Is Less Government More?

Another comment/response (like Unaffordable Health Care) in the same Facebook thread:

So I guess I’m saying that basically all government functions are socialistic in nature. They are implemented by/for a social group (U.S. or state or local or . . . citizens). Centralization is just a means of doing, or another way of describing, the focusing of effort. -which is really a main practical use of forming any group, in the first place (another being division of labor, for efforts which are big and/or complicated). E.g. You live in a family group. The family usually focuses or centralizes itself and resources into one, single, house, rather than a single dwelling for each individual. So that is a primary defining feature of a government. It will centralize, or focus, effort on manipulating defined aspects of our resource exchange (our “economy”). The scope/extent of its activity can be debated. But I don’t see any of a government’s activities as being much/anything but “socialist”, in my view. This might simply be semantics, and not THAT useful an issue to push. But I guess the point I’m trying to make is that it is not necessarily useful to demonize the act of centralization, or even sometimes the act of increasing its scope of influence. The act of choosing to have a government (national, local, or otherwise), vs. none, IS effectively the act of deciding it’s ok to increase its scope of influence.
I sincerely don’t mean to incite any ill will. I am surely missing some information. But it seems there are a couple internal inconsistencies in your words, and possibly your words vs. your life choices. 1) It seems a couple defining or observable features of a “fallen” (or otherwise similarly described) world are “chaos and disorder”. So to the extent you are “comfortable” with a “certain amount” of that, seems to be the extent to which you are fine with the world being “fallen”. 2) A “least” government is the best, “skeptical” view of the government, seems inconsistent with anyone who volunteers to work for one of the most extremely socialist parts of our national government. --the military. Those opting for this, are choosing to have the government most directly determine/provide their health services AND their housing situation AND their food supply (and more). This is a lot more than, say, an independent contractor, freelancer, small business owner, etc. Here are a couple free-market versions of military jobs, one might instead opt for: patriotic mercenary, civilian defense contractor, etc. 3) I’m not sure if, or the extent to which, this applies to you. But those who believe in a god, most certainly believe in a benevolent dictator. -someone who is (on the balance/within the context of his/her “plan”) “benevolent”, and to a large extent dictates what happens to the world (and thus the people in it). To, maybe, expand on the above, here are some other examples of what some people might do to demonstrate they, in practice, believe in less expansive/centralized, and more localized handling/control of resources/services: Local/sustainable farming (v.s. large, centralized operations, in a few states). Installing solar panels to charge an electric car, vs. using gasoline (localized sun energy collection, vs. from some central collection and processing facility, likely much farther away). Again, I don’t assume you, personally, are not already aware of, or doing, such things. Of course everyone’s experience, and thus worldview, differs. We all are limited by our biology (brain, eyes, ears, etc.) and circumstance in forming a model of the world which cannot exactly match the ACTUAL world. I don’t believe there is any utopia (at least, not that we have the capability to comprehend or design). But I do have some belief/hope that we might be able to set up some sort of optimization problem to try and determine an appropriate balance between “common good/effort” and “individual freedom” in defined instances, if we can account for real, tangible, trade-offs. The modeling and optimization can never produce some sort of “utopia”, because it is not possible to know all of the parameters, and those parameter values would change in unpredictable ways, as a civilization evolves. Our current form of governmental “design” contains many examples of “chaos and disorder”, built in. So I don’t want more of that. But I also try to be a “what is right” vs. “who is right” kinda guy. So I also don’t necessarily think a free market competition of PEOPLE or groups of people (businesses, etc.) is optimally useful. I think the free market can be a good empirical way to experiment and find the best IDEAS (i.e. “what is right”). I mean . . . I realize the current market form doesn’t literally kill, or eliminate, or enslave all the people in a competing company, who might produce/provide an object or service of objectively inferior value. Some of those displaced workers might, effectively, subscribe to the “victor” company’s “idea”, by going to work for them, instead. But it seems like there might be ways to better promote a competition of methods/ideas, vs. people, themselves. Anyway . . . I just feel like we are being played, by “the powers that be” (The people instrumental in this, might not be actually/totally conscious that/how they are doing it. They just know that it seems to be working for them), into wasting our time with (and/or then falling into apathy about) arguments which can’t ever be resolved. The people they want labeled as “liberals” and “conservatives” choose different sides of a “common-good/work together” vs. “individual freedom” debate, depending on the application (military vs. human welfare, etc. etc.). The arguments distill out to be the same, whether you invoke “Jeffersonian” or “Federalist” or other labelings/categorizations. If one group is on one side, the other needs to invoke the other view, to justify what they want. It is a waste of time to choose one over the other AS A GENERAL PRINCIPLE, because both contribute to quality/quantity of life, but both have costs. I feel like, if you push strongly for one, over the other, you just keep the pendulum swinging in a useless, never-ending oscillation. You can fall into some mythical fantasy of a country that used to be “great”, and we can get there “again”, by simply shoving the pendulum back the other way.

Yeah. The more I think and look closely at our interaction, the more I see that we seem to fundamentally agree on. -something I believe is generally more widespread, than "the media" might tend to portray (including Facebook, and it's suggested/relevant items which now show up in the center feed). I'm just afraid of rehashing failed solutions of the past, due to some nostalgic recall, or failure to objectively study the underlying dynamics of past scenarios. It seems like the more people actually engage each other, in terms of sharing values about basic needs (personal protection, food, health, housing), the more the other more politicized issues become irrelevant, and we see opportunities for real solutions and hope.

Unaffordable Health Care

The following refers to, and elaborates on, parts of a comment a friend made on Facebook, to someone’s post. I didn’t want to post a ton of text there. So I’m making it a blog post, here.
I think there is a lot of validity to "Agustus’s" comment. Any less direct means of paying for your health services (vs. paying “out of pocket”) certainly can have the effect of a person losing track of the cost. When people have any kind of insurance, they can tend to think “It’s paid for.”, or at the very least reason that they pay the same amount, so why not take advantage of as many services as they think they might “need” to. One might see how these could have the effect of providers (i.e. “free-market” businesses) being able to get away with increasing costs and services. So I think it’s valid to propose that effect happens when going through a modern government, with all its administrative structures, etc. -i.e. It can be hard to SEE the true costs you’re paying, for any specific service. So an unchecked/un-revisited "subsidy" can surely have the effect of increasing costs. Realizing I was naive to the history of employer-provided health care, I did some quick research. Apparently it started with hospitals trying to market some of the then new health care advances, without shocking patients with large one-time costs. I guess it got one big boost during the WWII economy, when employers tried to attract reluctant workers, by offering health care insurance/benefits. Said another way, these businesses used this “benefit” to lure employees, rather than paying a (modestly) higher wage. One could argue who’s fault that was: Manipulative “free market” employers, or “stupid” employees. Another big boost to employer-”paid” health benefits came in 1943, when the government made these benefits tax-free (plus another boost, in 1954). I personally don’t see any rationale for government services to be directly tied to one’s income (income taxes). Those health benefits seemed to enjoy an advantage, given that the other forms of employee compensation were taxed.
But I reject the notion that any of these effects are simply due to the nature of “the government” or the government being simply “too big”. People that advocate free market, also seem to want some socialism. E.g. “(some regulation and contract law is of course necessary for a functioning economy)”. I have asked, and have yet to get an actionable answer, to questions like “Exactly how much is ‘some’?”, or a question which should be easier to answer than that: “What is the concrete, guiding, PRINCIPLE you’d use to QUANTITATE how much regulation, of what kind, where?” How much of this socialism, you are in favor of, is too much?
My view: Any group construct, call it “public”, “government”, “corporation”, “company”, --whatever-- can be vulnerable to third-party manipulation. You can get some things done faster by dividing and specializing, and also spread risk. But you also increase the “attack surface”, when you introduce administrative processes, and other structures. Corporations have this third-party manipulation built right in. -shareholders, vs. the producers/servicers and the customers. The U.S. government has it’s lobbyists, etc., etc. As is usual, in life, there are tradeoffs. The fact that large organizations persist, means that the balance must be in favor of the large group, vs. individuals, for certain applications. Walmart is a large group. It uses it’s “large group” bargaining power to purchase things for its stores at very low prices. So why are so many people opposed to a group of all the U.S. citizens forming a large, collective bargaining group to get better prices for health care? If large organizations like Walmart regularly bargain for goods/services, why do people want to believe it’s IMPOSSIBLE for the U.S. citizens to do it? --and what is the large group that the U.S. citizens have formed?! Oh. Yeah. The U.S. government!  The “free market” many people think of would only exist if individuals traded amongst each other. As soon as you have some group forming on one side of any trade (e.g. a company, or corporation), the self-correcting benefits of that dynamic tend to fail. --until an equally powerful group can form on the other side of the trade (consumer/trade/labor union, etc.). In terms of increased health care expense, I believe part of it is just that progress has allowed more health interventions to be possible, and thus more “opportunities” to pay more money. But I also feel like a big reason things have/had gotten so expensive is that we have allowed employers, private insurance companies, and health care providers to keep their hands too much on the controls of OUR healthcare money. Too much “compromise” with private health insurance providers. I believe a person should be able to join any cooperative group, to pay (collectively bargain) for anything. Give people the option of joining a large insurance cooperative (U.S. government), to collectively bargain for health services. People should have the option of joining any other group, instead. But why would any logical person want to join a group where, on top of health care, they are paying for shareholder profit, and advertising costs (used to try and convince the subscribers they are getting a good deal).
I guess, in summary, I feel like the government needs to be more streamlined and held accountable (maybe completely rebuilt). I don’t think a growing of the large groups on the “other side” (private, “free market”) is an antidote for this. I have been focusing on health care, because it is a case example of a government program. I guess I see an OPTIONAL single-payer system as more market-like, than the alternative. We would effectively be allowing people to form a consumer-union-like group on one side of the market trade. The alternative to doing this would require increasing the amount of enforcement of “regulation and contract law”, so that corporations aren’t too powerful a force in this exchange with health care consumers (U.S. citizens). --more regulation and enforcement infrastructure, vs. just allowing the U.S. citizens to simply form their own trade group (effectively).

But I think you are right that many people agree on what we want, and we only tend to disagree on how to get it. When I attempt to look at things logically, and objectively, I feel like certain people who control many of our resources would have a huge interest in pushing a “free market” notion, along with a general distrust in government. They, themselves, utilize and benefit from large-group power, including the U.S. government. They like, and use, these “too big” structures, regularly.. They want you to distrust them, by promoting the so-called “free market”. If you do that, you reduce your engagement with, and thus your control over, your large, powerful group. --your U.S. government. I think the parts of the “free market” notion that resonate with many people are the concepts of fairness and accountability (fair price setting, no “stealing”, etc.). We want to be able to fairly trade, and share, our resources. We want people to be accountable for what they do or don’t contribute to a trade or sharing. But how could we ever really enforce people not joining together into large groups, to gain some advantage over our environment (other people/groups are a part of our environment). Our working together in large social groups is a huge part of how we have become such a successful species. So I don’t think we need to demonize one group (say, the U.S. government), in contrast with others (businesses which operate in the “free market”). I think we just need to try to engage with and within groups to make them more directly fair and accountable. Remember that these groups aren’t real things. They are just a set of interactions and intra-actions. So the more you try to be fair and accountable, when dealing with others, the more things will be that way. Technology can be used to shorten the interaction loop, so it is easier to see how your actions are affecting others, and to reduce the attack surface for potential third-party agents. I’m thinking about things like directly paying to “subscribe” to government services, as a way to keep government agents accountable, and directly “register” your “vote” for what you want, without having to rely on some elected official to hopefully advocate for your will.