Comment by lolcraft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolcraft | Hacker News Reader

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> From the left: One big concern with cash transfers is that some goods are complicated for consumers to understand (healthcare, for example).

Not really. The problem with health care is that it works if it's socialized, and it doesn't if it's private, as shown by about all the entire developed world. And Saudi Arabia. No way to patch it to make it palatable to the right wing, but that shouldn't be a problem. There wasn't any way to make the USSR being a failure palatable to the left, either.

To clarify, health care is not a consumer product, it's a particular kind of insurance. It doesn't make sense to bring consumer choice into it. [1]

> if you are left-leaning, maybe you can support a universal minimum income

What are you talking about? Universal minimum income is a socialist proposal. It has been for a fairly long time. I suppose they'll be glad to see the libertarians also agree that it could work, but it's not like Hayek alone invented it.

[1] http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/2/PHCBP.pdf

> What are you talking about? Universal minimum income is a socialist proposal. It has been for a fairly long time. I suppose they'll be glad to see the libertarians also agree that it could work, but it's not like Hayek alone invented it.

Only in some watered down sense of the word socialist. Neither "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" nor "to each according to his contribution" are compatible with a basically capitalist society with private ownership of the means of production that happens to have a minor redistributive element layered on top of it. In fact, I suspect a Marxist analysis of such a programme would conclude that it was simply a mechanism for the capitalist class to stifle the development of class consciousness among the proletariat.

That's exactly what we Marxists do conclude, but personally, if it means people can actually live happier, more fulfilling lives, who gives a damn?

True. It's a little like http://xkcd.com/810/: "Mission fucking accomplished".

You won't see many leftists pressing for competitive purchasing of goods and services on an open market, i.e., where the payers are individuals and not governments - that's the context in which I was writing about a universal minimum income. You do see a bit of this, but it's mostly a big push for monopsony.

Also, health care doesn't have to be insurance. With proper regulation, it could be competitively delivered (e.g. LASIK). However, as many leftists note, the consumer-knowledge problem comes into play at this point. That's what I was referring to.

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