Stupid Arguments

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Clarissa

January 9, 2013

I don’t know why people waste so much time making idiotic arguments. Consider this one:

Consider healthcare. We all of us—libertarians, conservatives and liberals—want a growing economy. And we all agree that a growing economy requires entrepreneurial dynamism.

So ask yourself this: In a country in which health insurance isn’t guaranteed, how many millions of Americans with great ideas find it impossible to become entrepreneurs because they’re terrified to leave their job, because then they would lose their health insurance and ruin their lives if they get sick?

Of course, one can waste a lifetime asking silly questions. Or one could just see for oneself. For whatever mysterious reason, the variety of goods and services in the US – where healthcare is not guaranteed – is much MUCH greater than in Canada where it is. Mind you, I’m not claiming that there is any sort of a causal link here. Post hoc doesn’t translate into propter hoc, as we all know. But there is a simple, easily verifiable reality that the author of the linked piece chooses to disregard.

You cannot expect to be taken seriously if you make these childish arguments that only make your political movement sound like it’s overrun by a bunch of idiots. I passionately support universal free healthcare but this is not a way to defend it.

P.S. The article also is very sexist in that it claims that Liberals “gave women the vote.” This just goes to show that there are sexist fools both among Liberals and Conservatives.

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13 responses to “Stupid Arguments”

Roberto Severino

January 9, 2013

Wanna know something interesting? I believe the great libertarian Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek was actually in favor of universal health care or at least some form of it. Proof you can be a libertarian and still support universal health care.

https://sites.google.com/site/wapshottkeyneshayek/hayek-on-health-care-social-safety-nets-and-public-housing

“Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong. There are many points of detail where those wishing to preserve the competitive system and those wishing to super-cede it by something different will disagree on the details of such schemes; and it is possible under the name of social insurance to introduce measures which tend to make competition more or less ineffective. But there is no incompatability in principle between the state’s providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom.”

It would be great if we could have universal healthcare, but I’m questioning how it would be implemented in the most cost effective, pragmatic manner. Now that’s how you make a good argument for universal healthcare. Acknowledge its disadvantages and flaws and emphaisize the fact that health care and freedom are compatible and highly important to advancing each other.

I also found this post interesting and sort of related to what I’m talking about.

http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2012/08/rescuing-menger-from-austrians.html

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1. Roberto Severino
  
  January 9, 2013
  
  I forgot to post the first paragraph from the Hayek quote which leads into his defense of universal health care.
  
  ““There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained [NW note: Hayek was writing not in prosperous post-war America, but in war-torn, austerity-ridden Britain in 1943] the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. …. [T]here can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody. … Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individual in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision…”
  
  Doesn’t that sound like a much better way to defend this rather than the clumsy, amateurish prose that Rick Perlstein wrote in?
  
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2. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 9, 2013
  
  “It would be great if we could have universal healthcare, but I’m questioning how it would be implemented in the most cost effective, pragmatic manner. Now that’s how you make a good argument for universal healthcare. Acknowledge its disadvantages and flaws and emphaisize the fact that health care and freedom are compatible and highly important to advancing each other”
  
  – Exactly. This is something that definitely merits being discussed. But not by rolling out weird rhetorical devices that don’t stand up to the most minimal scrutiny.
  
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  1. Roberto Severino
    
    January 9, 2013
    
    What also intrigues me is how very similar ObamaCare is highly based in what Newt Gingrich was trying to propose and a plan the Republicans tried to pass all the way back in 1993.
    
    http://www.newt.org/solutions/healthcare/
    
    http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-facts.php
    
    http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2010/february/23/gop-1993-health-reform-bill.aspx
    
    Hypocrisy much?
    
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musteryou

January 9, 2013

Quiet possibly people can make their great inventions whilst they are young, and are more likely to do so then. Older people and their ailing decrepitude may have no effect on a society’s overall inventiveness.

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1. zeppomanx
  
  January 10, 2013
  
  ” no effect on a society’s overall inventiveness”: Quite right! I believe the next logical step is the “Scrooge doctrine”. They can’t contribute and will die anyway so…”they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population”
  
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  1. musteryou
    
    January 10, 2013
    
    I was going to quote Scrooge. He was on the tip of my fingers.
    
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Rob F

January 10, 2013

What exactly is your problem with the argument you quoted? If one might lose health care when they quit their job, making their expenses go up, then taking any action that deprives you of health care is riskier, and therefore you’ll be less likely to take it. Similarly, if you don’t have health care, then a sudden, unexpected healthcare-related expense (for example, you child gets cancer) can easily send you into bankruptcy. Losing healthcare, then, increases your risk of bankruptcy. Hence, taking any action that leads to a loss of health insurance/healthcare is riskier than it would be if insurance was somehow “portable” or not tied down to a job. And if starting a business means you lose your healthcare, than starting a business is riskier than it otherwise would be, and therefore you are less likely to do so.

The above paragraph is a rephrasing of the argument Clarissa quoted. If you accept the premises it seems quite cogent, so for the life of me I cannot see what problem Clarissa has with it. Could you please explain?

And I can easily think of several possible explanations (which aren’t mutually incompatible) for why “the variety of goods and services in the US … is much MUCH greater than in Canada” that have nothing to do with health care:

(1) Greater population in the US. If the market is bigger, then in order to make the same amount of money, you can sell to a smaller proportion of the market percentage-wise. There are therefore more “slices” available, and more room for all competitors to make . In Canada, where there are fewer slices, there is less room, and therefore fewer competitors.

(2) The “variety of goods and services” is illusory. In other words, the variety is simply due to a number of different “me too” products that, in practical terms, aren’t appreciably different. The differences are simply ones of branding and the like. The bigger market allows more brands.

(3) The “variety of goods and services” is a poor measure of innovation. You’d be better off using some other measure, like number of patented products available or per capita business startups. Data I found here gives a measurement of new businesses registered per year per 1000 population.” If gives Canada 6.199 and the United States as 2.283. By this measure, (imperfect as it is) Canada is actually more innovative.”

(4) Interprovincial trade barriers. Since Gold Seal Ltd. v. Alberta (Attorney-General) was decided, almost any sort of trade barrier between provinces short of a tariff is allowable. This leads to the statement “In Canada, you have freer trade with other countries than you have within your own” being quite correct. Hence, there may well be as much of a “variety of goods and services” in Canada as a whole as there is in the US, but due to trade barriers, you’ll only ever see a subset of that in any one particular province.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 10, 2013
  
  There is absolutely no evidence that entrepreneurship diminishes when there is no guaranteed healthcare. The most entrepreneurial among the developed countries is also the one where there is no free healthcare. The only one, I believe.
  
  There is zero proof for this journalist’s theory and a lot of proof against it. I think he is simply extrapolating his own way of thinking. In terms of entrepreneurship, I believe some people would never start their own businesses, no matter how much healthcare or anything else you throw at them and those who are business -minded would never even see it as a factor.
  
  I’m not into business at all but it never even occurred to me to ask about health insurance when I was getting employed. It was just so completely off my radar.
  
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Steve

January 10, 2013

Yes, it is a very stupid argument, and I agree with what you say about it. But your PS skates perilously close to the same defect. In South Africa it was Liberals who wanted to give blacks the vote. According to your argument, that makes Liberals racist. But see here: Liberals and liberalism | Khanya

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 10, 2013
  
  What I find sexist is the idea that the right to vote was GIVEN to women to women by a benevolent authority while they sat passively by. This is simply not true. The feminist movement fought for 200 years to get the vote and finally wrangled it out of sexist old men who had to give in because they had no more choice left.
  
  So thanks, biut we were not offered any gifts here.
  
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  1. Steve
    
    January 10, 2013
    
    Thanks for the clarification.
    
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cliff arroyo

January 10, 2013

I the stupidity of the argument is equating potential entrepreneurs (by definition people who are not risk adverse) with people who are so terrified of getting sick that they’d rather stay in a job than start that new business after all.

I have a lot of sympathy for people who do stay in jobs they don’t like for health insurance reasons (often it’s health insurance for a loved one and not their own that motivates them). But equating them with those who’ll start new businesses is mostly wrong.

I think that some kind of universal(ish) healthcare safety net is problematic but mostly a good thing that helps lead to the kind of cohesive civil society that is most pleasant for most citizens to live in (and which is vehemently opposed by most current elites).

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