I tend to agree with Athletic Supporter's statement, "Live and let live and don't ask me to pay for it, more or less." Some discussion on this board about Libertarianism has lead to a few questions.

I think that seatbelts and motorcycle helmets should not be required by law. If Ben Rothlisberger wants to smack his head around, so be it. But what if someone goes in a coma? Isn't it taxpayers' money being used to keep a vegetable alive? Should it be that way?

Admittedly, I know little about economics. To me, laissez-faire seems good on paper. Could it work in the US? How far are we from free trade?

Does libertarianism really practice free-market environmentalism?

Discuss.

This promises to be a really good thread.


In a truly laissez faire world, there would NOT be taxpayer dollars keeping that eprson alive in a coma. When he ran out of money, he would be cut off. Maybe that sort of incentive might get people to wear helmets on their own, at least that would be the libertarian rationale. I think that doctors would probably have a major problem with letting people die simply because they are poor, and this is one of my major beefs with free market healthcare. If all health insurance is privatized, then the guy has his policy and could continue to receive money to pay for his care, but the premiums would be horribly high unless insurance companies refused to pay out for accidents that happened from high risk activities (like riding without a helmet). I guess one way or another, the system would balance itself, but poor people would have no health coverage and therefore be S.O.L., and that is unacceptable to me.


Interesting question. What is "free market environmentalism"? You know, there are markets for "pollution credits" in several cities around the world already in existence, including in Chicago. The problem is that the countries where these are really showing to work well are the countries where the government imposes strict environmental limits and controls, thereby necessitating the trade in credits. The market in Germany, I beleive, is currently the world's largest, many tens of times larger than the Chicago market.

So yes, I believe that certain market elements can be employed to promote environmentalism, but only if the governement begins by imposing the limits and restrictions that must be met.

Can there be nuances to laissez-faire? I don't think the poor should be denied health care, but I also don't think taxpayers should pay (significantly) for someone's stupidity/carelessness.

From wiki: Some libertarians, (such as free market environmentalists and objectivists) want to avoid mismanagement of public resources through private ownership of all natural resources, while others (such as geolibertarians) believe that such resources (especially land) cannot be considered property.

I can't say that I agree with either stance. This might actually be where I'm in favor of strong government restrictions.

I used to be of the mindset that a person should choose whether or not they want to risk their lives by not wearing seatbelts or helmets. Then I had an epiphany: roads are one of the few truly public realms out there, and whatever gov't is in charge of them has a legit interest in regulating behaviour on such roads.

One of the flaws that I see in libertarianism is a lack of concrete answers on the environment. The Libertarian Party's official stance is a good example: while they make a few good points, like with the African elephant situation, but overall they just do a blanket blame on the gov't:

http://media.scout.com/Media/Image/18/186550.jpg

Some environmental problems can have a good libertarian solution (like you can't pollute a waterway that others will drink from, or the air that others will breathe from), but others, such as preserving wilderness, are tougher to resolve, as plants and animals don't properly function in the scheme of the economy.

I don't think the government should tell people to wear a helmet or seatbelt any more than it should tell people to use birth control or have abortions. We (the taxpayers) end up paying for the children of people that make bad decisions and yet we don't end up regulating reproduction. Why should my decision to put a seatbelt on be any different?

For the record, I don't have to wear a seatbelt or a helmet.

true story:

i interned at the gannett news service's albany state capitol bureau a few years back. my boss was a really good, attentive writer.

there was one new york lawmaker whose name i can't recall who years before i was there, my boss noticed he was voting NO on every single bill. and i mean nearly every.single.bill.

so my boss went up to him after saving every voting sheet and was like 'hey, pal, why are you voting no on every single vote?'

he says one time he was out camping with his family and wanting to do something silly like leave his tent open in the afternoon and the state park officer said it was against state law. he then realized how ridiculous it was that the state regulated so many things, so for one year he planned to vote on every bill.

taxpayers being held responsible for "keeping a vegetable alive" is a characteristic of socialized healthcare and is not a problem created by free markets.



quite. the WTO, import quotas, farming and agriculture subsidies, exchange rate finagling, etc. much (though not all) of the poverty in the developing world can be attributed to some degree of protectionist trade policy in many of the developed nations.



most, including myself, would endorse a more market oriented approach to environmentalism. many environmental issues arise because of unclear, or altogether absent, property rights. to the extent that clear and identifiable property rights can be established, those environmental issues that stem from the tragedy of the commons (or the public overuse of common resources, ie...the ocean or a forest) are more likely to be alleviated.

that said, those problems that affect the global community (read: global warming) are much less likely to be solved simply because punkdavid now owns the rights to watersheds along the columbia river.



insurance is all about getting the numbers right. some people require little to no health care, while debilitating maladies require others to receive hundreds of thousands in care. insurance companies make money by determining the average cost of treatment for its policyholders and charging slightly more.

let us say aetna writes a policy for a group of fifty year old men, and they determine the average cost of health care for each is $1250. they make money, then, by setting the premium at $1300 for each underwritten policy.

the policy, then, is a bad deal for the healthiest of the bunch whose care is likely to be less than the $1300 they have to pay for the policy. some are likely to opt out. the sickest, though, are likely to opt in. the population of men on which the original premium was based has changed, as the remaining men are, on average, less healthy. aetna, then, in order to make a profit, must increase its premiums to, say, $1800. you see how this can proceed ad infinitum, theoretically continuing until the market for health insurance completely fails. this is to say nothing of what happens when the costs of what is being insured (in this case, health care) increase.

no cost sharing scheme, which is precisely what insurance is, can work in the long run, regardless of whether it is run by the government or by private firms. "adverse selection," which is the term economists use to describe the above phenomenon, prevents it from functioning as a normal market would.

Ooh, here's another good example of an issue that libertarians and greens can agree on. I'm sure their solutions afterwards vary differently, but oh well.

This is a really interesting way of looking at this. I think you're completely correct.

And I guess it begs the question, if healthy people opting out of health insurance due to high premiums is a cycle towards failure, then should we as a society mandate that all people buy into the system, like in a centralized, public, national healthcare system? No one is allowed to opt out, so premiums stay as low as economically possible.

this may be veering off the original topic, but is anyone familiar with consumer-driven health care plans? my work just switched to one this year. HR had these information sessions and they talked it all up like it was gonna just be great! no increase in the amount coming out of your paycheck, in some cases less, etc etc etc.

here's how it works: in a CDHP you are given a bank of money called your HRA. you no longer have co-pays for dr. visits, prescription drugs, etc. now you pay 100% of the dr. bill or 100% of the prescription out of your HRA. (the exception being for preventative visits, such as physicals or OB visits for women) so instead of a $20 co-pay you have a $110 dr. bill. once you blow through your HRA, you have what's called the bridge. the bridge is equal to your HRA, and you are 100% responsible for paying it. once you are through your bridge, you go to traditional health care, which is either 80/20 or 70/30 depending on the plan you choose.

they offer 2 plans, the regular and the "enhanced". the enhanced plan was very similarly priced per paycheck to our old plan. the HRA/bridge amounts were something like this (reg/enhanced):

single $500/$750
married $750/$1000
family $1000/$1500

so lets say you're a single person. and throughout the year you go to the doctor once, get a prescription, and in total your health care has costed $300. here's where they sell it - that extra $200 carries over into your next year to be used against your bridge. so in year 2, you have a skiing accident and end up in the hospital and your total health care for the year is say $2000. HRA takes the first $500, your leftover $200 goes next, you have $300 left of your bridge and you have $1000 left that you pay 20% of. so your total out-of-pocket for the year is $500. there is also out-of-pocket maxes as part of the plan, i believe it's something like $3000 for married people. so if there is something catastrophic, the most it will cost you is $3K.

they "sold" this to the employees by saying that they analyzed all the data and this will not affect 90% of the people working here (i assume because they are all young, single, presumably healthy people). but for the other 10% it is going to cost quite a bit more. that was their rationale. basically anybody with kids who go to the dr. all the time, or an illness, or happens to have an accident is pretty much fucked for the year. but, the single healthy person can opt for the larger HRA, and try to continue to bank their leftover $$. but then what happens when they leave the company? that money is gone, they can't take it with them.

my wife and i are having a baby and it's going to end up costing us about $2K out of pocket (and that was prior to the ER visit we had to do awhile back). people i've talked to who had kids on the old plan paid anywhere from about $50-$200. (gee thanks for the new health plan!)

from what they tell us, many companies are going to this type of plan and it forces you to become a consumer of health care, and to try and be smart about always getting generic drugs and things like that. i wonder if we ever get on some sort of universal health care it would be something along these lines. the healthy people benefit, the sick people are fucked. but, not as fucked as they'd be without health care.

sorry if this veered too far off topic...

I'm not seeing the epiphany. Could you explain a little more.

What would be some of the short term and long term repercussions if free trade, or even less interference, would be implemented?

It's unacceptable to me too. But it goes beyond just that, it's a question of honoring the "social contract". When people see great disparities between what they have and what others have it breeds resentment and hate. There is a thin blue line that separates the have-nots from overwhelming the haves, and the libertarians seem to put too much faith in the lower end of the income spectrum respecting that line. If our society was to cut off the poor from government assistance, I believe they are more like to "help themselves to" rather than "help themselves".




I think you may have that backwards.

I think free market environmentalism is the best solution to our current environmental issues. Why not purchase the entire Amazon rainforest? If you want to protect animals, buy the land they live on and do not let anyone build or hunt there.

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As for general libertarianism, I can't say I really agree with it. I think some level of income redistribution is ok. I think some levels of public health facilities are also ok. And I certainly reject their ignorant pro-open-borders arguments. I do think their stances on shrinking the responsibilities of governments and increasing the responsibilities of individuals is the way to go.

You've taken some criminology courses.

me too.



should we? i would be inclined to say no.

IMO, the problem has less to do with the inevitable failure of insurance than it does the exorbitantly unaffordable costs associated with health care. insurance would be less of a necessity if a trip to the doctor didn't cost two month's salary. the only way to do that is to expand the supply of available medical care (read: doctors, hospitals, clinics, etc). if i were king of the world, i would do my best to bust up the AMA, one of the most powerful labor unions in the country. while i was at it, i would eliminate much of the regulation that is so pervasive in the health care system.

reducing the cost of a doctor's visit or a hospital stay would have the same effect as increasing the amount of people covered by insurance.

in a nutshell:

if, for instance, we eliminated import tariffs, we would see several things. the first effect, though, would be an increase in less expensive foreign imports. consumers benefit from the lower prices and are left with increased discretionary income. this can be either spent (driving other industries) or saved (lowering interest rates for capital investment). those domestic industries that face increased competition suffer. if they cannot compete, they may be forced completely out of business. those foreign industries, though, experience growth and their living standards rise.

long term, free trade is absolutely crucial to creating a thriving global economy. one of the trademark arguements against free trade is that it somehow impoverishes third world nations with "sweatshops" and "slave labor." those who make such arguements are, well, simply incorrect. would any person reject better employment opportunities to work in a sweatshop? no. the reason that people work in such conditions is because it is preferred to all the other available employment alternatives for said employees. as untenable as such employment might seem to some, it is vital in developing the capital base in such nations.

as an aside, subsidizing domestic industries is just as deleterious to the developing world as an import tariff. making domestic products (artificially) cheaper in order to keep foreign competitors from penetrating our market harms the developing world and consumers. it only helps those in the visible industry (steel, farming, etc).

it's funny how farmers, who love to portray themselves as the paragon of self-sufficiency and virtue, are the first to run to the government for protection or a hand out.

Isn't steel pretty pricey these days? With the building boom in China and whatnot, I can't imagine why the industry would need any subsidizing when the demand outpaces the supply.

American steel workers demand high pay, and so steel from other countries is cheaper.

i signed no such contract. i am, therefore, exempt from caring about my fellow man.

seriously though, "social contract" is a platitude of the first order. what exactly is included in this contract?



disagree. it isn't wealth in and of itself that breeds resentment. it's those inconsiderate asshats who drive range rovers and summer in the hamptons that breed resentment. no one resents people like john mackey, the CEO of whole foods, or paul newman.

it's the people who revel in and flaunt their wealth that inspires enmity and jealousy.



agreed.

being a libertarian, i of course am anti-welfare state and government assistance. having said that, simply vanquishing such things from the face of the planet would have disastrous results.

these things are not unlike the path traveled by a pendulum. the pendulum does not simply arrive at one end of its arc; it has to travel all points between, gradually. tailoring social structures accordingly is the most prudent course. i want as little as possible government intervention into people's lives. but this process must be done deliberately, delicately, and gradually.

school choice, vouchers, tax credits; all measures to the right of our current education quagmire. these measures, while certainly not the truly free market measures i would prefer, must come before we have such a condition. kind of like a pendulum.