Then the logic of what you posted above means that our enemies are in fact carefully crafting a common policy of launching a nuclear war against us. That means Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, and North Korea will all be acting in concert – even if one of THEM started it with the first attack.

What it means is that they are not going to allow us to retaliate against the ones who started it. And they are crafting this policy at a time when we are letting our guard down on so many fronts it’s depressing.

In effect, they are advocating a first strike policy FOR THEMSELVES. We are not even allowed a defensive response.

As I’ve stated it so many times, and many perhaps have considered this opinion the rant of a crank, Russia is using Iran as a proxy in its war against us.

once one has a nuclear weapon, either the use of one has to be chanced when being taken over by force, or one moves to other spheres of war which are not so clear if one considers war by its actions not its outcomes. war has always been about outcomes and unrestricted choice of actions taken to achieve such. its outcome is the removal of a designated enemy whether designated publicly or not.

once force is off the table free open societies are at a disadvantage over closed controlled ones.

And my answer compared the government with private industry in an area in which both could perform. Certainly there exists a market, still to this day, for private violence in the form of such corporations as Blackwater (or whatever it’s called now).

Of course, violence is largely the purview of states and not private citizens and corporations as it once way. But there’s a reason for this: security is largely viewed as a public good. What I’m guessing is that there’s some confusion here over the concept of a public good. Defense does not have to be a public good, though it makes a certain amount of sense that way. We make a choice that we will treat defense as a public good; we make a choice that we will treat health care as a semi-public good.

You do know what a public good is, right? If not, let me know and we can back up a bit.

Overconsumption of health care certainly is a contributor to the rise of health care costs. Overconsumption is, however, primarily a product of poor information in the health care market and of the fee-for-service model of health care. Health care providers have a financial incentive to see more and more patients, which reduces the time they have to spend with each and thus drives down quality of health care. Health care providers also have a financial incentive to over-provide, that is, to sell as many health care “products,” such as tests or medicine, since they receive a fee for each service.

Russia’s Pravda interviewed one official, and printed his statement that the detonation of a nuclear weapon, regardless of country of origin, location of the blast, or even the nation or NGO claiming credit for it, would almost certainly be a US or Israeli plot at its core. This sentiment is being subtly added to a number of anti-proliferation stories.

If this narrative gains enough credibility that the US/Israel can be blamed for any nuke going off, no matter what the circumstances are, launching a nuke would go from being “suicide” to being a rallying cry to attack the US. Even the US itself may be starting to believe it, so far inward our gaze has turned.

Shepard: “No, they haven’t. It’s also a bit hard to equate a suicidal regime (and they know the use of nuclear weapons would be suicide) with a regime that’s trying to stay in power in the face of mass protests against it. Either they want to live or they don’t. I suspect they do.”

Yes, they have. And just for the sake of argument, what if they have one working bomb now? If the regime appears to be collapsing, what do you have to lose? Not necessarily suicidal, but fatalistic when life out of power or death approaches.

The basic problem right now is the perceived disconnect between the consumers of healthcare and the payers. If everyone had to write a check for health insurance each month (rather than receive it as a benefit), health care costs would not increase so dramatically.

Actually, this is false.

We write millions of people off in this country, people who do not have health insurance. This is, in effect, our rationing. In countries like the UK, they ration care through waiting lines and denying coverage and sometimes in sub-optimal coverage. We ration care through tens of millions of uninsured (plus waiting lines).

The key question is: what do we get for the money we spend, vice the money they spend for the health care they get? Basically, they get the same or better health care outcomes after spending far less and insuring all people.

Of course, the uninsured have access to healthcare through emergency room visits, but that’s grossly inefficient and costly (and essentially socialism!). If we’re going to have socialism, I’d rather have efficient socialism than our current inefficient socialism, thank you very much.

“Name one thing that the government does better than private industry.”

Liberate Iraq?

It’s a silly question. You know (I hope!) that there exist such things as market failures, public goods, externalities, and so forth. Admitting their existence doesn’t make you a communist, I promise. Now, it must be understood that capitalism does not entail absolute non-interference in the economy by the government. I’m quite glad that we have anti-trust laws, for example, to inhibit the growth of monopolies that are inherently inefficient. This is an example of government regulation of markets – government intervention! – that makes the market more efficient, not less. There are plenty more like that; bank capitalization requirements are another that I hope soon to see made far more stricter than they have been in recent years.

Health care is one of those markets that just does not work very well on its own. It’s very difficult, for example, for consumers of health care to make informed choices about the money they spend. Health care is an incredibly technical field dominated by highly educated experts. Most consumers have no real way of knowing whether the dollars they spend on health care produce better or worse results than dollars spent elsewhere. Markets operate efficiently only when information is available, and this is a great example of a market where information is almost impossible to obtain.

There’s plenty more, but I won’t bore you. The point is: socialized medicine isn’t as horrible as you think it is, and there are plenty of market-based reasons to think that it should, at least in part, be nationalized. We already treat it as a semi-public good (hence the emergency room option), and I sincerely doubt we’ll ever try to make it a purely private good, so the government will always be involved to some degree. We’re never, I hope, as a society going to turn people away from health care for their inability to pay for it. We should just be doing it more efficiently.

I take this position based on the pragmatic observation that we spend about twice as much on health care as other first world nations and have little to show for it in terms of better outcomes (we’ve had this debate before).

Bottom line: we spend more on health care because we don’t write people off. We don’t write off the elderly (as the NHS does in the UK, for example; beyond a certain age no heart surgeries or cancer resections — care is purely palliative), we don’t write off preemies (and count those don’t make it against our infant mortality statistics, unlike most other countries), and to accommodate feminists who left childbearing too late (when the fish eventually decided it did need a bicycle after all) we pay for IVF, and then the massive costs of multiple premature births. (Something other countries don’t do.) On top of which, we pay all of the R&D costs for all new pharmaceuticals and medical devices, while Europe and Japan merely pay the marginal costs for producing them.

Let’s look where the government is already heavily involved: education. We spend more on education than other countries too, and have zip to show for it. California spends the most per student in the US (IIRC), and has the second-worst results in the nation.

I believe we could be far more efficient with more government involvement.

You’re a funny guy!

Name one thing that the government does better than private industry. One.