I actually wasn't being disingenuous or trolling for the first 5-ish pages, but no one here will actually acknowledge what I'm saying or grasps what they themselves are saying. On top of this, I'm one individual arguing against a dozen. I tried to argue in good faith, but it was immediately assumed I was a Fascist, crypto-Nazi, corporate stooge, and/or teenager not-yet graduated from high-school. Why then should I continue to argue in good faith?
DSMatticus quoted a passage from Adam Smith meant to prove the evils of Capitalism, and in that passage was the line referencing how the masters of this or that trade appealed to the civil magistrate (the Govt) for laws and rules to keep their workers inline. But if one would just read a little bit further, Adam Smith explains the circumstances that increase workers wages and the nation's wealth.
Whatever got all indignant when I said that the USA had the most economic freedom of any country despite slavery of Africans and the genocide of native Americans indians, but... neither of those two tragedies invalidate that fact. The US was approximately 10% black peoples, and the native American indians weren't counted as citizens, nor did they operate in the economic sphere. The richest part of the country was the North, which had the most industry, notably little-to-no slavery, and the majority of the WASP population. Funnily enough, there were even economists and businessmen of the day arguing against slavery
as being more expensive and less efficient than just paying workers and dismissing them when they aren't needed.
Thaluikhain mentioned another example, the factories of the Industrial Revolution. Popular belief says that this is evidence of the cruelty of capitalists blah blah blah. But what actually happened? The history book will tell you that during this era, people from the countryside flocked to the cities to work in these factories. Why was that so? Could it be that, despite the miserable working conditions, it was still preferable to working on a farm where every family member worked from dawn til dusk often for mere subsistence living? Could it be that the option of working in these factories was preferable to
starving and more profitable for the workers?
Not only that, but you guys are dismissing the practical effects of that industrialism. The workers were not only being better compensated for comparable hours that they would have worked on the family farm, but the result of the factories and mills was that they could afford goods at a cheaper price than they had they been made by hand.
What about the London sewer system as a triumph of Socialism?
Wikipedia wrote:The Commission surveyed London's antiquated sewerage system and set about ridding the capital of an estimated 200,000 cesspits, insisting that all cesspits should be closed and that house drains should connect to sewers and empty into the Thames (ultimately, a major contributing factor to "The Great Stink" of 1858).
Open.edu wrote:Individual houses had cesspools (though often these were just the cellars). The solid waste or ‘night-soil’ was collected from these by well-paid ‘nightmen’ (they were only allowed to work at night) who transported it to the market gardens surrounding the city.
SewerHistory.org wrote:King Henry VIII decreed in the late 1500s that homeowners were responsible for cleaning that portion of the "sewer" on which their property fronted. He also created a Commission of Sewers to enforce these rules.
A law was passed during the reign of Henry VIII (in the mid to late1500s) that afforded the legal basis for almost all sanitary sewerage works well into the nineteenth century. For the next 300 years, the metropolitan area outgrew the city limits of London. By 1850, London contained only 5% of the metro area's homes. Each community evolved its own drainage system -- with no thought (physically or cooperatively) to interconnecting with an adjacent community's drainage system.
SmithsonianMag wrote:some chaotic medieval construction work was regulated by Henry VIII’s Bill of Sewers, issued in 1531. The Bill established eight different groups of commissioners and charged them with keeping the tunnels in their district in good repair, though since each remained responsible for only one part of the city, the arrangement guaranteed that the proliferating sewer network would be built to no uniform standard and recorded on no single map.
[...] The toshers’ work was dangerous, however, and–after 1840, when it was made illegal to enter the sewer network without express permission, and a £5 reward was offered to anyone who informed on them–it was also secretive, done mostly at night by lantern light. “They won’t let us in to work the shores,” one sewer-hunter complained, “as there’s a little danger. They fears as how we’ll get suffocated, but they don’t care if we get starved!"
So a problem of the human condition was exacerbated by Govt legislature, only to later be 'solved' by Govt legislature, and at no point was the free market really allowed to operate. I, for one, am curious how individuals and groups would have tackled the problem if they had been given the chance to earn a living off of waste management. Also worth pointing out, it's estimated the Govt project to overhaul London's sewers took ~4.2 million to ~6.4 million £s, or approximately 453,600,000 to 691,200,000£s today. One might be forgiven for wonder whether it would've just been cheaper for private enterprise to work on fixing the issue...
Frank tries to argue that public healthcare is much cheaper than private healthcare, but the Austrians would say he's mistaken. Let's ask him for some details:
* Is Govt in America currently requiring health-insurance?
* Do these mandatory health-insurance policies solely cover catastrophic chance or are the required to cover a whole host of common potential problems?
* If a customer knows that their health-insurer is footing the bulk of the bill for an operation, does this change their incentives? Will they be careful consumers if it is someone else's money at play?
* If everyone is has some form of health-insurance, does this change the incentive for hospitals? Do hospitals have an incentive to charge more for any given procedure knowing that the bulk of the payment comes from an insurer?
* If the number of people with health-insurance explodes, and the number of doctors / medical professionals remains roughly unchanged, what does this ratio of demand/supply suggest about prices?
* Does the Govt heavily regulate the pharmaceutical industry? Does this increase the cost of prescription drugs? Does this benefit the consumer or the big pharma companies?
* What is the average wait-time in USA compared to UK? What about other nations?
* Do different nations suffer from different health-care problems?
The Austrians actually think the USA has a very Socialist system. It's still technically a 'mixed' system, but it's becoming more Socialist every few years. And saying, "Why do you think we can afford X, Y, Z, a Bureaucracy,
and a layer of profit taking?" as though the Govt
was not also taking profits is pretty silly. And no, your thoughts on public tap water isn't the mic drop.