Government is the social outcome of the rights to life, liberty, and property. Police and courts (and military forces) exist to protect those rights. When a criminal infringes your right, the legal system administers justice. Armies do this on an international scale.

No rights are infringed if you become ill. There is no one to hold culpable. No one to punish.

Although all socialists think government should provide universal health care because it is important, few people think government should create a universal food program even though eating is important.

Your article was humorous but it clearly illustrates a misunderstanding of the true role of government.

As for the vaunted Canadian system: I paid $8000 more in income tax on the same return I filed in Florida. In Canada, the sales tax is anywhere from 13% to 18%. Gas is a dollar a gallon more expensive. So our free health care is pricey.

Also, we can wait months for MRIs and CAT Scans, but for $1200 we can book one next day in the USA. However, if you think that poor folk get a better deal up here because medicine is socialized you need to know that professional athletes get immediate access to any treatment or test. My son got preferential treatment because he is a medical student. I am glad about that but it isn't fair.

Be careful what you let Obama do to your system. Where will Canadians go for good health care if you become just like us?

cabdriver wrote:

For them, the "tragedy of the commons" consists of the fact that "the commons" might be deemed to exist in the first place.

Yup. It's the Enclosure argument all over again. Folks like tonydavisnelson have an ideological position that is their anchor, and no amount of reason will sway them. He says he doesn't need a primer on Garrett Hardin yet clearly he is misusing Hardin's piece. He quotes our medical expenditures as "17 % of our GDP" but neglects to tell us that Western industrialized nations with single-payer are spending half per capita than we are, an inconvenient fact he conveniently ignores.

Has socialized medicine triggered a "tragedy of the commons"? Heck, why not take a look-see? Every other industrialized nation on Earth has some sort of social medicine plan. It is incumbent on those making an argument to present facts backing it up, and there are plenty of potential examples to chose from. Did it happen in France? Spain? England? Canada? Germany? Japan?

See, this is what drives me nuts about this "argument." We aren't blazing any new trails here. It's been successfully done by others. The outcomes are clear. A rational person would think "if socialized medicine has been demonstrated to be cheaper and more effective, maybe we ought to consider it." But the fact that we're still arguing about something that's been settled long ago shows that ideology, greed, and special interests are driving this argument, not reason.

I believe it was that most crazed of all liberals, Thomas Jefferson himself who famously served notice that in his view "The only legitimate function of government is to serve the people."

The rapaciously Imperial doctrine you are seeking to advance here would better befit a Roman Emperor like Julius Ceasar. In brief you would argue against Jefferson and the like minded Madison and Franklin that the only legitimate function of government is to seek peace by waging war while fashioning government into a publicly funded private corporation serving the exclusive interests of defense contractors the Pentagon and the prison industry lobby. By doing so, are you not arguing that the only legitimate function of the present is to perpetuate the past?

If you would like to test my logic I would urge you to consult the federal buget if you wish to discover who your theory of government actually serves in practice. When government came to act as a tax collector dispursing tax dollars by the trillion to the private interests the likes of Halliburton&Co, Lockheed Martin and The Carlyle Group America was transformed. What remains is a beligerently hostile, hyper militarized and leathaly armed imperial state. So far as the real condititions of democracy in this country reflect America's standing in the world community it might just as well be the year 44 AD.

You have a long way to go to convincing the rest of us that American empire will ever advance the theory of liberty by the practice of invasion, occupation and military rule abroad. Meanwhile the people at home are crying for an affordable health care system, housing and educational opportunities that the republicanized free-market has never been able to produce. Any theory of government regardless of what you choose to call it, that does not care for the social welfare of its citizens ultimately is a failed theory. How long can we continue expecting this failed and fractious ideology of the extinct Romans to serve as a sound basis for guiding the choices of our current social, economic and foreign policy? You seek to dazzle with riddles instead? Come on admit it, aren't some of you still casting a conservative and gaze longingly backward to that fabulous golden age of the emperor Nero?

If you wish to compare social conditions in Canada to those in the US then please do so. To compare the quality of life you buy in Canada for an additional $8,000 in taxes paid, you are certainly enjoying the better part of the bargain. By comparison to quality of life standards set in the US, Canadians really ought to be complaining as a nation about their relative lack of access to homelessness, crime, imprisonment, gun violence, fear, poverty, envioronmental degradation and a government steadfastly oblivious to the demand for anything but weapons, prisons and war. What most Americans would not give to be having you Canadians many misfortunes!

Lind hasn't studied basic microeconomics apparently, a syndrome that sadly affects millions of liberals nationwide. Police protection is known in economics 101 as a "public good." A public good is a good that benefits many people, even if only a few people consume it: i.e. if a criminal is taken off the street, more people benefit than just his victims. This makes it exceedingly difficult to apply market mechanisms in the case of law enforcement. In a free market situation, since the benefit of a mercenary police force would extend beyond the transaction between the consumer and the service provider, the market would underproduce the "good," thereby necessitating public provision. State Parks and Education are other examples of public goods, nonrival nonexcludable goods (there would be no market for them in a free market due to the cost vis a vis the benefit, & the marginal cost for one extra unit of service is little or nothing, thereby creating no incentive to provide the service).

Healthcare is not a public good, at least not in the same way the law enforcement is. I've lived in countries with no healthcare safety net (Guatemala, Paraguay) and had care on a totally free market basis (the cost was less to me, though it greatly exceeded the reach of many peoiple in the population). I've lived in countries (Germany) where the healthcare system is a public private partnership, waits are long, but facetime with physicians is too, and prescriptions and medical procedures are inexpensive (though that is due to price floors more than market conditions). Anybody who says wholesale that a government run singlepayer healthcare system is the only way to go is being intellectually lazy. If you really care about this issue read Allain Enthoeven's social medicaine centered take, or Milton Friedman's free market centered take. They're really the only two options out there.