re: #383 lostlakehiker

Scarce goods are never available in the quantity people would like. If they’re allocated by the State, then people will consume as much of each scarce good as they’re allotted, even if they’d rather have more of one and less of another.

This results in misallocation of resources. Unless you want to say that poor people are too stupid to know their own needs and parcel out the money you give them sensibly, the way to use State power to shore up the lives of the poor is to give them some money. They can then decide whether they want the tooth pulled, saving money there so as to have more for food, shelter, clothing, or some small luxury, or whether they’d rather have the root canal work done, forgoing something in the way of food, shelter, clothing, or little luxuries.

HEALTH CARE ISN”T LIKE OTHER GOODS!

Nobody’s going to be more willing to break their leg in three places, or have a heart attack, or get cancer, knowing there’s a government program to pay for their treatment. It’s just as painful, and potentially deadly, even the biggest mooch ever isn’t going to say “oh yeah, might as well since it’s free.”

And nobody’s very clever, conscientious planning is going to prevent the muscular dystrophy or ALS or who knows how many other things can just happen.

Of course, there’s the people whose lungs are full of crap, dying in agony, because they spent a few weeks digging in the pile at ground zero, first hoping to find survivors, then hoping to recover remains. Suckers shouldn’t have put themselves at risk that way, it’s their own damn fault, let them pay their own damn bills. Right? Let them be an object
lesson to anybody faced with a similar choice to make in the future.