Re: Property rights.

From: Stathis Papaioannou (stathisp@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Apr 20 2008 - 21:50:13 MDT


On 21/04/2008, Lee Corbin <lcorbin@rawbw.com> wrote:

> > Across the world, capitalists provide the cars while government provides
> > the schools and the health care. It's not as if there is less money and
> less
> > opportunity for corruption and a large bureaucracy in cars.
> >
>
> I would argue with that: especially provided that the government is
> not regulating the businesses and corporations, the bottom-line
> profit and need to compete successfully minimizes corruption under
> free-market capitalism.

I see my statement was ambiguous. What I meant was, if you assume that
the main reason governments provide services is so that they can
collect money and spawn large bureaucracies as ends in themselves,
then there isn't a better reason to do this with hospitals than there
is to do it with manufactured goods, for example. But even communist
governments have learned that for the most part it is better to leave
manufacturing to the free market, while even governments ideologically
committed to free markets in just about every other respect run public
health systems. This requires some sort of explanation.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou


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