included on the GAO’s high-risk list, increasing its debt to $10.2 billion and incurring a cash shortfall of $1 billion.

Note that the post office is not being shut down for this mess. On the contrary, it is being subsidized not only with tax dollars but, most importantly, with laws. Title 18 (I.83.1696) says that “Whoever establishes any private express for the conveyance of letters or packets” can be fined and jailed. Moreover, the law (39.I.6.606) says that any letter delivered by unlawful means can be seized and stolen by the government. It is immune from antitrust action and criminal liability. You can read the whole Post Office Gosplan here. [http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/39/usc_sup_01_39_10_I.html]

If the Post Office were really a market institution, it would go belly up in about half an hour. So, no, there is no competition here. Only the government is permitted to deliver first-class letters. How do UPS and Fed-Ex get away with it? They slip through a hole in the law by delivering packages, not mail. And it wasn’t easy to survive even then. Just as in the 19th century when the federal government waged war on Lysander Spooner’s American Letter Mail Company and on Wells Fargo (and Benjamin Tucker defended “private enterprise in the letter-carrying business”), the government has been hounding private services in our time, whether through wicked labor union bullying or by restricting their services as much as possible.

The freedom of UPS and Fed-Ex to operate at all is hard won. But the government has succeeded in destroying the private marketplace in the one area that government monopolizes by law. It took the innovation of digital messaging to finally horn in on that area. And this has worked in a big way, with a massive collapse in the number of people choosing government mails over digital alternatives.

Just posting this because I came across it.

How government handles a monopoly, specifically, the United States Postal Service:

From: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/oba ... ce126.html

Lew Rockwell is a well-known Libertarian... of course he's opposed to the government doing anything!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Rockwell

Irrelevant. Someone asked for the facts on how the government maintains a monopoly over postal service, and I finally came across something that summed the issue up nicely.

I strongly suggest that you don't get your health care from your mailman

Once we get Obama-Care you would not want to get your mail from your doctor.

ruveyn

Once we get Obama-Care you would not want to get your mail from your doctor.

ruveyn

I wouldn't want to get my mail from my doctor even without ObamaCare. I don't really see what the problem is. We have a similar system here (as even Fox News would admit, only they went on to bring in totally irrelevant and prejudiced comments on our other legislation), and really it isn't like they'd rather kill the disabled/elderly than providing healthcare.

@ Ed: look up Godwin's law online and then come back to thsid ebate without totally irrelevant Nazi comparisons.

Not irrelavent at all... it's like asking Hitler for his opinion on Jews.

@ Ed: look up Godwin's law online and then come back to thsid ebate without totally irrelevant Nazi comparisons.

Although no doubt Stalin. Mao, and a few other totalitarian dictators did a reasonable job of extreme cruelty and general viciousness Hitler and his malevolent crew did a rather classic piece of totally extreme nastiness on a large number of people and I wonder why people should hesitate to use him as a philosophical asymptote just because a guy named Godwin seemed disturbed over the comparison. Hitler fits the bill very nicely and the concept is quite useful. To hell with Godwin.

I wouldn't have minded Nazi comparisons if they actually had any relevance. For example, if the discussion had been about some type of genocide, it may be useful to make a comparison to past genocides, including the holocaust. However, this debate is about healthcare, and the system really has to go way, way farther than ObamaCare in order for this to be a useful argument. Besides, that wasn't Ed's point at all (comparing healthcare systems).

It absolutely amazes me how easy it is to persuade people to vote contrary to their best interests, and to vote instead in the best interests of other, wealthier people.