Posted by
Good Al on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 11:46:18 PM
Link
Why don't we have a
single payer system for groceries? Competition is terrible because it
forces consumers to get products and services at a lower price. Isn't
that awful?
The article tells about what is happening in the
grocery store business in California. Competition and profit
is what drives improvements, cost reductions, and lower costs to the
consumer. Every example we have of government run health care in this
country and in the world shows how inferior it is to what we already
have. Yes we have problems, but we have incredible successes in health
care that would never have come from government fiats. The fact is, the
Marxist mindset looks for a problem, or creates one, and then singles
it out as a vehicle to advance more government control. We have the
first Marxist President in Barack Obama. His agenda has nothing to do
with improving health care, the economy, our energy supply, etc.; it is
all about "remaking" America. Our current leadership in the Executive
Branch and Congress have visions of communes dancing in their heads.
We have so many examples of how the free
market works and so many examples of how socialism does not work. For
years in America we have given ourselves over to socialism as
politicians have appealed to us emotionally. "They're doing it for the
children," so why not vote for them and let them fix our problems.
Well, we now have lots of experience in socialism in our country, and
we still have great examples of the power of the free market. It is not
much of a comparison. I constantly marvel at the consumer marketplace.
The choices we have in America is staggering. Just take one
sector--electronics. You walk into an electronics store and you are
just overwhelmed with all the different cell phones, ipods, computers,
TV's, you name it. No one person, or bureaucrat, could dream up the
stuff. The very President who is pushing a draconian government run
health care system, enjoys all the neat little gadgets created in our
marketplace--all driven by consumer demand, competition, and profit.
Come to thank of it, those three words--demand, competition, and
profit--are dirty words in the mind of the Marxists. Meanwhile, their
little schemes can only exist on the backs of those that succeed in the
marketplace. Our current President has a Blackberry in one hand a pen
of death to the marketplace in the other. What an oxymoron.
On the other side of the economic spectrum we have examples
like the VA health care system. I hear horror stories everytime I speak
with one of my neighbors who is depending on that "free" system that he
was given access to for his service in Vietnam. Where there is no
profit incentive or competition, there will not be a high standard of
excellence. We need good doctors to have good health care, and I can
tell you the best and brightest are not going to that system. The VA
system is a great opportunity for doctors from other lands who don't
mind lower pay and more hassle in a government
bureaucracy.
We could look at our wonderful AMTRAK
system and see the beauty of government running things that are outside
its perveiw. Government took out the profitability of passenger trains
back in the days after WWII. So those in the train business got out of
it and focused on material transportation. So of course after
government created that problem, it stepped in and gave us AMTRAK.
Problem solved right? No. Government destroyed the ability to have
profitable passenger trains and to meet the demands of the consumers,
so now what we do have is train systems built by government fiat that
no one wants to ride. If there is a demand in it, get government out,
and let the marketplace in. These government systems are failures that
are only sustained by more and more tax dollars. Everywhere government
steps in, where the marketplace should be, it leads to
failure.
The beauty of the free market is that
those products and services that are demanded by the consumer will
flourish, while those things that are not accepted by the consumer die
off in the marketplace. That may not be so good momentarily for the
provider of the product that does not succeed, but it is much better
than having government institute that bad product. There are always
problems in anything involving man. When we put things that should be
in the private sector into the hands of government, the problems become
instituted. In general, the marketplace responds quickly to problems in
its products and services because of the desire to be profitable.
Government does not have that incentive, so problems keep perpetuating
themselves.