Comments on: Health Care: Socialism is a Bipartisan Disease

By: Michael Bindner

Michael Bindner — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:50:56 +0000

Slavery did not actually end until mechanical cotton harvesting was invented. It just had a different face.

Collectivism without a profit motive will be broken down – however if you imbue the collective with the profit motive it will be unstoppable. Until this happens, the status quo will continue.

We had monopsony and monopoly without coercive government – except that the monopolists bought out the government. What you fail to understand is that the source of coersion in American society is the economic elite which is funding a kabuki dance of less government.

By: Alex R. Knight III

Alex R. Knight III — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:22:32 +0000

I fail to see how such a state of affairs could be held together in the absence of coercive government laws that protect such a state of affairs. All employers would be thrown upon the free market. Any who did collude would soon find themselves outpaced by those going it alone at cheaper cost and better prices. Profit motive always breaks down collectivism in the end. In any case, however, I'm not really concerned with the outcome of any given situation — economic or otherwise — once violence is removed from the equation. Remove violence and situations tend to work themselves out — just as the end of black slavery didn't spell the death knell of southern cotton plantations or the textile industry.

By: Michael Bindner

Michael Bindner — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:39:27 +0000

Alex, there is considerable collusion in the labor market from the employer side. The market is not free, but can be more accurately characterized as monopsonistic comptetion. In a free market, the wage is set by the market. This is not the case in the current labor market. The current market does not clear, unlike a free market. The fact that employers work to keep the market in its current state testify to its un-freedom. Getting rid of LLC's won't even do the trick, since sole proprietors are as likely to be monopsonists.

By: Alex R. Knight III

Alex R. Knight III — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:15:56 +0000

And Michael, that participation is occurring at the barrel of a gun, whether anyone is “benefitting” or not. That seems to me the ultimate Ponzi scheme. As for LLC’s, those could no longer exist with no government since it has been just that institution which has granted LLC’s both partial immunity from their own bad judgments marketwise, and actual physical human status which is absurd on its very face. An artifice has not the same inherent life, liberty, and property as an individual. If some people, in the absence of government, wish to form cooperatives voluntarily, so be it. However, it need not be a universal model — that is antithetical to the concept of a free market itself. As to untangling from government, that says it all — there’s no such thing as un-free employment contracts except, euphemistically, under total communism. If you’re in a contract you don’t like, you realize your mistake, and get out. That’s liberty when there exists no government.

By: Michael Bindner

Michael Bindner — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:05:39 +0000

Health care as proposed is not a Ponzi Scheme, because everyone is participating and benefitting simultaneously.

Simply abolishing government won’t assure a free market unless you go all the way and get rid of limited liability corporations and replace them all with employee cooperatives, with the cooperatives providing educational and health services currently provided by the state. If stock companies with hierarchical management and sole proprietorships with large workforces are still the order of the day, you won’t have a free market. You can’t untangle from government and from un-free employment contracts by simply walking away from government.