TCS: Tech Central Station - The Collectivist Feeling

Liberterians vs collectivists...

TCS: Tech Central Station - The Collectivist Feeling: "In my experience, libertarians and collectivists often talk past one another. Libertarians believe that collectivists are not thinking, while collectivists believe that libertarians are not feeling.

I view economics as training in thinking. That does not mean that you lose your empathy with people. It means, however, that you pay attention to the consequences of policies, regardless of their motives. Or, as Alan Blinder put it, economists have Hard Heads, Soft Hearts.

Although many people remember President Clinton as saying 'I feel your pain,' many economists recall policies of his Administration (in which Blinder played a role) that were based on thinking. Support for NAFTA, fiscal restraint, and welfare reform all ran counter to the 'feeling' wing, which holds sway over the Democratic Party today.

I believe that the Republican Party also is dominated at the moment by its 'feeling' wing, which puts issues like the Schiavo case on the front burner. Each party's feeling wing believes so firmly in its own rectitude that it is intolerant of those who disagree. To a skeptic, these wings appear to be anything but 'warm' or 'tactful.'"...


The Right to Health Care?

Those with the collectivist feeling often speak of a "right" to health care. But in The New Libertarian, Bruce McQuain points out, "you have no moral right to demand that a doctor, nurse, or other health care worker provide their time or talents to you without their permission or at their expense."

I believe that a collectivist would argue that the right to health care does not impose such untoward obligations on health care providers. Rather, it is the obligation of "all of us" to provide resources to anyone who needs health care.

As a thinker, however, I can raise some questions about this. Suppose that Bill Gates would rather spend his money improving the health of Africans than on adding to poor Americans' already extravagant health care spending. From a collectivist feeling perspective, however, he could be viewed as violating Americans' right to health care.

Here is another example. I have never had heart trouble. My lipid profile is good. My EKG's have always been normal. I can exercise as much as I want without untoward shortness of breath. But suppose that I decide that I would like to see a cardiologist, "just because." Do I have a right to do so?

In a capitalist society, I have every right to see a cardiologist, and either spend my own money or try to convince my health insurance company to pay for it. But from a collectivist perspective, my "right" to demand that "all of us" pay for the cardiologist would seem more problematic.

The collectivist feelers base their appeal for a right to health care on the presumption that health care is necessary. However, as I have learned by reading the work of economists such as John Wennberg -- and as I have pointed out here and here -- much health care is in fact discretionary. By that I do not mean unnecessary, but still above and beyond the sort of acute care or basic services which are called to mind when the phrase "right to health care" is invoked.

In fact, if a "right to health care" were defined solely in terms of necessary care, enforcing the right to health care would mean dramatically scaling back government health care for all Americans, including the poor and the uninsured. In practice, it would instead become a political piggy bank, with everyone from plastic surgeons to massage therapists to witch doctors insisting that their services be incorporated into the "right to health care."...