Take China for example. A middle class person in China today lives like an upper class person compared to the 1700s. A poor person on average anywhere is doing way better than ever before..
Has there actually been a better century in terms of comfort and stability for most people
I mean.. Successfully privatizing reusable rocketry and making domestic launches possible in the states again is amazing even if you hate him.
The reasons for farm subsidies are.. Debatable. If you keep food cheap people don't notice currency debasement as much. Personally I think it might make more sense for prices to rise to a point where farmers are profitable without subsidies. Those subsidies are value extracted from the tax payer anyway.. You're paying for it.
You're right too in that buses and trains are a lot cheaper and should always out compete cars. How much do you think fares would have to rise to make public transport self sufficient ? Make it so it funds its own expansion and service improvement.
The Toronto Transport Commission is my local example. From what I can napkin math they get about 1 billion dollars in subsidies per year from the city (maybe some provincial and fed money too.. I rounded up generously). They collect a little over 700k fares a day. Wouldn't take much of an increase with like almost 250 million fares a year to close that gap.
Privatize the roads and have cars users pay their share of that infrastructure cost and get the burden off of working people and I bet a small share increase would be pretty affordable.
If you rented or bought a house close to a grocery store you'd mostly be able to do it. European cities were built when horse and carriage were still the best option. I think if city centres were designed to be car free and have everything organised to be walkable that'd be great for people who want that.. There are certainly a lot of situations where someone needs to have a car .. Here and in Europe.
A world where roads and public transit are all operated as for profit ventures without any tax ? Man now you're talking .. I'd love that
Yeah the US is a really poor example of a free market.. I don't think one exists for health care.
Some environmental impact is unavoidable. I think people are maybe a bit more aware and if I knew a company was being unnecessarily wreckless I'd personally not give them a dime. Also this is what lawsuits are for. These companies should be sued into nonexistence.
Why are domestic companies forced to compete on an uneven playing field like that? Why are companies able to just go abroad and import at very favourable rates. That's profoundly unfair .. But have you thought about what would happen to the cost of goods if there was an equal playing field? All the worst things are still done they just happen elsewhere.
Some people are just better in terms of being productive. I don't see how that's debatable. The question is just if you let those people keep they're outsized earnings or you forcibly redistribute them.
I guess the difference being the people in control of permits and policies produce nothing of value. If a capitalist fails to produce he no longer holds the property or patents. Someone else gets them to try to compete.
The reason capitalism is moral is that the people who get the scarce resources need to be effective in providing for everyone else by creating or they lose them. Under a central planning system this is not the case. Scarce resources are held by connected people .. The state bails them out if they really fuck up.
Nothing is stopping you from creating an improved Gillette razor and competing without blatenly copying their patent.. Property is expensive but available (problem created by government with interest rate manipulation and making land one of the only viable hard assets) you can hire people for your factory. They'll cost 10x what they do overseas though.. So you'd probably just go there.
Man you won't find me defending fractional reserve banking or fiat currency. Those are also things created by politicians and bankers. They're just means of stealing value. You also can't have socialism without fiat currency. The myth that you can rob the 1% to pay for the needs of everyone.. Well do the math .. Liquidate the 10 richest people and it funds the state for maybe a month or something.
Ah I didn't get the joke I guess lol. I'm not really much of a fan of socialism. If companies can't build without permits and tax breaks then you dont really have a level playing field anymore and you no longer have functional creative destruction. Old inefficient well connected incombants strangle the new razor corp in the crib and you're stuck paying 35 dollars for blades :)
I'm actually not really. Here's at least a logical arguments one could make.
Healthcare is a scarce resource like all things. Making it universal doesn't exempt it from that fact. Removing it from a competitive market will likely make it more expensive and prevent innovations which will keep it affordable. Competitive markets drive efficiency.
Government provided healthcare rations service availability based on criteria they set. A private system rations availability based on the indivual's ability to afford the service. If people can afford the service additional capacity can be created with that money. Under a government system extremely long wait times are the norm .. With health this may mean late diagnosis of cancer and other suboptimal outcomes.
People are generally more wealthy in the later years of their lives and also in need of more care. Under a public system the costs associated with an aging population will be disproportionately placed on younger people who still pay taxes in their prime earning years. With the number of working people constantly decreasing when compared to the number of retired baby boomers this is unsustainable under a public system.
At the end of the day I think free markets apply poorly to healthcare because you have no ability to comparison shop during a medical emergency. Also US seems to have the worst mix of regulated private healthcare which has kept costs the highest of any country. I do think most social democratic countries are basically screwed over the next 20 years with the demographics being what they are.
Everything is profitable if you raise prices. In a way you're just offsetting a certain segment of the populations transportation costs to everyone else under that system. Maybe you could privatize the roads too and use the tolls to fund more buses which operate at a profit. Its fun think of insane libertarian free marker solutions to such problems :) Cars might be less appealing if people had to pay the associated infrastructure costs on a per km basis.
If you really want to you can structure your life in a way where food is close to home.. did that through college. Paid for cabs for groceries .. Walked and used transit or my bike. Was pretty miserable in Canadian winters and not very convienent. Plus pretty expensive.. You can do it. Or just admit you like cars :) as long as most people secretly actually like cars and use them then society will be structured in a way to accommodate that. The world's a big place and in order to have most of the things you need really close isn't really entirely realistic.
You can agree with some principles of a work and reject others. What parts of her philosophy do you find to be lunacy?
It speaks against a system where political favour dictates your success as a producer over your ability to compete. If you feel land owners and intellectual property owners are gate keepers in a society where your can have your own ideas and buy your own property I don't know what to say.
Well two of probably a dozen or more requirements a week right? Your solution is "pay someone else with a vehicle" and after a certain number of times that makes less sense than just having a vehicle. Also imagine being a single mom who works with like 5 kids.. Trying to manage that with paying for cabs or trying to use a bus..
For non urban people like me you unfortunely need a vehicle to get everything. I vastly prefer public transport if I'm going into a major city because parking is a major inconvience and expense.
Public transport in areas with low population density is unprofitable and poor service .. Too few vehicles so long waits between pickups. My town has literally a single cab .. Better be the first person to call if you need a ride to work ..