The Intellectual Weakness Of Liberalism, And Its Wrong Direction

Three recent stories highlight inherent weaknesses in modern liberal concepts of governance. First, Muskegon Pundit notes that Nebraska's state Medicaid will no longer provide for penile implants, declaring sex medically unnecessary. (Get the government out of the bedroom! Erm...) I always knew liberals hated poor people, I just didn't know how much. But, I kid the system. Anyway, I think we can all agree that almost everything one does in life relates to one's health somehow. With government-provided medicine inching ever closer, we also inch ever closer to giving government authority to decide what we eat and how much we exercise and sleep; this article shows how it may come about that government may start deciding what's really necessary for you to do, and what's not necessary. (Nyah, nyah!)

A second story, passed along by Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, relates the problem of increased drunken driving that results from smoking bans in bars. Apparently, people who want to smoke in a bar will drive longer (surprise!) to get to a jurisdiction where it's allowed, and the result is more accidents from drunk driving. The law of unintended consequences strikes again! And it is this inability to predict all the results of legislation that makes ridiculous the concept that government can use legislation to control the amount of negative outcomes.

Finally, Allahpundit notes a case in which a Canadian court overturned a sentence they considered overly harsh...a sentence passed by a father and contested by his daughter. Specifically, grounding from a school trip for breaking household rules. This example of a completely inappropriate intrusion by the state into strictly family matters reminds me of Hillary Clinton's admonition that we have to jettison the concept of "someone else's child"--i.e. that parents have a special authority over their children. The doctrinaire rationalism and egalitarianism of the Left is incapable of dealing with children, who are indisputably not governed by reason and indisputably unequal in ability to adults. The Left's movement toward increased governmental authority to parent children manifests itself, in part, in insistence on universal K-12 public schooling and court rulings such as this.

More predictable news about the American Left? They're proposing to nationalize our oil refineries, Fox News reports. (H/t: Muskegon Pundit.) Conservatives have been predicting for years, and been ridiculed for it, that the Left would move toward increasing nationalization of industries as they come to be deemed "necessary," and thus inappropriate for private control. Well, health and oil are going. Food is already heavily involved in government. How much more, and how soon? Anytime you weaken property rights in favor of some social goal, you are on a slippery slope. We'll see how this turns out.

Creeping Health Tyranny

The Detroit Free Press prints the AP story: an eighth-grader in Connecticut has been thrown off the student council, banned from an honors dinner, and suspended from school for a day. Must've cheated on a test or plagiarized a paper, right? Worse: He encouraged poor eating habits.

This kid bought a bag of Skittles from a candy pusher in the hallways of his own school. (Parents: this is the danger your kids face every day.)

Now, I realize that nobody died here and it's not an incredibly serious issue (although when it comes time to apply to colleges, a suspension never looks good). Even so, I ask you to witness the danger that comes with assigning responsibility for physical health to government entities. The school's policy was an infringement of the students' freedom for the sake of their health. Go on and keep thinking that universal health care will be different.

Socialized Health Care Supporter Rations Logic

One of my friends posted this on their Facebook, and I thought I'd respond briefly, since I don't have time to delve deeply into the issue. Here's an excerpt:

Government-run health care is inherently less efficient -- because governments themselves are inherently less efficient.
If anything could finally put the lie to this old conservative canard, the disaster that is our health care system is Exhibit A.

America spends about 15% of its GDP on health care. Most other industrialized countries (all of whom have some form of universal care) spend about 11-12%. According to the WHO, Canada spends a bit over 9% -- and most of the problems within their system come out of the fact that it's chronically underfunded compared to the international average.

Any system that has people spending more and getting less is, by definition, not efficient. And these efficiency leaks are, almost entirely, due to private greed. There is no logical way that a private system can pay eight-figure CEO compensation packages, turn a handsome a profit for shareholders, and still be "efficient." In fact, in order to deliver those profits and salaries, the American system has built up a vast, Kafkaesque administrative machinery of approval, denial, and fraud management, which inflates the US system's administrative costs to well over double that seen in other countries -- or even in our own public systems, including Medicare and the VA system.

After years of failed socialism, after years of economic theory consistently debunking collectivism, after seeing the wonderful job government does in postal service, departments of motor vehicles, and the Walter Reed military hospital, you'd think we wouldn't have to put up with this stuff anymore. But you'd be wrong. Government creating inefficiency in the market isn't a "conservative canard"; it's a time-tested truism. And it's so obvious! Think about it: you lower the cost to zero--not the price tag, mind you, but the cost--and quantity demanded skyrockets far beyond the market equilibrium. That creates shortages, something we invariably see in states using nationalized health care, including Canada, Britain...and Japan. Those who believe they can take a vacation from the laws of economics are likely to take a vacation from prosperity. There's a reason why massive numbers of economists oppose socialized health care vehemently. (By the way, whenever someone starts talking about "private greed" and "delivering care, not profits," you can be sure that she has no clue what she's talking about where economics is concerned. Just thought I'd mention it.) Should we choose a system that relies on the beneficence of government employees rather than on the strictures of a competitive market in which profit depends on delivering satisfactory service? Both practice (history) and theory (read up; try Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams) tell us that the latter is preferable, and not just by a little bit.

Cluelessness Alert: This woman asserts that fraud will vanish if we get the government involved.

Really, collectivism IS what's wrong with American health care right now. Government needs to get out of the job of regulating health care--no one should be required to ensure employees, people should be able to buy health insurance from other states, etc.--and market forces should be allowed to deliver health care in the most efficient possible way.

Besides, no one who advocates a program which everyone has to join or else go to jail should be able to talk about liberty, like this woman does. That is an affront to real liberty.

In conclusion: if you want socialized health care, go to Canada, the U.K., or France. Don't drag me into it. I'm begging you.