A good friend recently said: "Here, I'll make it easy: Not all problems can be solved by a market, and some problems can only be solved by a market. Just figure out which."
I don't believe free markets are the one fix for all... I mean, it's entirely possible for EVERYTHING to be privatized, but is that the most feasible and efficient way to do things? I don't think so.
That said, government should be the exception to the rule. It's not that I'm against government and pro markets so much as I'm pro-pragmatic, and typically markets seem to do a better job than government.
More discussion ensued, and he had some excellent points.
"You guys are right, in most cases. But you need to acknowledge that markets are dynamic systems, and like any dynamic system, they have their failure modes. There are certain cases where markets break down and stop working. This is just game theory, and really isn't controversial I would hope.
Markets indeed do better jobs than government, for specific jobs, given specific conditions. But I don't think that health care is one of these jobs. A health insurance company improves its bottom line when it figures out ways to get people to pay in without paying back out. This creates incentives for all sorts of loop holes and "pre-existing condition" nonsense. The less claims they pay out, the higher their profits."
This was an excellent point, one which I'm still figuring out.
Bottom line:
I pretend to know things, but am constantly changing my mind on these matters. I guess that's good, right?
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