If you are a Libertarian and hold liberty as your core value, why do you not believe in universal healthcare? Nothing impacts liberty more than sickness and death.
The reasoning is nonsensical and requires several baseless leaps of logic to even begin with, of course it will get downvoted. OP's kinda the confused one here, they should have expected bad faith arguments in response to this post if it wasn't just bait, but hopefully they've learned what American Libertarianism is actually like now.
There's a legal obligation to provide defense lawyers to defendants and it obviously isnt done by holding lawyers at gunpoint. The "force doctors to work under threat of violence" argument is so bad faith and imaginary you might as well have just posted "I will make up fake reasons to object to this"
real markets need choice and transparency to operate and there's no way to have those things in emergency care.
Realistically, universal healthcare doesn't intrude on doctors it intrudes on insurance companies.
We all pay for it when a child with potential gets sick and dies because their parents couldn't afford health care.
We all pay in one way or another when health care bankrupts a family.
We are all going to pay for it anyways, and if someone in a worse financial position than you needs health care and your taxes can provide that, you're garbage if you feel you're being forced or you're mad cause a poor person got medicine with your taxes.
No. I'm a Canadian that actually knows what socialized programs like healthcare do to a country. It's not great. Socialized medicine is one of the major of the hundred little cuts impoverishing Canadians. Mississippi and Alabama have higher per capita average income and personal wealth than the richest Canadian province, before and after taxes. Despite the huge amount of wealth transfer to the government for reallocation, they inevitably start acting like its their money, wasted in ridiculous ways aside from the original point, a bureaucratic mafia forms intent on nothing but its own continuance, and then you've Canadians denied health insurance either formally (I'm not allowed to have it because I've not a fixed address in the province I pay income tax, but i can't just not pay taxes either) or informally by denial of needed care (that's the common one). I do have American health insurance. I spend 5 months a year in the states, acquiring insurance was as simple as paying for it.
I'm not being impoverished by universal health care, I'm being impoverished by corporation and those "free market" fucks who are anti union, anti workers, and pro fascism.
Orphans are real and a serious issue. A large percentage of homeless people today are people who went through the US foster system.
Children whose parents are A) unable B) unwilling or C) dead ... all become society's problem to feed and house and you've basically said that its unethical to do so.
Because someone needs to be enslaved to provide universial health care. If even one person wants to opt out, no matter how wrong their reason you if you allow don't allow it they are enslaved. (note that there have been many different systems of slavery, but even the best still remones choice from someone). as such I prefer other options if they exist.
There are other options and so I oppose universial health care. Do not confuse that with approving of the system we have.
Because someone needs to be enslaved to provide universial health care. If even one person wants to opt out, no matter how wrong their reason you if you allow don't allow it they are enslaved.
Congratulations, you just said the dumbest thing I've read on the Internet in a very long time. That's impressive!
I pay for the military, for roads, for schools, for police, for fire departments...and I can't opt out of any of that. So am I already a slave? If so, then I might as well get some healthcare out of the deal.
If I'm not already a slave then universal healthcare isn't making me a slave either. No one would be forcing you to use your healthcare either.
Actually, education and health are the 2 things I think the government should take care of in a serious way. That said, I still Believe people should be able to pay for alternative education or health care if they wish, I just think I should never see a bill for either of those two ever. Especially for children. Wtf are we doing if we as a society cannot afford for children to be healthy or educated?
the issue is that everyone needs to have equal opportunity.
Is it okay for parents to purposefully give their kids a worse opportunity for education and health than every other American? (I know homeschooling is a controversial topic, but sadly the vast majority are just dumb as a box of bricks religious nut jobs)
I'm sorry, I genuinely don't understand the question of, is it right to give a worse education. Are you saying that homeschool is worse? Sorry not trying to deter from the topic, but I might just not be reading it right.
I will say this in response though, I don't agree that everyone should be given a completely equal opportunity. What I do think is that everyone should be given a very superior baseline of opportunity.
Chasing completely equal opportunity seen like a fools errand. But we really should be putting education and health first, unfortunately we just don't.
homeschooling: absolutely, because of the quality of the vast number of 'teachers' (in the USA). You should read about how batshit insane they are. And lets not get started on the rampant child abuse.
it sounds like you're trying to confuse equality and equity. But yes, same baseline = equal baseline, which is not what they're getting in the slave states.
On a political spectrum, the term libertarian should relate to anti-authoritarian. So, I can see how the case can be made against socialized healthcare for them. It's not really about true freedom or liberty. And in the US anyway, it's largely just facade co-opted by the fascist [authoritarian and wealthy] right wing, ironically.
The word "Libertarian" in US has less relation to the dictionary definition than "Republican" and "Democrat". These are names of parties over here, even if they have a namesake of governmental mechanisms.
Examples:
Ron Johnson said in a single breath that he was a libertarian and opposed the legalization of marijuana.
Find the average "libertarian" policy position on border policies.
US politics is unfortunately entrenched in tribalism rather than searching for the right tool to match a job or solve a problem and maximize outcomes, the libertarians over here are no exception.
Big L is the party - and yeah, it's just Republicans in a different T-shirt.
Little l is the ideology, which in many ways matches up with what I think, but to get there you need so many social programs to put people on even ground that we should have but don't. Universal healthcare being only one of so, so, so many.
Edit: And just to add, I think Rand was just a precursor to the Big L Libertarians, and little to nothing to do with the little l. You can have true individual liberty without the protections and support to enable those liberties.
Equality in the law, freedom of association, civil liberties, etc., etc. while technically in the US we "have" these freedoms, in reality we do not - we are subject to capitalism with regulatory capture, fines that unfairly punish the poor, so on. I'm on a phone, so I'm not typing out a dissertation.
Probably the best reference would be libertarian socialism or libertarian communism. The right wing Libertarian movement (which is dominant in the US) is really anarchi-capitalism, which is the complete opposite direction of left libertarianism (which is anti-capitalist).
Anyway, yes, there are a variety of ways freedoms are limited by simply being unable to afford things, or even being put into a position where you don't have the time to dedicate to those things. To me, that's fundamentally wrong.
That's what I summarised, aside from the us-centric references. I still don't quite understand the emphasis on "true individual liberty", what that should entail and the meaning of it for the discussion. I agree with everything else you said, that part just isn't clear to me.
On a political spectrum, the term libertarian should relate to anti-authoritarian
Sure, but we're not on a political spectrum. Political names are codified as part of a propaganda campaign advanced by the original party leaders. Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Constitution Party, Reformers, Socialists (both National and International) are - at their heart - marketing taglines, fully divorced from the beliefs and policies of their constituencies.
Ron Johnson said in a single breath that he was a libertarian and opposed the legalization of marijuana.
He's only the latest iteration. I might send you back to Murray Rothbard and Ludwig Von Mises, the OG American Anarcho-Capitalists, both of which had some bizarre theories about what constituted "small government" from the perspective of a Washington DC insider.
Marijuana consumption, much like miscegenation and immigration and unionization, might seem at first glance to be a consequence of independent human agency. But they all carry potential social consequences, particularly against individuals with claim on private property.
By getting high, you're turning yourself into a public nuisance - possibly even a violent threat - to your landlords. By crossing international borders, you are acting as a member of an invading army and threatening the economic livelihood of prior landed gentry. By unionizing, you are forming a labor cartel - almost certainly crafted through the violent agitation of wicked foreign governments employing the mind-altering ideology of Marxist-Leninism. By miscegenating, you are robbing me of the commodity of a virginal daughter to be traded on the open market.
All of these are acts of violence that threaten the property and security of the rightful landed man. We must rely on the good, honest, well-trained battalion of law enforcement officers in order to uphold the security of that property.
US politics is unfortunately entrenched in tribalism rather than searching for the right tool to match a job or solve a problem and maximize outcomes
The US is focused first and foremost on the claim to private property and the fruitful extraction of wealth from that property. Libertarianism, as an ideology, revolves around defining the extent to which individuals can go in defending that property from evil foreign aggressors and corrupted domestic residents. It endorses a state solely for the upholding of this ideology.
I think the terms that you are instead looking for are positive and negative liberty. Libertarianism, generally, aligns with negative liberty. Universal healthcare is an example of positive liberty.
And in the US anyway, it’s largely just facade co-opted by the fascist [authoritarian and wealthy] right wing, ironically.
I think before folks downvote this for being a flawed opinion on its face, they should remember what the actual question was, and this statement wasn't lodged in a vacuum.
Now if actual libertarians are downvoting this I'd love to hear their corrections.
I am libertarian-ish, but generally don't like all the loud libertarian nuts (I register Dem and vote Dem because the things I care about aren't represented anywhere on the ballot anymore).
For me, it comes to a very simple economics truism: Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy. Markets on the other hand, tend to be really efficient at allocating capital when left alone. The times a government should step in is when the market has created a form of externality that breaks things. The old economics example is the people downstream from a chemical plant are paying the price for the plant's pollution.
From a libertarian lens:
The government should negotiate SPH b.c. it's obvious that markets failed and we'd all be better off (spend less money) if everyone had healthcare.
The government should stay out of people's bedrooms and love lives, it has no business there.
The government should use UBI and then eliminate every other deduction, and tax break, and subsidy (Social Sec, . The office running UBI could be one guy sending checks out once a month (exaggerated obvi)
Unfortunately the things I'd like to see from a libertarian don't actually show up.
Finance management major here, I'd argue that governments aren't inherently inefficient.
On a local level, government organisations are essentially the same as non-profits. The only difference is in who they are accountable to. Even KPI are pretty much the same.
The inefficiency of a government in contrast to the free market is in its inability to adjust to people's needs quickly on a global scale. Imagine a company that has to sell a little bit of everything and then some. What kind of resource does it need to have to fully satisfy the demand? It's practically impossible to make a vertically integrated system that would do this amount of research, let alone organize all the production and supply chains. It doesn't matter if it's a government or an entity. They all will drown in beurocracy, except the government is usually stricter as they tend to play it safe.
Hence, it's really a non-issue if a government takes control over parts of the market. And because they can't facilitate it all, they take over socially significant parts of it, like municipality governance, military, and healthcare.
Also, you (the person reading, not the person I'm responding to) should never be mistaken in thinking that the free market is perfectly efficient. It isn't. Creating points of inefficiency drives a lot of revenue. Think purposefully limiting demand to drive prices up. This is what's happening with insulin in the US, for example. If you have perfectly inelastic demands, you can make your product infinitely expensive.
Having worked a decade each in private and state positions in my experience they're just different brands of inefficiency. The big difference is that in private industry inefficiency doesn't really matter as long as you're making money. A business that starts in the right market at the right time can do everything wrong and still turn a profit for decades and no one will question their efficiency because they're profitable. If they're well established enough they can be relatively immune to competition because the market doesn't justify enough investment to create competition, so they dominate regardless their failings but still get celebrated as a successful business.
The state is judged by completely different metrics of success and no matter how successful, people will still ask if it could have been done more efficiently. In private industry success is the only measure of success.
I responded already but a perfect example of government efficiency is Medicare, which is 16% cheaper than private Medicare replacement programs for the same services in the same population. And Medicare has better outcomes as well.
Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy.
I wish you would take a look at how government works in places like Scandinavia and much of Western Europe. Their universal healthcare systems are very efficient and cost-effective.
Other than politics and gone-wild ideology, there's no reason the US couldn't do the same.
The biggest government program is socialized medicine, aka Medicare. The “market” aka private health insurance, costs on average 16% more than Medicare for the same services and population. Your view of government efficiency is tilted by decades of corporate media manipulation and is blatantly false.
I register Dem and vote Dem because the things I care about aren’t represented anywhere on the ballot anymore
First past the post doing first past the post things.
Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy.
The reason for this is, imo, because they are a monopoly. They have no incentive to reduce costs.
The old economics example is the people downstream from a chemical plant are paying the price for the plant’s pollution.
This is actually more of a Georgist philosophy than libertarian, imo.
The government should negotiate SPH b.c. it’s obvious that markets failed and we’d all be better off (spend less money) if everyone had healthcare.
Cooperatives could potentially be a solution.
The government should stay out of people’s bedrooms and love lives, it has no business there.
I agree.
The government should use UBI and then eliminate every other deduction, and tax break, and subsidy (Social Sec, . The office running UBI could be one guy sending checks out once a month (exaggerated obvi)
In principle, it sounds great, but I personally feel there are some potential economic issues that could get in the way of UBI being a success. An alternative to UBI could be a negative income tax, specifically that which was proposed by Milton and Rose Friedman.
I would clarify this to say that it's not healthcare being provided to the populace that violates the NAP, but, instead, the taxes that must be raised to fund it.
It's not the idea of healthcare being provided to everybody that's the issue for libertarians. Generally, the issue revolves around how funds are raised for the healthcare. Namely, taxes.
The relationship between libertarianism and taxes is rather complex, imo. The main issue with taxes that a libertarian would have typically revolves around the interpretation of the NAP. It could be argued that the enforcement of taxes is an aggression that has not been consented to, so, since a libertarian is more in favor of negative liberties, they would take the position that they want freedom from being compelled to pay them. Do note that, like many things, there is a spectrum of this belief — not all libertarians completely oppose taxes. Many libertarians recognize that some amount of taxation is necessary for a properly functioning society. What is essentially universal among libertarians, however, is the minimization of taxes.
I think we seem to have different understandings of what "libertarian" means. I think that libertarian is simply the opposite of authoritarian and has little to do with taxes or other economic stuff.
I think we seem to have different understandings of what “libertarian” means.
From my experience, it certainly feels common that people tend to have different definitions and/or misunderstandings of libertarianism.
I think that libertarian is simply the opposite of authoritarian
I take issue with the usage of the word "simply" — I advise against such types of reductionism. That being said, the comparison gets kind of tricky when one considers the different variants/offshoots of libertarianism, or other freedom/liberty oriented political philosophies. It's tempting to try and reduce political philosophies to a point on a 2D plane, like the political compass, or, worse, a 1D line, like the left/right dichotomy, but it's often quite a bit more complex — thinking in terms of absolute "opposites" can lead one down the wrong path. That being said, without being overly pedantic, libertarianism can be thought of as in opposition to authoritarianism.
little to do with taxes or other economic stuff.
While it may be possible that a definition of libertarianism doesn't directly reference economic topics, they still arise as a dependency or result. Economics and politics are often tightly intertwined.
I believe in universal basic income, because it is simple and easy to define, and therefore doesn’t have these two problems
Universal healthcare is problematic because of two things:
How much is covered? Because healthcare isn’t fungible like money is, unlike UBI, UH has a problem where a ton of attention and discussion is required to determine what’s covered and what isn’t. It becomes a “to each according to his need” scenario where “his need” is being determined by the central committee
Once society is promising to take care of my body, I now have to promise to society to take care of my body. If I want to take risks with my own health or safety, there is now opposition to that from others on the basis that I’m ruining their investment. This means less self-ownership and less liberty.
Universal Healthcare doesnt have that problem, it's what universal means.
This idealized version of universal healthcare isn't possible because it'll require more resources than we have as a species. There's always more that you can do to improve health outcomes. A line had to be drawn somewhere.
Yes, but universal basic income instead of universal healthcare has two issues as well:
You may not be able to afford expensive healthcare procedures, which may result in all ranges of bad consequences, from lost productivity to death. In either case, there's a big chance society loses a productive worker for no good reason, and for the person who couldn't get healthcare it's obviously super bad, too. All while this expense would be returned in the economy many times over if the person got recovered and continued working, and the person in question could keep living a fulfilling life.
Relying on private healthcare institutions means falling victim to the price-inefficient businesses, as a lot of your money goes to cover profits of the healthcare organization. When there is no public alternative, prices go through the roof. Even in the US, where there is some government oversight but no full-scale universal healthcare system, the prices for healthcare are insane. Thereby, you either have to hand people a fat UBI check and constantly increase it as companies drive up their appetites, putting more strain on the system than universal healthcare ever could, or let people not have decent healthcare, or control the healthcare institutions (which is not super libertarian), all while living with a reality that many people will not think of their medical needs or will genuinely have other strong priorities and will put money to something else, ending up shooting themselves - and the economy - in the foot.
I often hear criticisms of some "committee" deciding whether you're gonna get healthcare or not, like here. In an alternative when it is ruled by money, it's how much you earn that decides it. Someone in a critical condition might not receive help simply because they are poor. Someone will always be cut off, and it'd better be someone who needs the help the least or requires too much resources to help that could be better spent saving more people.
This is constantly ommitted by the haters of planned systems, which I think is very unjust.
When you combine "Libertarian" with the greed that is typical in the ultra wealthy, their core value typically only includes liberty for themselves and no empathy for others. You can use any party label you want but without empathy, members of every party are nothing more than selfish pieces of shit. Just to be clear, I am not a "they're all the same" idiot, as Republicans clearly think empathy is a four letter word. But there are sociopaths without empathy everywhere in society, especially in the US.
As far as universal healthcare is concerned, we can't even agree as a society to provide clean water to our population by removing leaded pipes. Why would we expect something as reasonable as universal healthcare?
When you combine “Libertarian” with the greed that is typical in the ultra wealthy, their core value typically only includes liberty for themselves and no empathy for others.
I would argue that, at that point, they are no longer libertarian. To uphold liberty, as described in libertarianism, is to uphold it universally.
Oh I agree. Even F Hayek in “Road to Surfdom” said that government needs to regulate certain industries (he used the example of pollution and environment ironically). Even the founding father of libertarianism knew that the “free market” is incapable of regulating some things.
said that government needs to regulate certain industries
I completely agree. It is often overlooked that this is core to capitalism — capitalism is a market with adequate regulation to ensure fair competition.
he used the example of pollution and environment ironically
Imo, this is more of a Georgist position, but I could certainly see an argument for its overlap with libertarianism.
Do you mean ancaps? Because I'm pretty sure most libertarian would be for universal healthcare. I have heard Americans use libertarian for ancap which are pretty opposing ideologies, I'm not sure what's up with that.
American libertarians hate anarchy and love order. They believe there should be zero government to enforce that order. They also believe they should not be held to any laws.
Anarchy and order are very much not opposites (There's an O in the logo!), you might be thinking of anomie which means the absence of (legal, social) norms.
From the random yanks I see on the net the dividing line between ancap and libertarian is how open and/or conscious they are about their radicalism, though even ancaps of course fall short of admitting that they're neo-feudalists. Basic differentiating factor from ordinary monarchists is that they want their King (not too uncommonly, it could also be a Queen) to rule by grace of capital instead of god. Which, if you ask Stirner, isn't really much of a distinction both are spooks.