Should Certain Goods Be Excluded From the Free Market?: Philosophy Forums

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Should Certain Goods Be Excluded From the Free Market?
Is it ethical to exclude certain goods from the free market?

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Should Certain Goods Be Excluded From the Free Market?

unrealist42
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Posted 10/15/09 - 02:47 PM:	#11
It really depends on how you view society and the role of government. If you are an egalitarian then many things may be excluded from the private sector in order to ensure an equitable world. If you are a Nitschean then nothing would be. Personally, I see little that needs to be excluded. Callous disregard for others, concentrations of wealth and/or power.

JagerJagger
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Posted 10/15/09 - 03:36 PM:	#12
Caldwell wrote: So, by the same argument, it is wrong for supermarket stores, roadside stores, farmers, etc. to make a profit off their produce and food products since most, if not all, people buy food for sustenance? Is it wrong to profit from sustenance needs of society? How about apartment buildings that are designated government subsidized, meaning the tenants get part or all of the rent money from the government paid to the owner of the apartment? Is it wrong to profit from shelter needs of society? If I needed a particular type of food to survive and it cost me two year's salary, your analogy would make sense.
"The people saw the opening and rushed for it euphorically." - Paul

JagerJagger
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Posted 10/15/09 - 03:38 PM:	#13
unrealist42 wrote: It really depends on how you view society and the role of government. If you are an egalitarian then many things may be excluded from the private sector in order to ensure an equitable world. If you are a Nitschean then nothing would be. Personally, I see little that needs to be excluded. Callous disregard for others, concentrations of wealth and/or power. Why would nothing be for a Nietzschean?
"The people saw the opening and rushed for it euphorically." - Paul

JagerJagger
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Posted 10/15/09 - 03:40 PM:	#14
unrealist42 wrote: For profit health care in the US was, until recently not the way health care was delivered. While there have always been some for profit health care insurers and providers the market was dominated by non-profits. It is only over the last 20 years or so that for profit health care has become a dominant feature of the US health care landscape. Blue Cross Blue Shield was a non-profit company for most of its existence and the great majority of hospitals were non-profit community or religious institutions. When most health care was non-profit, do you think it's fair to say that this model was possible simply because there was less dependency on medical technology because, quite simply, there wasn't much technology and therefore not much to spend money on?
"The people saw the opening and rushed for it euphorically." - Paul

Caldwell
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Posted 10/15/09 - 11:46 PM:	#15
JagerJagger wrote: If I needed a particular type of food to survive and it cost me two year's salary, your analogy would make sense. Ah so, you want to ignore supply and demand and just want to criticize "profit" just for the sake of convenience in your argument?

JagerJagger
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Posted 10/16/09 - 12:30 PM:	#16
Caldwell wrote: Ah so, you want to ignore supply and demand and just want to criticize "profit" just for the sake of convenience in your argument? I'm not criticizing profit, I'm criticizing your weak analogy. But nice job trying to frame this into a tired "capitalism vs. socialism" debate.
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Posted 10/16/09 - 11:50 PM:	#17
JagerJagger wrote: I'm not criticizing profit, I'm criticizing your weak analogy. But nice job trying to frame this into a tired "capitalism vs. socialism" debate. My analogy isn't weak, and it doesn't make it weak just because you say so. Brush up on your skills in argumentation before you get into a debate. A brain surgery of aneurysm can cost up to 500,000 because of the amount of specialists, medical technician, facility, medical equipments, and procedures needed to work on a patient. What drives up the price of such medical care is the hospital costs. The hospital needs to operate profitably or it closes down. The same with other goods and services. So, your questioning profit as ethical, etc. needs a lot of work or you have no argument to say. Edited by Caldwell on 10/17/09 - 12:09 AM

unrealist42
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Posted 10/18/09 - 10:34 AM:	#18
JagerJagger wrote: When most health care was non-profit, do you think it's fair to say that this model was possible simply because there was less dependency on medical technology because, quite simply, there wasn't much technology and therefore not much to spend money on? No, most health care was non-profit because people did not think that medicine should be an endeavor that preyed on people in distress to make a profit. People had a sense of ethics and morality back then. Much medical technology is grossly overrated, and overly expensive. There are many conditions that can be determined by a $50 x-ray that now seem to require a $2,000 cat-scan or $5,000 MRI.

unrealist42
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Posted 10/18/09 - 11:08 AM:	#19
Caldwell wrote: My analogy isn't weak, and it doesn't make it weak just because you say so. Brush up on your skills in argumentation before you get into a debate. A brain surgery of aneurysm can cost up to 500,000 because of the amount of specialists, medical technician, facility, medical equipments, and procedures needed to work on a patient. What drives up the price of such medical care is the hospital costs. The hospital needs to operate profitably or it closes down. The same with other goods and services. So, your questioning profit as ethical, etc. needs a lot of work or you have no argument to say. The price of surgery for a brain aneurysm, or any other procedure, for that matter is a direct result of the ability of those who are paying for it to make deal with the provider. If it is an insurer with a large base of subscribers in the area, surgery for a brain aneurysm would probably only cost $50,000. If you are a rich Saudi Prince it would cost you $500,000. A friend of mine told me he was talking to a surgeon the other day and the guy was complaining that the hospital he worked for charged a foreign patient $200,000 for a surgery he performed that usually cost $20,000. When he confronted an administrator about this he was told " He will pay it so why not?". Last year Aetna dropped 2 million people from its roles because they lived in areas where it had little clout with providers and was unable to negotiate reasonable prices. They were paying up to 10 times the price for standard procedures compared to prices in areas where Aetna had significantly more subscribers and could negotiate deep discounts, like $15,000 for appendix removal that they would pay $1,500 for in areas where they had a strong negotiating position. This is part of the perverse economics of health care in the US. Providers cost shift to those in weak negotiating positions, except in Maryland where procedure prices are set by the state. This is also why the insurance industry is scared to death of a public option. The public provider will have a strong negotiating position and providers will shift the cost to private insurers. This, of course, entirely ignores the reality that the for-profit providers are out to get however much they can from wherever they can get it and are free to charge whatever the market will bear with little regard to the actual cost of providing services. Hospitals around here are spending $Billions on expansion projects right now. I kid you not, Boston area hospital groups are in the process of spending over $2Billion in completely unnecessary new construction. Guess who is paying for it and how? All this new construction has to be paid for somehow and with all those empty new beds and underutilized fancy new equipment..... It is no wonder health insurance premiums are going up %10 a year. Somebody had to put their foot down with these dick heads.

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Posted 10/18/09 - 12:03 PM:	#20
unrealist42 wrote: No, most health care was non-profit because people did not think that medicine should be an endeavor that preyed on people in distress to make a profit. People had a sense of ethics and morality back then. Prove it. Even though if you read my last post I explained why I am for a single payer health care system, I find your history here to be dubious. Your explanation for why health was non-profit is based on a rhetoric and dichotomy that derives from out current political debates, and is not contextual to the time period your talking about. In other words, your understanding of history is hopelessly biased by a contemporary reading of the issue. It would be like framing a discussion of affirmative action through the ages with the terminology of the 1990s. It just doesn't work. Second, I don't think profit is a moral evil and I don't think historically people have treated profit as immoral either (in practice). This was one of the conundrums of the early Communists. Instead of revolting and taking over the means of production, as they predicted, the masses seemed instead to not so much mind that surplus value was being made from their inputs. But it was unthinkable that people might actually like capitalism, which gave birth to an assortment of other theories like ideology and fetishism that are irrelevant here. The point is that in history when people turn against profit, they have generally been using the word in an improper way; as a misnomer, or misdiagnosis. Thus most of the cultural turns against profit have been during crises or corruption scandals; Enron being a prime example of the failure of corporate accountability. But Enron`s problem was not profit. Indeed, it was the opposite. Enron was cooking the books to fool investors. They had been losing money all along! Thus profit was a misdiagnosis where the real issue was creative accounting and fraud. Today our disgust is directed at bankers, and similar to the Enron case, the sub prime mortgage crises was essentially caused by creative insurance schemes; and as the perception that as the world plunges into recession CEOs are still being paid undeserved and exorbitant bonuses from pre-recession contracts there is a justified sense of injustice. But the injustice is not profit, per se. The injustice is a mixture of unearned profits (largely from tax payers) and a perceived unfairness, or zero sum relationship, as CEOs profit and the average joe goes into bankruptcy. As for the actual state of health care "back then" it depends on when "back then" is. In ancient Rome, for instance, health care basically consisted of good sanitation which was basically an infrastructure question. At the beginning of the industrial revolution most health care was delivered by charity, church or a family doctor. The quality was obviously very poor. Early hospitals revolutionized the quality of heath thereafter. With capital and science converging into medical breakthroughs people migrated from all around to get treatment. In Utah a Mormon society began the Deseret Hospital which was very progressive in training women is medicine. It was funded primarily by donations and for most things care was free. This vestige of how things use to work (the church delivering basic health care by donation) combined with the birth of modern, capital intensive medicine (research, development and training) lead to the collapse of the Deseret Hospital under financial instability. So you see how things have changed. The reason that health care use to be charity has more to do with the little health care options that existed back then. It usually meant taking some sort of placebo treatment or praying. Today we don't die in child birth like 1/10 women did in those days because of medical advancement. However the advancement isn't cheap. It costs nothing to let a mother wither and die as you say your Hail Mary's, but if a hospital wants to be up to date in its technology and techniques it will have to be business savy: that is, it will have to make money or it will fail. A single payer system, by the way, still keeps medicine private. It is insurance that gets socialized, and primarily because of the market failures that insurance markets are prone to -- not because of profits evil.
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