Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Well, no, I instead confused the term "the public good" with the economics term "public good". Public goods are goods that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, and generally they are described as things without "commercial interest in providing for it" for those reasons.
The reason I did this is because the economics term "public goods" is more clearly defined, while the term "the public good" is so vacuous, that I could insert anything.
1) I find it unlikely that the bare minimum for literacy would require public education at this point in time.
2) Most public schooling would not really make students more capable of adjusting to innovation. Most classes taken are not even relevant to any innovation.
3) If the matter were important, then I do not see why commercial interest would be lacking.
visagrunt, I already addressed your concern, you just broke up what I said. I don't need to address you twice.
"Employers themselves can guarantee the health of their workforce"
As for the "viability of the investment", honestly, I don't really have much concern for that metric. It will tend to correspond to economic efficiency. Your only case is that the distribution of costs is more efficient under one system than another. If it isn't, then you don't have a point, and I would think you would need to make a case. It really seems to me that following from Coase's theorem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem , (assuming that we could even label this health-care issue an externalityh in in general, distribution of resources won't matter so long as transaction costs are low enough. (and transaction costs are totally beside your point)
Yes, employers guaranteeing their workforce is a club good. That's kind of the point. Health care is both excludable and rivalrous, so it isn't a public good. Talking about "ensuring that every consumer has an opportunity to participate in the marketplace" is a moral cause, not really a good, unless you are willing to admit to the "abolition of homosexuality from the public square" as also a public good. If we say that, then ANYTHING can be labeled a public good, making the issue less relevant, as the real concern is items or services that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable.
You surely don't mean "maintenance of moral hazard". If you do, then you need to be the one reading the book, not me. Moral hazard is a negative thing. Even further, the issue is that "inequality of information" also is something you'll have to put more effort in defending. While there is a vague notion of what you might be talking about, there are a lot of different possible directions you can go with this, and some of them are more or less valid. That being said, I am really unsure that the inequality of information problem is as big as you are trying to sell it as, as inequality of information exists in every single freaking field, but the case for nationalization on that ground is not considered relevant.
visagrunt, that's nice of you to recommend a book and readings. But frankly, it makes you look like an arrogant a**. Even further, I really just don't think you see much past your ideological preconceptions and framings of reality that you impose.
At what point did I make a case for nationalization? My point has absolutely nothing to do with the modality of delivery, and a more careful reading should have revealed that. I have never suggested that government is necessarily a service provider, either in education or in health. What I
have said is that government has to ensure that universality of access exists. There are many ways of accomplishing that.
Clearly employers could be one mode of delivery. However, who has a commercial interest in educating a child with a learning disability? "You child is too expensive to educate. We only accept "normal" children in our school."
Who has an interest in providing health care to a worker who has retired? "We have all we need from you. Good bye."
Who has an interest in hiring a worker who has a pre-existing medical condition? "You are perfectly qualified for the job, but the costs of paying for your anti-retroviral medications exceeds the value that we can extract from your work."
Who has an interest in continuing the employment of a worker who develops a chronic medical condition? "Your work is very good, but the cost of your kidney dialysis makes you a liability to us, now."
These are the kinds of gaps that government is uniquely established to address. Perhaps though regulation (such as prohibiting employers from making hiring and firing decisions based on medical cost grounds), perhaps through programs (medical insurance for unemployed and unemployable people), perhaps through direct service delivery (public schools). I don't pretend to know the best way of addressing every gap, but I do assert that it is government's function to identify and address those gaps.
(Thank you for catching my mistake on moral hazard. I had intended to write, "mitigate.")
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--James
07 Oct 2010, 8:01 pm
