What country do you live in?

Posted by Marc Hodak on September 24, 2009 under Invisible trade-offs | Be the First to Comment

I really liked this exchange from EconLog:

Troy Camplin writes:

If Baucus’ bill passes, I would get a fine if I didn’t buy insurance (I currently am uninsured). Now, if I didn’t have the money to either buy insurance or pay the fine — or if I justly refused to pay the fine — then what? Defenders of his plan have to agree that the government can then come and arrest and threaten to kill me in my own home, in front of my wife and children, because I don’t want to buy insurance — or because I can’t. To support something like that is evil. Pure and simple.

I think this points to something we should all consider when we say that the government should do this or that: is it worth killing someone over? Because, in the end, that’s what we’re talking about. That is what we’re always talking about when we say the government should or should not do something. If you don’t comply, you die. As George Washington said, government is not reason, it is force.

Another way of thinking about it: what actions can another take that you can legitimately kill them over? If someone tries to murder, rape, or steal from you, you can kill them, and you will find few who think you can’t. But should you be able to kill me if I refuse to help you help someone else? Yet, we agree to let out governments act that way.

burk writes:

Mr. Camplin, you may not understand the concepts of insurance and democracy. Democracy is not doing whatever you like, but being part of a larger community that creates certain duties as well as rights. Should you be forced to pay taxes? Should they be voluntary as well, so that you could opt out of being defended by the military and our diplomatic corps? Should Social security be optional, so that, were financial disaster to befall you in old age, you would be left at the roadside, sleeping under park benches?

And for health care, should insurance there be optional as well, so that, were you to choose to opt out and get a dire disease or injury, you would again be left in a ditch, bankrupted by the medical system and then discarded? Right now you rely on emergency room care that is open to all. However wealthy you may now be, that may change in a heartbeat, and then where would you turn? Just what kind of society do you want to live in?

Troy Camplin writes:

Wow, Burk, you live in a pretty hateful society, where the only people you can count on to help are the police and bureaucrats. In the society I live in, there are all sort of generous people and organizations, ranging from my own family to churches. What country do you live in where all the elderly were lying in ditches before the government created social security, and the uninsured sick (as were everyone before insurance was created) were also lying in ditches, unhelped by anyone before, thankfully, such marvelous people as Congressmen and Senators, bureaucrats and policemen came along, lifted those poor, sad people up out of those ditches (must have taken them a long time!), washed them, put them on their feet, fed them, clothed them, and gave them the medical care they needed which nobody before them had ever done for them (nor had they done it for themselves). That must be a pretty awful society, full of people not even people in their awesome helplessness. I would invite you to come visit my society, where private individuals are able to work and feed themselves, provide for themselves and their loved ones, and give to each other. There is so much love and generosity over here, something I fear you must be unfamiliar with wherever you live, where the best you can hope for is that a bureaucrat will call your serial number after you’ve waited in the doctor’s office for 12 hours after your 18 month wait to even get an appointment — and if you do try to get better care by paying for it, you find yourself shot in the head after you resist arrest for having tried to better your life (which is, after all, illegal).

Democracy is not community. They two are utterly different. And a just democracy is not a majority forcing its will on everyone else, no matter what. That is mob rule. Nor is it a minority of government officials trying to force people to do what those officials think is “best” for them — that is tyranny.

burk offered no response.  I wonder what could he say?