From: Byrne Hobart (bhobart@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Apr 18 2008 - 20:02:52 MDT
> If that were so, then over decades they would become a lot poorer than
> countries with freer economic systems. That obviously hasn't happened.
>
If and only if that were the only difference. As I noted, they have a very
high-quality work force. It's no accident that American firms work very hard
to hire people from Germany, China, Russia, France, etc.
> Well, this is the point. Unfettered capitalism does not necessarily
> build human capital. If it did what would be the point in taxing
> people to provide free education and so on?
Are you claiming that capitalism must not provide for education, else why
would people tax capitalists to provide it? I usually try to go for higher
standards of proof than "People act as if it were so." I would also note
that if you stroll around the average American campus, you will find lots of
buildings named after Stanford and Tepper and Brown and Yale -- all rich
capitalists who gave millions to start colleges. Perhaps I haven't traveled
enough to see 'Taxpayer hall' and 'voter for proposition authorizing bond
issue earmarked for education memorial cafeteria'.
> The point of a public health system is not that it is paid for by
> taxes but that it efficiently provides excellent health care for all
> the country's citizens, and there would only be a handful of
> achievements that are as important as that.
It is interesting, then, that advocates of national health care don't try to
start businesses operated like the European health care cartels, but instead
demand government intervention. If that is the unimportant part, why do they
spend all their time on it and not on what you claim is the important part?
Your theories introduce a lot of confusion, but they don't seem to have much
explanatory power. Elaboration is in order.
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