Misconceptions about libertarians

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Will people innovate in such fields before it is too late?

A stable ecosystem is crucial to humanity's survival, and a crucial long-term strategic asset. People think too much about the short-term. Ultimately, the way it is going, unlimited economic growth WILL cause an environmental catastrophe beyond the scope of even global warming, and even the most advanced technology will not be able to do anything about it before many of Earth's species become extinct, or mutate into something ghastly.
Sensible capitalism need not be an oxymoron. Regulations should be in place to prevent bad things happening.

Would you call genetic defects and cancer catastrophes? Or something that only people with deep pockets or limited charity support should be able to afford. Do note that many private hospitals are out for profit, and will have prices above variable costs and contribution to fixed costs for profit. And don't forget local clinics, where there is no competition in the area. The doctors out for profit have a ball at keeping local prices high.

One could argue that not only a good amount of pay, but a strong, highly motivating organisation culture can be just as good at inspiring innovation. The NHS needs high morale right now. Thanks NuLabour.

Healthcare should not be a privilege, but a right. As for the voucher system, well, if it were extended to all situations, except non-reconstructive cosmetic surgery, junk medicine, etc, then it would be fair. Private businesses sub-contracted by the government, essentially. Still, there are problems even with that.

Strict regulations are better preventative measures. Strong, thorough testing and proper quality control would ensure that most of the no good, useless/harmful medicines sold by quack companies never get onto the market to blight patients.

Too late for what? The universe won't suddenly implode, not only that, but "too late" seems to imply

Actually, what is necessary is working farms and industries. Technically, if people think too much about the short term what will cause their leaders to think about the long-term? Not only that, but we see the major push towards environmental destruction in newer developing nations, not in the older ones as the newer ones do not yet have the level of development where environmental protection makes much sense. This means that the way it seems to be going will not lead to environmental catastrophe. So? What if these creatures become extinct? Not only that, but how many mutations do we see occur? Practically none. We see creatures die by the boatloads but no mutations.


I see both as unlikely. I never said that medical care was set up in a perfect manner, not only that, but what about those local clinics when population growth increases and we have set up a monopoly with no chance of competition? Frankly, I see the gains from competition in terms of faster and more effective care to be worth the costs. Certainly there will be profits made, but that is not a major problem.


A strong, highly motivating organizational culture will not necessarily act in competitive manners. Even concerned individuals can misallocate resources.


Rights are not things we ordain, they either are or they aren't. If a right is merely a governmental contract, then it is hardly a right. Frankly, health care should be a good/service so as to allow for improvement, development, and to account for the fact that not all people can necessarily get the same treatments due to limitations in resources. As for a voucher system it should be towards insuring a patient, with insurance determining what is to be covered, frankly, if we fix insurance then it should only be towards high cost procedures that would otherwise break the bank.

Not really, strict regulations are usually uneconomical anyway. Frankly, I just see in your disposition a tendency towards overregulation of everything without regard for expected gains or losses from doing so. More forced regulation means longer waiting periods for valuable medications to reach the market, this in turn means more deaths, now we can avoid directly killing people, but frankly the largest concern would probably best be minimizing deaths or maximizing utility and I think that mechanisms that regulate too much will avoid doing so simply to avoid minimizing deaths on one end rather than regarding the other.

Apologies, Leviathan is a reference to Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan is basically a government formed by men in order to get out of anarchy according to Hobbes. This government will seek to expand its initial power (for example, look at the U.S. Federal government in 1800 and compare it to the government today). The problem with this increasing power is it tends to infringe on people's rights (or in some cases ignore them all together, such as in Nazi Germany), so libertarians may favor constraints on this leviathan to control it(i.e. constitutions with clear guidelines, super majorities required to make changes to policy, etc).

As for health care, health economics has some interesting insights in the subject. First of all, the marginal effect of medicine is zero (so, if someone is helped, it is offset by someone else who is harmed). For a detailed analysis of this and other health care signaling, I'd recommend reading Robin Hanson (http://hanson.gmu.edu/showcare.pdf). Another interesting fact is having "free" health care does actually make one any more healthy; use 30-40% more medical services, however. This was shown in the RAND Health insurance experiment from 1974 to 1982, where the government paid $50 million to randomly assign 7700 people in the US to three to five years each of either free, pay partially, or pay full for health care. So far this is our best experiment to see the effects of health care (no other similar experiment has been repeated since then). The book Free for All (http://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB199/) goes into greater detail on this (or the free summary, http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9174/ , is nice too).

Knowing this, universal health care does not look like a very appeasing deal anymore. People will go visit the doctor more, but they will likely be harmed rather than helped on average (again with the marginal benefit zero, you are most likely just increasing your risk by going to the doctor if you are not willing to pay directly for it). Of course most people probably will not believe this because it either goes against their ideology or just take the normal view that "health care and doctors are good and that's all I need to know" without doing any real research in the subject (this view is fairly common throughout human history, even before 100 years ago, when you probably would actually be better off not seeing a doctor if you were ill). Then there is the who government bureaucracy with a universal health care system that would reduce the general effectiveness of the health system, which is the more common view against universal health care (and an entirely legitimate argument).

As for the environment, many of the "problems" currently associated with it could probably be resolved via privatization. Common ownership of land or resources will usually result in a "tragedy of the commons"; the common grounds are overused and rendered unusable. If you actually own the land or resource, you have an incentive to care about the future (since that will be future profits or will be inherited by your children). This same logic applies to animal species as well if you are concerned about extinction. I once heard an argument that during Thanksgiving, "We are killing more turkeys per year than in the past and in X years, they will be extinct". However, they are not heading to extinction precisely because people want to eat them; firms have an incentive to increase the supply of turkeys to meet demand and to ensure there will be turkeys next year to make more money. As one of my professors once said, "Nothing privately owned has gone extinct, nor will it". If anything, we need less regulation and the expansion of property rights (i.e., auctioning off more common land/resources).