Competition is good, opening the market is good. But don’t turn a blind eye to the fact that the medical market will be comparatively inefficient. That is all I’m saying.

I don’t believe in government intervention unless it’s a commons or anti-commons situation. This isn’t one of those. ergo, I don’t believe in government intervention. But I don’t believe in whitewashing.

All I’m trying to do is say ‘yeah, free-er markest are good, but things won’t be as good as they might be in other markets’. It’s not a hard concept to understand.

This is much like when a doctor tells you that yes, with hard work and diligence you can recover, but you’ll never be quite as healthy as you used to be.

You can keep namecalling, though. I don’t mind.

I could only guess what you meant by “free-for-all systems” and “structure on balance,” however I was not far from the mark. It’s the same premise: individuals are but the hapless pawns of some ultra-powerful mega-beings without a chance of survival absent the guiding, coddling hand of Big Brother who always knows best. Your ideological comrades welcome you with open arms.

Where there’s necessity there’s opportunity. You basically explained in your article how “lay people” would find doctors in a free economy: they would pay someone who knows to do it for them.

I find your statements about “free-for-all systems” and “structure on balance” unintelligible. If your point has to do with the old socialist fiction that unregulated business will monopolize, drain civilization of all value, and finally enslave the humanity, I will direct you to those who those who concur.

I use the word “ideal” as it applies to reality. It is often mistakenly used to describe the impossible– scenarios that contradict facts. Such solipsisms have no place in meaningful conversation.

you can keep repeating it over and over that this isn’t the case, but that doesn’t make it true.

I don’t think I mentioned government intrusion at all in my post. As for ‘unregulated business monopolizing’ I said nothing of the sort. What I did say was that laypeople will be taken advantage of in a market free from regulation.

which is true no matter how much you try to deny it. It’s supposed to take 11 or more years to train a doctor. Yet the patient is supposed to understand the ins and outs of procedures and medications as well as he did?

RIGHT.

If ‘the market’ is so efficient and so beautiful why do chiros peddle their crap?

An important part of applying a model to the real world is understanding when and how the conditions the model relies on will fail to be what is actally seen in the real world. Which is what my discussion was meant to show. I’m saying that whether through government or private corporations, we will end up with a less than free-for-all system. There will be a heirarchical structure, and such a structure is on balance a good thing.

your discussion of a false dichotomy in the 4th paragraph, maybe I’m just obtuse, but I’m not seeing your point. Is an ideal gas not really ideal? Maybe it’s my background in science rather than philosophy, but ideal has always meant a situation in which certain conditions apply; these conditions rarely apply in the real world. Economics being more or less scientific in its methodology, the same would apply to that field.

This is why economists model situations in which the degree of imperfection of information varies. This is why the ideal gas equation has to be modified to take into account that real gas particles do have weigth and do have volume. This is why saying ‘oh free markets!’ without acknowledging the fact that what you’ll have wont behave the way you think it will based on the model.

The kos kiddies say ‘free markets don’t work. time to head toward statism!’

I say ‘markets work. But they’re not completely free.’ Which is a completely different thing.

Neither is perfect rationality a requisite for a free economy, only that many men act rationally much of the time. This is already true; as evidence I offer any developed country. But if your fear is that some can not succeed in a world that provides only for rational individuals, and your wish is to provide a sanctuary for the irrational, my response is that it already exists. It’s called the Middle East.

I would take Dr. Davis’ use of the word “license” to refer specifically to government permission. Also, I would take “no insurance” to mean “no government mandated insurance.”

It doesn’t seem to me that you disagree very much with Dr. Davis’ notion of a free market, only the underlying principles that justify it. Your fundamental error is that of Kos and other libertarian-wannabes: entertaining the false dichotomy of the practical and the ideal. In fact, there’s no difference between the two. Action without purpose or context can never be considered practical, and no principle that flies in the face of reality, of facts, is ideal.

How can you claim that a free market is a utopian ideal, but that it would never actually work? Would it not, then, be something other than “ideal”– a non-ideal market? And if a free market is not an ideal market, then should we not make practical steps in the opposite direction, presumably to what is ideal?