Apologies for a belated response, but I have been engaged elsewhere.
In a message dated 5/19/00 11:47:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
<snip: remarks concerning statistic exchange between Dan and Mumpisis (sp?)>
> Issodhos has raised several related issues. I think that it would
> clarify and simplify addressing his concerns if he would identify each as
> a new thread. This would avoid confusing apples with oranges. Please
> correct me Issodhos, if I have misunderstood the various additional
> threads that you have introduced.
>
> It seems to me one issue that you have introduced relates to the social
> contract; specifically, how much of our individual freedom and
> prerogatives, including revenues raised from taxation, is it necessary or
> desirable to sacrifice in order to avoid "a war of one against all". It
> seems to me that the issues that you have raised about publicly
> subsidizing health or education costs have no superior logical status to
> the funding of fire, policing, roads, ambulances, parks, water supply,
> sanitation, or anything else. In short, if we don't enter into a "social
> contract" to sacrifice some of our prerogatives, then there will always
> be many who will make the same argument for each of the other services
> specified above, including police (A "my gun is bigger than yours and my
> pit bull will have you for breakfast mentality", as it were.) That
> position, of course, logically leads to anarchism, though of a
> non-communitarian "rugged individualism" bent. But if this is what is
> being argued, why not label the thread appropriately and argue it. The
> issue is no longer one of the relative effectiveness of health care
> systems.
I will leave it to you and Mumpisis to determine who has the better health
care system. As to the "social contract", I have agreed that it is a
question of where the line is drawn, so I think you will go astray if you
require that I argue from a position of utopian "purity". Just as a fish
must swim in the water it finds itself in, so to must we work within the
world we have about us. The examples you cite are for the most part local
services and have historically been provided from the taxes levied on members
of the local community. Whether I agree with local government providing
these services or not does not mean I must then drawn the conclusion that it
is only "logical" from these examples to support the idea of a national
health care system. The two, to use your phrase, are in my opinion, apples
and oranges. It is also difficult to see where your "flow of logic" would
stop. Where would it draw the line? Obviously, logic is not the basis for
determining where such a line must be drawn. Instead, it must be drawn based
on a philosophy of what the relationship of the individual is to society.
That would be the point to be argued, not the lack of "superior logic".
> It seems to me that there is another thread you have raised as well: that
> is, the issue of interconnectedness. I think that you are overlooking
> the fact that what happens to your neighbours does affect you, whether
> you wish it to do so or not. Tuberculosis, for example, is much more
> prevalent among poorer people living in substandard accommodations.
> These same people who acquire it may pass it on to you in the food
> preparation process at your favorite restaurant or fast food joint (and
> why should we subsidize inspectors and compulsory testing since "we"
> can't afford to eat out -- to pick up the theme from thread 1, above)?
> Similarly, hepatitis or AIDs (for example) may be passed on in the blood
> supply when you need that emergency transfusion or, perhaps when you're
> feeling a bit randy and your condom breaks (I am not trying to be vulgar
> with these examples, and neither do I mean these rhetorical examples to
> be taken personally. They are not intended to be such). And a small
> proportion of those street kids might just think that you are easy
> pickings (and I live in a "safe" area or in a low SES environment where I
> have nothing worth stealing so why should I pay taxes for police to
> protect you from kids mugging you or stealing your car or burglarizing
> your house, to use another example). And if the society becomes
> technologically illiterate because the public schools are so bad and only
> a small proportion of the population can afford tuition at private
> universities, well then per capita GNP, including your standard of living
> can head south. I do not present these examples as fully elucidated
> positions, but rather to provide an indication of the fact that we are
> much more interconnected, and that the public good is not only a social
> good, but is also much more in our own self interest than may be
> immediately apparent.
"Interconnectedness" is, I think, relatively well recognized by most, and
its existence was never argued by me, but it does not dictate that a
government controlled, taxpayer supported national health care system is
needed to address public health needs involving contagious diseases or other
non-medical problems (sanitation laws, water pollution, improper use of
antibiotics, epidemics). I think you are again trying to use oranges to
support apples. (As an aside, I would like to see some evidence that public
schools are or ever were needed for technological 'literacy'.)
> There were two more threads that I think that I detected in your various
> posts under the thread that I introduced. The first was the clear
> assumption that people should not be reproducing unless they are
> reasonably well off and that, if they do, punishment for their "bad"
> choice should be inflicted upon their offspring. In your words:
> Why are you making babies if you are only earning 5 bucks an hour?
> Well, in the first place, maybe when people got pregnant life was going
> much better with much greater prospects than what turned out to be the
> case nine months or (nine years?) later. Such reversals are commonplace
> in life and oftentimes are both unforeseeable and completely beyond
> people's control.
My statement was made in response to a question that clearly suggested
that one had a right to have a child and then have its birth paid for by ones
neighbors. The fact that a couple sometimes find that their circumstances
have changed does not address what was being discussed. And it would be the
consequences of the couple's irresponsible decision, not an outside directed
"punishment," that would befall the child -- but in reality that is not what
happens because we have government programs and charitable hospital policies
that provide for such births. The question concerned "intent", not
unforeseen future financial reversals.
> I won't dwell on this thread, however, because I think that the main
> issue is simply one of values. It would appear that some of us may have
> differences in values such as compassion. Some of us may have a deep
> value commitment to what might be called the social gospel (e.g., the
> seven beatitudes in the Christian bible or the leavings of gleanings for
> the poor and jubilee years of debt forgiveness in the Jewish bible).
> Values, however, are just that: values. They are beyond the realm of
> logical argument (though some aspects arising from them such as
> interconnectedness are not).
It is not a question of values at all. It is a question of government
versus private means of providing health care, and how to best provide care
for those who need but cannot afford it. I might also point out that your
claim to a superior morality is a bit much. Your use of the Beatitudes as
well as "gleanings" are also a bit misleading in that neither was ever
advocated as a political system, or to be put in place by force. They were
directly targeted at how an individual should voluntarily conduct herself.
Nowhere does it say, "Taketh from thy neighbor by force what was his and
keepeth it unto thyself to do with and scatter as thou wilt, for thou and
those who thinketh as you do, art surely superior."
> The final thread that I detected I will label "externalization of
> costs". It is an incontrovertible fact that a child cost tens or
> hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise, which includes health care
> costs, shelter, nutrition, clothing, education, values socialization,
> etc. Without that expenditure, there would not be a young adult who
> would be able to become a police officer, a fire fighter, a surgeon, a
> construction worker, etc. An argument can be made from an economic
> perspective, and apart from values, that the cost of a police officer
> (for example) is not merely the wages and ancillary expenses associated
> with the job, but also the cost of raising that police officer from a
> fetus to adulthood.
Let's just call it what it is, the "socialization of costs" associated
with the raising of a child. Now show me any functioning society throughout
history that was bereft of workers of any sort because it failed to tax
others for the raising of another's child. An aside: In such a system, to
whom would the right belong to determine which values', philosophies, and
faith would be instilled in the child?
> Think of that expense as the equivalent of the
> infrastructure expenditure that a public body might make to induce a
> potential employer to set up shop in its jurisdiction (rather than
> elsewhere). The actual costs of the jobs that are created are not simply
> the cost incurred in building the factory, but also the additional
> publicly subsidized infrastructure costs in even making it possible to
> have that factory. Ideological normative macroeconomic theory aside,
> this is positive macroeconomic theory -- i.e. how the world actually
> works rather than how a textbook says that it should work. I would argue
> that raising a child to adulthood is similarly part of "infrastructure
> costs" for society and that because all people are going to benefit from
> those expenditures, they should also contribute to those "infrastructure"
> expenditures. Regardless of whether or not people have children
> themselves, they are going to need those children to develop into adults
> to repair their roof, to remove their tumour, to protect them from
> disorderly individuals, to prevent their house from burning down when
> their neighbour's house catches fire, etc. As such, I think that I not
> only have a moral commitment to contributing to the rearing of **all**
> children, but that so also does everybody else, regardless of whether
> they have any children of their own.
Children are not the property of a "public body", they are not
infrastructure, the having of children is an elective, and others, rightfully
so, should not be required to bear the burden of another's choice to have
children -- unless they voluntarily wish to do so.
Unfortunately, what you claim as being the moral way, is actually based on
the immoral concept of using the legitimized violence of the state to steal
from a neighbor who may be unwilling to view your beehive society as being
desirable.
Yours,
Issodhos
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