Submitted by tshirtguy2000 t3_121ol6g in Futurology
Zealousideal_Ad3783 t1_jdnptb9 wrote
Reply to comment by SomeoneSomewhere1984 in Who do you think will be the winners and losers of the coming AI revolution? by tshirtguy2000
You can thank the Federal Reserve and all other government interventions into the free market for that. If we had actual capitalism right now, poverty probably would've been eliminated already.
SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jdnsgl3 wrote
Wow. I don't even know where to begin with that level of naive innocence.
Have you ever worked for a living? I'm not talking about a summer job, I mean worked to pay for your own housing, food, transportation, healthcare? You really sound like someone who read about some idealized version of capitalism in a book, but who has otherwise been completely sheltered from the real world.
Let me give you a clue, people are fucking awful. They steal, cheat, and exploit others because they can. The government's job is to protect people from unsafe products, dangerous work environments, and predatory business practices.
You seem like you could use a few lessons from the school of hard knocks, I'll just hope they aren't too difficult.
NoDimension1757 t1_jdo0m84 wrote
Well I was going to respond to that nonsense but I think you've just about got it covered.
Zealousideal_Ad3783 t1_jdnt7kb wrote
I know what the real world is like. It's not great, which is why I want us to move to a capitalist system. And by capitalist system I mean, ideally no government at all, but at a bare minimum, at least completely privatize healthcare, education, banking, housing, money, etc. We are so so so far from that currently.
The government does not protect people, as you presume. The government is basically a giant mafia gang that systematically violates private property rights. It's a parasite that leeches off society. We would be enourmously wealthier right now if not for the government. Food insecurity, homelessness, dying from preventable diseases, these problems could have been eliminated already but so much of our increasing productivity is being syphoned away by the government.
SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jdnuegy wrote
You claim you know what the real world is like. How? From what you read or saw on TV? What you've imagined? Or have you actually lived in it? If you haven't fully supported yourself in it, you have no idea.
Why would it make sense to treat sick people with fully privatized healthcare? Maybe if they have some super rich relative who can pay you, but otherwise why would you do it? You'd just trust them to pay once they were well enough to work, if they got well enough to work?
What possible capitalist incentive would there be to treat the sick who are too weak to contribute? Or is your idea of healthcare euthanizing everyone who can't contribute, that doesn't have family to care for them? Or you think people will care for the sick out of the goodness of their heart?
You want to know how a truly free market works? Look at the drug market. People often sell laced drugs that kill people. People kill each other over payment disputes.
Zealousideal_Ad3783 t1_jdo4hxg wrote
I don't understand why you keep asking me about the "real world". I know what the real world is like. I know that the healthcare system is insane, inflation is running rampant, people are being forced to work multiple jobs, etc. But all this bad stuff is happening because of government intervention into the free market. The reason I want us to move to a capitalist system is precisely BECAUSE I know the real world is bad right now. If I thought the real world was all rosy right now, I obviously wouldn't be a fan of capitalism because I would be fine with our current system of statism.
Regarding privatized healthcare: the big picture is that free-market capitalism creates an abundance of high-quality goods/services at a low price. If you want our society to have an abundance of healthcare available to poor people, you should support completely privatizing it.
It's hilarious that as an example of a "truly free market" you talk about illegal drugs. That's like saying "if you want to see how true circles work, look at squares!" Your example shows the problems caused by GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION into the free market. By making some drugs illegal, the government prevents legitimate businesses from selling them. So if someone wants to buy an illegal drug, instead of buying it from a reputable company with brand-name recognition and good track records for safety, they have to buy it from some shady guy in a dark alley. If CVS tried to sell marijuana (in a state where that's illegal) they would be stopped by the government. How the hell is that a free market? Your comment makes literally no sense. Look at what happened during alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. The mob got involved in alcohol and violence increased. Then, once prohibition ended, the government was no longer implicitly protecting the mob from competition from reputable business. So the mob was pushed out of that sector by market forces. Today it wouldn't make sense to go to some dark alley to buy alcohol, because you wouldn't be sure of its purity. So you go to a business that you trust, and you know that the product is pure. That's what would happen with drugs if the government stopped getting involved.
canad1anbacon t1_jdp0sy4 wrote
> I know that the healthcare system is insane, inflation is running rampant, people are being forced to work multiple jobs, etc. But all this bad stuff is happening because of government intervention into the free market.
But the US spends more as a percentage of per capita GDP on healthcare than countries with universal healthcare systems like Canada, France, the UK....more privatization in healthcare actually creates inefficiency and waste and leads to worse outcomes
Zealousideal_Ad3783 t1_jdp1je0 wrote
It's conceivable that a completely socialist healthcare system might be more efficient than our current quasi-socialist healthcare system. But both of those options are horrible compared to a completely privatized healthcare system. If we imagine a scale from 1 to 10, where a higher number means a greater abundance of affordable high-quality care, maybe our current healthcare system is a 1, a universal healthcare system is a 2, and a completely privatized healthcare system would be a 10.
SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jdrxzv5 wrote
What motive does a privatized healthcare system have to treat the dying, the disabled, or people too sick to work, who may never recover? Where's the money in that?
SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jdochvk wrote
>I don't understand why you keep asking me about the "real world". I know what the real world is like. I know that the healthcare system is insane, inflation is running rampant, people are being forced to work multiple jobs, etc. But all this bad stuff is happening because of government intervention into the free market.
If you knew about the real world by living in it, you'd see how your theory about the government being the problem is wrong. You would see corporations cutting every corner they can legally get away with because they want to make more money and how others are harmed by that is irrelevant.
If you worked in the real world, you'd know that before the government changed the rules mine owners valued the life of a donkey over a human worker, because they could just find another person to pay without losing much, but they'd have to buy a new donkey.
If you had lived in the real world, you'd be aware just how often regular people rely on government intervention to force others to play fair, or to help them during a crisis that isn't of their own making.
>the big picture is that free-market capitalism creates an abundance of high-quality goods/services at a low price.
Why do you believe that? Not even Adam Smith believed that. He thought government regulation was necessary to prevent monopolies. There is no evidence for this whatsoever.
Based on how people abuse our current system, I think it's more likely most of us would effectively be slaves in a company town if capitalism was completely unregulated.
> Today it wouldn't make sense to go to some dark alley to buy alcohol, because you wouldn't be sure of its purity. So you go to a business that you trust, and you know that the product is pure. That's what would happen with drugs if the government stopped getting involved.
I can go to any legal business to buy alcohol, because they're regulated by the government. There are rules about the purity of alcohol they can sell. Somebody checks they aren't selling alcohol contaminated with methanol, so I don't have to. That somebody is the government.
The government makes sure the food I buy from a grocery store is safe to eat, and isn't contaminated with toxins or pathogens. They regulate restaurants to make sure they uphold food safety standards.
Regulations are written in blood. Most of the regulations you might think are dumb, or common sense, exist because somebody thought they could make a few extra bucks cutting corners, and killed or maimed people doing it.
There are certainly some regulations that are too strict, or unreasonable, but the vast majority of regulations are things closer to making sure there isn't menthol in drinking alcohol, or rat poison in food, than they are like setting the drink age to 21. You just don't think about those regulations because people aren't questioning them.
You think housing will get cheaper if all regulation is removed, and I agree we need to remove a lot of stupid zoning laws. However, I like being able to buy a house, or move into a building, without being a construction engineer, and know the house is safe and won't collapse on me.
Zealousideal_Ad3783 t1_jdp2gdn wrote
My response will be short because I don't have enough time to continue writing a bunch of paragraphs.
If you think that only the government can make sure that food is safe, or that buildings are up to code, you just haven't thought about this enough. Of course the private sector can handle those things. Just because the government is currently doing something, that doesn't mean that only the government can do it. I bet if the restaurant industry was controlled by the government, and I was advocating for the government to abolish the Department of Restaurants, you'd think we would never have restaurants again because we need the government for that.
I'll let you have the last word because I don't want to continue this back-and-forth indefinitely.
SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jdqhp02 wrote
Have you ever worked in the private sector? Because they can't handle those things. The belief they can is based on the false idea that people are basically good, honest, and put the public interest above their own greed. That's not how things actually work though.
The incentives are all wrong for the private sector to even attempt to handle those things. They prioritize short term gains and don't consider the long term costs. Government is required to ensure companies don't risk public safety for short term gain, when the incentives set by capitalism encourage them to do so.
Yes, I support the health department inspecting restaurants, if the private sector tried to do that the restaurant owners would pay them to pass even when they should fail. The government can do that effectively because they aren't trying to make money, so they don't have a motive to pass a restaurant that should fail.
There are many things society needs to function where the incentive for profit encourages people to the opposite of what needs to be done. That's where government comes in. In a property functioning capitalist system the government tries to align the interest of the private sector with the public good.
Profit motive and public good aren't aligned by magic as you seem to think. The government is required to keep those things aligned by setting the rules for the private sector and creating incentives to do the right thing. Where that isn't enough to align profit motive and public good, the government runs things themselves, as they run courts, the military, programs to care for the sick and elderly who can't care for themselves.
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