Incoherence Run Amuck
I haven’t blogged much about the Health Crae debate currently raging in the halls of government and elsewhere. Much of the debate is muddled and incoherent at best, and downright mendacious at worst. I have noticed a couple of things that I feel compelled to point out.
You have no right to medical care. Sorry, we don’t accept the notion of positive rights around here. Sooner or later positive rights run smack into the more traditional negative rights. At the point of collision, positive rights must lose, or else we are all servants of the state. If the positive rights inevitably lose, they’re not really rights.
The debate is not about health care, as such. The debate is more properly about who is supposed to pay for health care. Seeing as how health care is a rivalrous, excludable good I’m forced to conclude it is not, in any traditional sense, a public good. Pay for your healthcare yourself.
The socialists and progressives in America have spent decades promoting government interference into health care. When the resulting goat screw produces less than optimal results, what answer do they have? As always, the answer is more government! This strikes me as akin to looking at a house on fire and saying “I know! Let’s add gasoline!” What I find perpetually depressing is the vast number of people that buy off on this bullshit.
I have a quaint and archaic notion about legislators. I feel they should read the laws they vote on, consider the merits, and render a judgment via their vote. If they are unwilling to do so, I consider it prima facie evidence of malfeasance and they should be removed from office. There’s a collection of people who should be getting removed from office any day now under my rules.
Ultimately, the health care debate comes down to one core concept. Do you want the government to take care of you or do you think you can take care of yourself?
You have no right to medical care. Sorry, we don’t accept the notion of positive rights around here. Sooner or later positive rights run smack into the more traditional negative rights. At the point of collision, positive rights must lose, or else we are all servants of the state. If the positive rights inevitably lose, they’re not really rights.
The debate is not about health care, as such. The debate is more properly about who is supposed to pay for health care. Seeing as how health care is a rivalrous, excludable good I’m forced to conclude it is not, in any traditional sense, a public good. Pay for your healthcare yourself.
The socialists and progressives in America have spent decades promoting government interference into health care. When the resulting goat screw produces less than optimal results, what answer do they have? As always, the answer is more government! This strikes me as akin to looking at a house on fire and saying “I know! Let’s add gasoline!” What I find perpetually depressing is the vast number of people that buy off on this bullshit.
I have a quaint and archaic notion about legislators. I feel they should read the laws they vote on, consider the merits, and render a judgment via their vote. If they are unwilling to do so, I consider it prima facie evidence of malfeasance and they should be removed from office. There’s a collection of people who should be getting removed from office any day now under my rules.
Ultimately, the health care debate comes down to one core concept. Do you want the government to take care of you or do you think you can take care of yourself?
Labels: gummint, hopey changy, politics
posted by T at 4:05 PM
1 Comments:
Actually, the vast majority of people are with you on this.
The 11% - if current polling data is reliable - who aren't are the same ones already getting a free ride from government, who just (predictably) want more and more.
This movement is from the top down, not the bottom up: Legions of "experts" and "professionals" who want to make room for themselves at the hogslop trough of bureaucracy!
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