Comments on: Rationing Health Care: A Case of Equivocation

By: Andrew Dalton

Andrew Dalton — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:09:10 +0000

The NYT author is claiming that all economic choices, not just government-directed ones, are “rationing” — in order to dupe people into accepting actual rationing (socialist central planning) without objection. This tactic reminds me of the religionists’ propaganda method of broadening the meaning of “faith” so that it encompasses any claim of knowledge (hence “faith in reason”), in order to sell people on the fire-and-brimstone real thing.

Once again, a proper epistemology is a powerful weapon against statist arguments.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:26:51 +0000

“…good public high schools.” Ha! I can’t think of a bigger paradox.

By: Andrew Dalton

Andrew Dalton — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:52:54 +0000

The NYT author’s misuse of the term “rationing” (broadening it so that it applies to everything, not just government-directed allocations) reminds me of how religionists have tried to broaden “faith” to apply to any claim of knowledge. Just as the latter claim that reason is also “faith” in order to lure people into accepting the fire-and-brimstone real deal, the former claims that the free market somehow practices “rationing” (“We ration lakefront homes”) in order to lure the reader into thinking that a change to socialist central planning is merely a variation on the same theme.

By: Mo

Mo — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:28:51 +0000

thanks for the clear-up John. BTW Canada is already privatizing their healthcare and its sad to see the USA move in the opposite direction.

By: John McVey

John McVey — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:13:33 +0000

The aim isn’t to improve access to medical care, it’s to make sure that some people don’t get more care than others. If the bastards let that slip then they’d be dead meat. Hence they’re buttering people up for more egalitarianism in medical care by obfuscation through equivocation and subtle assertion of the claim that there is only yay much to go around.

Mo: a free market is about people being free to make their own judgement and spend their own money on what they want. Even to focus on efficient allocation of what is produced is to imply that the whole product is socially owned and that the issue is just one of how it is distributed “fairly.” The moral is the practical: efficient allocation is just the practical result of morality of free trade, where the real justification of free markets is that morality.

JJM

By: Mo

Mo — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:32:53 +0000

My primitive understanding of this matter is that in a free market it is about allocation of resources rather than rationing.

I think rationing is when a central authority decides what to give or deny.