Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you need to know how silly you look if you post some variation of, "Welcome to Socialism..."The first sentence, just to set the tone.
You are not seeing Socialism. What you are seeing is one of the wealthiest, geographically advantaged, productive capitalist societies in the world flounder and fail at its most basic test. Taking care of its people.
This crisis is not about the virus.
This crisis is about the massive failure of our, "Booming economy," to survive even modest challenges. It is about the market dissonance of shortages in stores, even as farmers/producers destroy unused crops and products. This crisis is about huge corporations needing an emergency bailout within days of the longest Bull Market in our history ending and despite the ability to borrow with zero percent interest rates.The first paragraph in this block is kind of confusing. I don't know if he's saying this rich, capitalist society is failing by the standards and goals of self-described capitalists, or if he's saying it's failing according to a goal assigned to us by some other ideology. It would be a more interesting claim if we were failing by our own standards and values, but it's far less interesting to say that we fail according to some test or by some standard set by someone else. I'm not sure what "taking care of its people" means. A well-versed libertarian would probably argue that free market societies are all-round richer (they are), so the poor are much better off and have more resources to take care of themselves. There is less of a central "do-er" in a free market society, in which the state is not charged with solving all social problems. But that describes a fictional capitalist society. The "capitalist" society we live in actually has enormous amounts of welfare spending and income transfers and regulation of markets. If governments that do a lot of income transfers make poor choices and fail to "take care of their people," that's a mark against socialism, not capitalism.
The third paragraph in this block is worse. If he is blaming "capitalism" for the shortages in stores and surpluses of crops, then he is confused about the causes of these problems. Shortages are caused by price controls. Anti-gouging laws prevent the prices of scarce commodities from rising, which makes it unlikely that anyone will ramp up production to meet the higher demand. Those higher prices, if stores were allowed to charge them, would discourage hoarding. This combination of encouraging production and discouraging hoarding would fill those empty shelves in short order. Market critics need to acknowledge the bad government policies that are getting in the way. It's more than just anti-gouging laws. The government is in many cases actively getting in the way. Foolish regulations on food packaging have prevented a reallocation of the food supply from restaurants to grocery stores. Other regulations have made it difficult for distilleries to produce hand sanitizer. Businesses want to fill market demand and reallocate capital to the highest valued use. Socialists need to acknowledge that government is getting in the way. In a trivial sense "this isn't socialism", because the government doesn't actively own the means of production. But it's damn close to socialism when the government tightly dictates the terms under which commerce can happen.
This crisis is about corporatized healthcare systems being unable and ill equipped to provide basic healthcare, at the same time they post record profits. It is about crisis response depending on antiquated systems nobody remembers how to operate.This is particularly clueless. Our healthcare system is incredibly socialized. There are not market prices, because almost nobody pays out of pocket for anything. Medicare effectively sets prices by determining reimbursement rates, which private insurers are often compelled to follow. (What kind of system is it when the government sets prices?) When the bad features of our system are removed and people pay out of pocket, the prices come down dramatically and quality and responsiveness to patients' needs improve. Our healthcare system has been wrecked by inadequate reliance on markets, not an excess of them. Laws mandate that employers to "provide" health insurance, while other laws mandate that insurers "pay for" various treatments. (Scare-quotes here because ultimately the employee/insurance customer pays for everything. That is a blindingly obvious bit of econ-101 level reasoning. But sometimes proponents of these mandates pretend they are achieving some kind of transfer from "capitalist" employers to workers, or from insurers to customers. We need clearer thinking and language when we discuss the wisdom of these mandates.) Again, he is simply not acknowledging that government is in the way. Recall that the CDC initially put out a defective test. A frustrated epidemiologist believed the virus was present in her community, but could not secure permission from the CDC and FDA for her test. She tested anyway and was given the finger-wag by the FDA for using an "unapproved" test.
Note also that face masks and other ppe are highly regulated. There were people who wanted to ramp up production but couldn't because they could not secure the government's permission. There are import restrictions on ppe, which the FDA mercifully but belatedly lifted. This is a system in which you must secure permission from the government to produce something. That's not government ownership of the means of production, but it is government control. The most effective part of the government's response to this crisis has been to remove these various barriers and let private firms operate freely. (And, once again, anti price-gouging laws are hurting us. It's as true for ppe as it is for toilet paper and hand sanitizer.)
It's notable that he calls it our "corporatized healthcare system" rather than "our free-market healthcare system". It certainly isn't the latter. "Corporatized" implies some degree of free markets and private ownership, but it leaves the door open for lots of government intervention: subsidies, regulation, mandates, barriers to entry, cronyism, baptist-and-bootlegger style rent-seeking. Is the author aware of certificate of need laws, which block hospital systems from expanding capacity or purchasing new equipment? CON laws basically give large hospitals veto power over their competitors' operations. I suppose it's not wrong to call this a "corporatized" system, but it seems like that word was carefully chosen to lay blame on markets and punt on conceding any blame for our massive system of government interventions.
I think I actually agree with the spirit of this next part, with a few obvious exceptions:
But most of all, this crisis is a direct result of the politicization of every aspect of our society for the benefit of a privileged few. The vilification of education, science, media, natural rights, rural lifestyles, urban lifestyles, charity, compassion, and virtually everything else for brief political gain has gutted our society.
What you are seeing is a quarter century of technological brilliance being reduced to a narcissistic popularity contest. You're seeing the folly of basing the health and welfare of an entire society on personal greed. You're seeing all the necessary tools, for us to shrug off this crisis, go unused while people argue over who should get the credit and profit. Even worse, you're seeing vital help withheld because recipients might not, "deserve it..."I'll join him in decrying the "politicization of every aspect of our society" and the "narcissistic popularity contest". I don't know about the "vilification of education". As Bryan Caplan points out in The Case Against Education, education is quite popular, and per-pupil spending has gone up continuously, despite no sign of improving outcomes. Other than that, the author does put his finger on a truly obnoxious feature of our society: people join "left tribe" and "right tribe" and everything becomes politicized along this axis. For some reason, things that should not correlate with your politics do. People predictably align with the "correct" opinion and orient themselves against the opposite tribe. I could stand to see less of that.
In a sense he's correct that "this isn't socialism". But if I were going to write a "this isn't socialism" piece, I'd point out all the ways that we've ditched socialism because it was hurting us, many examples of which are given above. I'd point out that altruistic billionaires are on top of this while government is asleep at the wheel. I'd point out that private businesses acted appropriately before the government mandated shut-downs, such as the NBA cancelling its season and companies sending their employees to work from home when possible. Sure, some features of our system are obviously socialist. Like Trump ordering meat producers back to work. Or passing a 2 trillion dollar spending bill and allowing the government to literally allocate capital in the economy. Sure, obviously that's socialism. It's no less socialist because the government, once empowered, makes poor decisions and has the wrong priorities. Some socialists would like to tautalogically define "socialism" as "good, well-functioning socialism", but we're far too sophisticated to fall for that trick.
It's probably not very productive to label things "socialist" and "capitalist", and then claim that certain bad outcomes impugn one ideology or another. When critics use the word "capitalism", they usually mean some degree of free markets with a lot of cronyism, with government putting its thumb (or fist) on the scale to benefit big businesses. When proponents of free markets discuss capitalism, they will often criticize the same business-favoring policies that socialists don't like. It devolves into a pointless discussion about what words mean. Same with socialism. It doesn't have a consistent definition. Maybe some people are still using the original meaning of "government ownership of the means of production," and maybe some people (who don't know that the 20th century happened) still think that's a good idea. Some proponents use the term to loosely mean "lots of government intervention in the economy and lots of income redistribution". Some opponents of socialism use the term to mean "any government intervention in the market", and many moderate leftists bristle at the term.
A more fruitful approach would be to discuss the merits of any particular government program. I don't care if it's "socialism" or "capitalism" when our government hands out checks to incumbent businesses. I think it's a terrible idea, but it doesn't particularly matter what you call it. We have a massive welfare state that primarily redistributes from young to old, not from rich to poor. I don't care if we call that "socialism" or something else. But I will certainly make the point that this is likely to happen when government has a mandate to "help the poor." Give government control over society's resources, and it will predictably distribute it to politically powerful groups and reliable voting blocks (the elderly). It's what we're likely to get when someone tries to implement socialism in the real world, with all it's political constraints fully in play.
_________________________________
Here is the full text of the original post:
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you need to know how silly you look if you post some variation of, "Welcome to Socialism..."You are not seeing Socialism. What you are seeing is one of the wealthiest, geographically advantaged, productive capitalist societies in the world flounder and fail at its most basic test. Taking care of its people.This crisis is not about the virus.This crisis is about the massive failure of our, "Booming economy," to survive even modest challenges. It is about the market dissonance of shortages in stores, even as farmers/producers destroy unused crops and products. This crisis is about huge corporations needing an emergency bailout within days of the longest Bull Market in our history ending and despite the ability to borrow with zero percent interest rates.This crisis is about corporatized healthcare systems being unable and ill equipped to provide basic healthcare, at the same time they post record profits. It is about crisis response depending on antiquated systems nobody remembers how to operate.But most of all, this crisis is a direct result of the politicization of every aspect of our society for the benefit of a privileged few. The vilification of education, science, media, natural rights, rural lifestyles, urban lifestyles, charity, compassion, and virtually everything else for brief political gain has gutted our society.What you are seeing is a quarter century of technological brilliance being reduced to a narcissistic popularity contest. You're seeing the folly of basing the health and welfare of an entire society on personal greed. You're seeing all the necessary tools, for us to shrug off this crisis, go unused while people argue over who should get the credit and profit. Even worse, you're seeing vital help withheld because recipients might not, "deserve it..."You're seeing a lot of things nobody thought they'd ever see, but you're not seeing Socialism..."Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves."-- Horace Mann
No comments:
Post a Comment