Hacker News Reader

"Public health care" is interesting, because it usually involves first forcing everyone to pay for a government healthcare system, then (usually) regulating the private system into oblivion, or destroying it outright. "Public health care" is fundamentally incompatible with liberty.

Your third paragraph is interesting, because you appear (to me at least), to endorse liberty, yet without believing in it.

>"given that the abolition of force and fraud is a moral long term goal, what sort of society would we want to build that would be likely to evolve in that direction"

My answer to your question, (as quoted above,) is that I believe liberty would allow for people to prosper, and all the fascist, feudal, and that regressive tendencies we see are a product of coercion. I do not understand your answer to the question, as it seems to open the door for any type of coercive means with the stated intent (but not necessarily with the result) of improving the welfare of the populace.

The ends which you describe in the last paragraph are all interesting, and nice goals, but do not (in themselves) justify the use of coercive means; especially since the coercion presents many discrimination problems due to the discretionary powers granted to those who would 'solve' the problems.

> "Public health care" is interesting, because it usually involves first forcing everyone to pay for a government healthcare system, then (usually) regulating the private system into oblivion, or destroying it outright.

You seem to be using a strange definition of "usually" -- every OECD country has "some degree of public healthcare" (what the grandparent post suggested support for), and yet most of them have some degree of a private system.

I would pose a question to you:

In what area of healthcare has a government in the OECD reduced its 'participation'?

If the answer is 'a few' or 'not many', then I would say we are experiencing the destruction of private health care right now.

If you define "destruction" that way, your argument is circular, as you've just made it:

1. Public health care usually leads to destroying private health care, and 2. "Destroying" private health care means the government not decreasing the public role in health care.

I left unstated the fact that many OECD governments are greatly increasing their roles in healthcare, because I thought it was readily apparent. Perhaps I should have been more clear.

My point is that many OECD states are (greatly) increasing the portion of the healthcare market controlled by the government, and few if any are decreasing it substantially (or at all). I define 'destroying' the private market in healthcare as the government taking over previously private activities, in effect nationalizing the industry.

> I left unstated the fact that many OECD governments are greatly increasing their roles in healthcare, because I thought it was readily apparent. Perhaps I should have been more clear.

It wouldn't change the basic problem; you first started with the claim that public health care usuually means destroying private health care and have progressed to define "destroying" private health care as government either not decreasing (your penultimate post) or increasing (your last post) its role in health care.

Which means that, stripped of the peculiar definition of destruction, your claims is that public health care means the government either not decreasing or increasing its role in health care. Which is trivially true, of course, but absolutely vacuous.

Clearly stated, you criticism should be that my claim is tautological, not trivial; this is a legitimate point... But you seem to be forgetting that the proposition was part of a larger argument, where I was criticizing a previous post which claimed to support liberty, but was also supporting government healthcare programs. My argument was basically that the government health program destroys the private market, thus eliminating liberty (and choice).

If you take the statement that 'increasing government control destroys private markets' alone, it is tautological; but extracting that phrase from the argument of which it was only a part, then criticizing the statement is a pointless set of activities.

> Clearly stated, you criticism should be that my claim is tautological, not trivial

Its both, and "circular" is another word for tautological.

> But you seem to be forgetting that the proposition was part of a larger argument, where I was criticizing a previous post which claimed to support liberty, but was also supporting government healthcare programs.

No, I'm not. Your argument in support of government healthcare plans being inconsistent with liberty was that they destroyed private healthcare, a claims which, when questioned, required redefining "destroy private healthcare" to just mean that government remains involved in healthcare at the same or greater level.

So, the whole line of argument was superfluous abuse of language to cover up a bare assertion that government action in any domain is, in and of itself, inconsistent with liberty.

There isn't even an argument in any meaningul sense being made.

dragonwriter>Its both, and "circular" is another word for tautological.

wikipedia>"Circular reasoning differs from tautologies in that the premise is restated as the conclusion in an argument, instead of deriving the conclusion from the premise with arguments, while tautologies states the same thing twice."

dragonwriter>Your argument in support of government healthcare plans being inconsistent with liberty was that they destroyed private healthcare, a claims which, when questioned, required redefining "destroy private healthcare" to just mean that government remains involved in healthcare at the same or greater level.

Earlier on, you stated : dragonwriter> You seem to be using a strange definition of "usually" -- every OECD country has "some degree of public healthcare" (what the grandparent post suggested support for), and yet most of them have some degree of a private system.

I have been trying to argue (with no apparent success) that the "some degree of private system" is gradually becoming little private or no private system, through a ratcheting up of government intervention, hence the statement that all have increased or kept constant their levels of participation in the healthcare system, and they rarely (if ever) decrease it. If the amount of state participation only ever increases or stays the same, and it increases often, then the government is 'taking over' healthcare.

> Seems to me that the precursors to a volitional libertarian state are radical reductions in violence both within and between nations, a highly educated and healthy populace that is capable of taking care of itself, and the abolition of caste systems (e.g. sexism, racism, classism, guild systems, etc.). A basic income is a step in that direction.

Does the libertarian within you believe that the State will accomplish this goal, without worse repercussions? Why remove the state at all if you think it can engineer society for the better in this way?

A libertarian could be a minarchist, and anarchist, or simply someone who looks at our current governance architecture (state control focusing on finance and asset wealth growth) as counter intuitive.

> Does the libertarian within you believe that the State will accomplish this goal, without worse repercussions?

The libertarian in my worries that a state would either abuse a system for the benefit of a small elite, or purposefully skew results in favor for their brand of narrative (didn't work, too expensive, just not possible, abolishing labour laws because it needs to be done!, etc...).

Personally it depends on the policy details to me. If this leads to the abolishment of all other forms of social assistance, and can reduce the amount of government employees who simply decided who got them in our older models, then sign me up. A system would also have to not discriminate, neither down nor up in regards to income.

That said if our choices are current social assistance, negative income tax based minimum income, or minimum income for all without deductions, then both NIT-MI and MI work for me.

If you remove the state from a violent, fraud-ridden, still very feudal system, you will simply unveil the underlying less centralized tyranny latent in that system.

There's also a massive blind spot in most conventional libertarian thought with regard to soft power and indirect coercion. Eliminating direct coercion but leaving caste systems in place only frees those who are rich or powerful enough to evade those caste systems. The rest are consigned to poverty and oppression through manipulation instead of force.

So yes, I do think the state can play some role at this time in history at uplifting the human condition and empowering the general population in ways that could -- given a lot of time -- eventually lead to a future that is better and freer in multiple ways. Or it could not. The state can't be trusted, but I also don't think we can dispense with it (yet).

Simple reductio ad absurdium: imagine actually dispensing with the US Federal Government. Most US states in the interior would establish theocratic feudal totalitarianism along Christian Reconstructionist / Dominionist lines, and the coasts and anywhere resource-rich would probably be invaded.

I'm confused as to how you think libertarianism is the path to get to that society, the only path, or even the best path. If we are dreaming futures, the goals you mention could just as easily be met by a system in which super-sentient AIs plan all the details, and robots provide all the labor. After all, the only monetary 'freedom' that is better than having complete control over one's money, is the freedom of not having to even worry about it.