The Glade 4.0

Save your snark, and give me a supply chain or an industry that responds the way you've described. Furthermore, explain how healthcare costs have decreased as they have become more bureaucratized.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I'm just talking basic market theory here, so I think all industries should respond the way I've described - i.e. information asymmetries, time-sensitive trades, lack of substitutes, price inelasticity, and lack of effective comparisons will tend to limit effective competition and move the market away from optimal efficiency.

As for health care costs and bureaucratization, sure, extra bureaucracy (whether governmental or corporate) will typically raise the price of a product, all else being equal. But all else is rarely equal. For example, if that extra bureaucracy improves transparency, thereby reducing the aforementioned information asymmetries and improving the ability of consumers to make useful comparisons among providers, the net effect might actually be efficiency-improving.

All of that is relative to it's own industry, and not to other industries. Healthcare may be more or less responsive to those variables that other industries. The truth is we'll never know, because a modern comparison will never be permitted. However, even competition limited to the point of barely existing is better than no competition. Competition finds a way to improve services and costs, because in order to make money you have to have market share. If your competitor has better services and prices, you'll lose customers, so the drive is always consumer friendly.

In our country we have thousands of different industries, and the ones in which our government is most heavily involved see the highest inflation rates, by far. This is the effect of monopoly, government or otherwise.


Are you kidding me? List for me some documented examples of effective laws improving transparency, with data points. Also, how do you suppose that the least transparent entity in our in our country can make something more transparent by sticking it's fingers in?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Although, if you'd ever experienced the healthcare any of those provide, you'd know why Obamacare is a bad idea.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And none of that is built by the government. It's built by private corporations.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Do any of those things look like they are under construction to you?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Also don't we rely on "contractors" in Iraq and Afghanistan?

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Understood. However, given my above point that competition makes for efficiency, I still hold that warfare itself is no different. I'm content to allow governments to handle that, and make it less efficient, however, given the ramifications of exponentially increasing the efficiency of killing thousands of people.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

We use contractors for certain things, but there are a lot of things they simply don't do, or couldn't do. Contractors are ruled by their contracts. If every shift in political or tactical realities required re-negotiationg the contract to meet it, you'd never get anything did and it would cost a million dollars for one guy to guard the chow hall. The contract would put the tax code to shame for length, too. As it is, military contracting is an utter nightmare, it tends to lead to waste, fraud, and abuse, and.. I better stop. I could rant about it for days.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think you'd also quickly find that having all the weapons in the hands of corporations without corresponding governmental power would quickly mean the corporation is the government.

You also might find that killing people would drop considerably in efficiency. Corporations might be considerably more reluctant to engage in competition when that competition might result in a 2000-lb bomb landing in the board of directors meeting.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm skeptical that the warfare would be conducted with anything so antiquated as a 2000-lb. bomb.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

See, the reason businessmen who can make difficult but significant financial decisions to make sure that at the end of the day their books are squared away don't end up in government is because government thinks it doesn't need to square its books.


You say that as if the bolded isn't already virtually the case.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

<3 Neil

Which is why Elmo should be able to have a tactical nuke. Or why the people of California should be able to have a 50 caliber semi/full auto if they choose. Any power that's only in a few hands is going to be misused.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

FTFY.

Wow RD really?

So lets restrict the rights of all people based on the actions of the most crazy.

No voting - people have committed fraud.
No driving - people have driven drunk.
No speech - people have lied under oath.

Law school has been extremely detrimental to your moral reasoning.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

When we're talking about the kind of guaranteed mass casualties you get with WMDs? ****. The .50 cal I have less of a problem with.

The 2000-lb bomb is hardly antiquated, especially when a convenient and cheap (relatively speaking) laser guidance package can be attached. General-purpose high-explosive bombs remain one of the most cost-effective high air-to-ground weapons.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There's nothing wrong with RD's moral reasoning. We absolutely should restrict certain actions based on the amount of damage they can cause, and we absolutely should draw lines based on judgement. We should not allow people to own nuclear bombs just to avoid imaginary "inconsistency".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's a reason Elmo should not be allowed to own a nuke. Elmo is a single person. Even corporations with large military forces is preferable to individuals having control over nuclear weapons.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't know about that. Personally, I think they've been very diligently squaring the circle for years.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

A law against it does not prevent it from happening. If I really wanted to make a gun type nuke I could, if I really wanted to make a dirty bomb I could with ease. So could anyone who isn't dirt poor.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

No, you really couldn't. They don't sell enriched uranium at Home Depot.

If that is the extent of your imagination Xeq, I'll state that "anyone but Xeq could who isn't dirt poor."

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville