Posted on 08/21/2009 8:35:36 AM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
Had an argument with a friend, and he said that "we have socialized institutions for national defense, police, fire, and mail delivery.....if government is good enough for that, why can't they provide healthcare?"
Obviously I knew it was a dumb statement, but I struggled to come up with a solid, reasoned, and strong rebuttal right away.
Anyone got any good ideas?
Government exists to protect life, liberty and property. The police and military, ostensibly, exist to d just that.
how about “Going Postal”....
Those services that he mentioned are for EVERYBODY, not a select few!
Right, but then he comes back with, “healthcare protects life too!”
We already HAVE ‘socialized medicine’ in the US. VA, Medicare, Medicaid. They need auditing and reorganizing.
The Military is a government entity because of the constitution, The Police and Fire are under local government control and the Post office is BROKE.
Whatever happened to the left wanting to keep government laws off their bodies?
four words: “enumerated powers” and “10th amendment”
but not private industry, but not the financial sector-banks, nor automotive which was private, etc etc
Establishment of a mail post and the military and among the ENUMERATED powers given to Congress in Article I section 8.
Establishment of a national system of hospitals is NOT among the enumerated powers given to Congress.
The services he mentions are natural monopolies - you can’t have more than one army, for example. Medical care is an individual responsibility.
First thing that comes to mind is that none of those institutions make money...except for the post office. The capitalist incentive plus competition results in high quality products and lots of choices. Firefighting, Police and Military are each dedicated to a single well-defined purpose. Your friend’s argument was comparing apples and oranges.
He’s falsely equating “socialism” with “government.” Socialism involves redistribution of wealth, allegedly from the ‘haves’ to the ‘have-nots,’ and it’s part and parcel of Social Security, Medicare, welfare, etc. The Postal Service is self-supporting (paid for by service / postage fees, not taxes). Police and military are being paid to do a job. By calling that ‘socialism’, your acquaintance is morally equating soldiers with welfare queens.
First off the military is not an industry (for profit) but it is for our National Defense. We need to hold government accountable and not private firms in regards to National Defense. The police and fire departments follow a very similar line. These are areas were as people need to be able to hold electable officials accountable being that they deal with the defense of our homes and nation.
The post office need not be socialized or government run and it would probably be better off it wasn’t.
Tell your friend to learn what makes America unique: a nation of people of whom self-government is expected and required. This is a nation founded expressly on the principle of limited institutional government. The founders, being students of history, knew that every form of government under the sun results in some form of totalitarianism or abuse of the weak and poor. So they crafted a means by which only the very minimums -- only those things that must be done by a government -- would be done by it. The rest is up to the individual, or individuals cooperating in an environment where all are equally accountable to a rule of just laws.
"It is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams.
Those institutions didn’t start out socialized. But Unions got to them too....
We have a right to protect our persons and property from barbarians and fire; as such we also have a right to delegate that function to “government” to perform that function on our behalf, and we pay for it via taxes.
We do not have a right to demand that doctors work for us for free; neither do we have a right to demand others pay the doctor on our behalf.
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