The NSA-DEA police state tango
salon.com
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Perfect.
They certainly think so. That leaves out the part where politicians won't shut down those agencies (or parts of agencies) because of the power base they represent.
As Rand observed through Dr. Ferris, "There's no way to rule innocent men... when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them." They can make criminals by passing more laws or by detecting more people breaking already existing laws. Rand was referring only to the first type, and they do have some different effects, but they both serve to increase control.
First the courts allowed searches (except they're called officer safety frisks) based on "reasonable suspicion" (an absurdly low and vague hurdle created by Terry vs Ohio); now intelligence collected by agencies pursuant to foreign intelligence mandates is being used to improve detection and conviction rates for domestic crimes. And there's the beginning of mass surveillance of public spaces: cameras, radios, and modern technology enabling identification and location tracking of individuals, cars, cell phones...
It's an interesting political dynamic when everyone's fearful that they've broken some law and fearful that they've been detected but not yet arrested.
The politicians, most of them, want to rule, not serve. They want to accumulate power for themselves and their friends, at the expense of everyone else who is caught between increasing surveillance, stricter laws, and increased black market related criminal activity.
Turns out, that's bullshit. It's used by DEA, it's used by IRS -- soon it will be used by Obamacare.
Who's doing the knee-jerking, again?
Don't be a fool.
In fact the IRS is what administrates Obamacare and it's already in the news that IRS was using NSA data.
The IRS is in no sense "running" Obamacare. That would be DHHS.
If you're going to reply with the claim about the IRS needing to hire 9,000-16,000 new agents to "enforce Obamacare," there is nothing I can do to stop you and will only point out that the claim was based on partisan estimates and thoroughly debunked (http://www.factcheck.org/2010/03/irs-expansion/).
How could we "have single payer" without the threat of violence?
A doctor would normally be free to treat whoever he wants, and patients would be free to choose any doctor they want, and any insurance company they want. The only way to change that reality is through threats of violence.
For example, today a doctor cannot compete with his local hospital's monopoly without obtaining a "certificate of need" from the State, certifying that the local region "needs" an operating room. (Such certificates aren't actually granted of course, since they are used to protect monopolies.) If he opens one anyway, he faces fines, imprisonment, loss of license to practice, etc. (Threats and violence.)
So in fact there is already not any free market in medicine today--just a bunch of fascism and crony capitalism... Single payer just seems like even more centralization, more threats, more violence, when the problem today is already a complete lack of any free market.
However I'm willing to bet that the people who are actually paying for the system would face threats of violence if they stopped paying.
We do have private health insurance here in the UK, but I'm sure there are restrictions on who can do business and where and when. I think that is unavoidable. There are obvious difficult trade-offs when legislating this kind of thing. Not everyone can be made happy. However, the freedom to operate a medical business without government interference is not as important as ensuring that everyone has access to adequate healthcare. If your rights as a business owner get trampled on at the cost of saving human lives, well, frankly that's just too bad. There are plenty of other lines of work you can get into where there aren't quite so many dangerous and perverse monetary incentives.
And there's really no need to prevent competition, since people pay the taxes that fund our NHS anyway. If they want to spend again to go to the private system, it's their choice.
For example, if you don't regulate the quality of healthcare, then it is quite easy to make money selling bad quality services. Many people are gullible and some die needlessly from being sold "cures" that do nothing. People with cancer are a great target, because the real treatments are so unpleasant.
Medical research requires a lot of expensive equipment. You could have a lot of government funding research - but academia has its problems. Academic research isn't always very focused and efficient, it doesn't always bridge the gap between theoretical and practical. Otherwise you have to provide incentives, which usually means patents. However, if you have patents on new drugs, then that grants a de facto monopoly on that treatment. The drug company that is the sole supplier of the medication that can save your life has an unsettling amount of market power. How do you solve this problem? Do you think in a truly free market, groups of people who were sick would band together and fund research into their cure? That would be a very slow process. The capital to find a cure should raised as quickly as possible to save as many lives as possible. To do that, you have to have expected future returns from people who aren't sick yet.
Regarding the question of who gets to open hospitals and operating rooms - I can easily believe there is crony capitalism going on. However, this is something that should be regulated and controlled. Having hospitals open and close like regular businesses is not a good thing. If a restaurant is poorly managed, customers realise it from the quality of the food and the business fails because they lose customers. If a hospital is poorly managed, people can die. The negative market pressures in healthcare involve actual human suffering and death. It's not going to be much comfort if your dying act is posting a poor review of a hospital that lost your paperwork, misdiagnosed you or did the wrong surgery.
I agree that once data is available it will be abused. But Obamacare one of the main problem? Dude, take off the tinfoil hat.
It would be the height of naiveté to believe the information wouldn't end up being abused. It's already being abused. Also, maybe you aren't in the USA so FYI, the IRS is currently in a scandal for abuse of authority, especially related to "tinfoil hat" organizations. (Those crazies apparently being, people who do not trust the IRS to handle their health care.)
Also, if you had to choose one place to tap communications, doctors' offices would be a likely step. Lawyers too. Internet and political office are already completed, so doctors, lawyers, schools, businesses are next, if not already covered entirely by our current surveillance. I'd assume this is textbook tyranny.
What's worse is that he actually got away with it, and those "journalist" jokers at the White House that were laughing at his jokes didn't even ask him about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVQnbNspHsk