Links 2022-12-03
Highly Linkable - links you need and deserve
Before you advocate for Medicare for All, listen to Juliette Sellgren on The Great Antidote interviewing Michael Cannon. Medicare is a classic case of a problem the government caused that it then created a program, Medicare, to “solve” it. Like much in our healthcare system, it is something that benefits sellers at the expense of buyers (taxpayers) and products (people needing healthcare).
Art Carden offers 9 economic essentials and 9 economic errors. Extra credit goes to those who can read these lists and then identify the lesson to apply or error that is present in Medicare vis-à-vis the prior link’s discussion. [Spoiler alert: They all are.]
Before we dismiss people who “just don’t get it”, a problem I myself have been guilty of, we should seek to understand why they might see things as they do. From an economic perspective this includes things that are quite obvious to me: price controls like rent control, minimum wages, and anti-gouging laws are bad as are regulations like occupational licensing, import restrictions, and export subsidies.
All of these are areas where I can quite confidently say that I am correct. However, those who disagree might simply be looking at the problem from an entirely different perspective—not that it necessarily will bail them out of their error.
Mike Munger makes the case for this in his piece on lifeboat minds in a Walmart world. Simply put, our instinct is to think empathetically when approached by what is actually an economic decision like setting prices. Most naturally frame the problem wrongly thinking about what feels right and wrong for a one-off, close-at-hand encounter—often one that is predicated upon difficult circumstances. Hence the lifeboat analogy. In truth the world we live in is governed by forces that very fortunately allow us to make decisions with compounding effects and far-reaching benefits despite how difficult it is for us to get our minds around it.
For those who will get the references: this is an error in thinking we are on a camping trip versus understanding we are living in a society here. [Started note to, but I couldn’t help but include the links. That is, after all, the name of the post.]