1edwood79

I see.

Why.?

Aggression is coercion, fraud, assault or theft against another individual or their property. You can be as intolerant as you want to be as long as you don't do any of those things. The hallmark of liberty is tolerance. You want to form a socialist commune, it's ok with me as long as you don't force people to join or force me to pay for it.

Though I believe there is some truth in the writing of Ayn Rand, her works are not representative of libertarianism,by a long shot.Try some Hayek, Fredric Douglas or Henry Thoreau. Regulation is, like any business, only as good as the people administering it. That means they can F stuff up just as bad as any corporation. Why is it you would trust people wielding immense power in government more than those who run corporations. At least it a private entity screws up or is dishonest you can sue the crap out of it. You just admitted that government in Flint and Louisiana don't work. As a tax payer why should I want to buy more of that.

Is no one else disturbed by the fact that experienced nurses are being forced to get BSNs to keep jobs they have been doing for years? Where are out unions and professional organizations on this? If they were truly representing the best interests of nurses, or for that matter patients, they would be defending us from this BS, not advocating it.

The US government is, exponentially, the biggest polluter in the nation. Why? Because it far too frequently acts as an unchecked entity. If you want to see an example of the kind of destruction caused by unchecked government fraud, incompetence, perjury and disease just explore the Flint water crisis. There were no private companies involved in that one. Or, maybe take a look at some of the devastation the Tennessee Valley Authority has caused over the years. I'd also point out that competition has very little to do with many public contracts. It is the shortsightedness and sometimes fraudulent behavior of your beloved government personnel that lead to the "predators" getting the contracts. How you going to fix that? More government to oversee your government? This isn't a black and white issue. Instilling some libertarian values into our leadership doesn't mean ending government. It means decentralizing power and allowing market competition as often as possible.

I agree. I'm not placing the blame on Obama. The ACA is just the icing on the cake. You can't tell me you haven't noticed an acceleration in the process. Small hospitals and even large clinics are being snatched up left and right. Doctors who own their own practices are becoming a rare breed.

The new system is less responsive, less innovative, more intrusive, and more expensive.

You are describing the system we have now, not a free market system. The situation you describe, including corporate red tape, happens because Government, Big Pharma , Insurance and Big Hospital Systems are colluding, eliminating competition, driving prices up and efficiency down. Entities in competitive systems can't set prices too high because if they do someone else will offer lower prices and take their business away. Competition also encourages quality. Even our central planners accept that as evidenced by their attempts to artificially inject competition into various parts the system. Ever worked anywhere they want you to treat anyone you interact with, even your coworkers, as "customers?" It's a common practice these days. Where I live big health systems are rapaciously gobbling up smaller hospitals and systems. They are also buying large shares in insurance companies. Stand alone hospitals are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. This is happening mainly because current health care law encourages it. It smacks of monopolization and oligarchy, things previously abhorred by Americans. Our great trust busting Teddy Roosevelt must be rolling in his grave over this perverse use of American law. VW did what they did because of the perverse laws they are acting under. That is not to excuse their behavior. I'd also point out that they are paying heavily for their transgression. And even cheating, they were making desirable high quality product because of the competition they face. Do you believe that a tightly controlled health system behaving in similarly egregious manner would be treated the same way by the powers that run it. The more Government controls something the less likely it is to fess up to its mistakes. We've seen this again and again. Look at what's happened to the Vet.

I like Ron Swanson. The character is a parody, but a gentle one.

Even in that "horrible" Gilded Age things were steadily getting better for the common man. Markets respond to the public interest and generally gets it right. Those who aren't right go out of business. Centralized planners tell the public what its interest is and when it is wrong causes shortages which leads to rationing and in the long run cause disasters like the starvation we've seen in socialist countries.

I only hate collectivism, or the notion that individuals should be forced to participate in whatever the powers that be decide is the common good. Affordable Health Care would be great. I'm OK with labor organizations as long a participation is voluntary. Why would anybody hate education? Libertarians are great team players. They aren't very good at being forced to do things, especially when those things are clearly detrimental to the common good.

And you think that giving those same people power through government is a better idea?

Do you really think that Big Pharma isn't right in there making the rules?

Ooh! A true raving neocon. I so seldom see those in the wild.

It's tough. It's a compromise I make based on the fact that I live in a relatively liberal democracy. I do fear other nation states and believe we need a well equipped modern armed forces to defend us. However, I do not want politicians using that power willy-nilly, hence my preference for a limited government. I'd also prefer that the liberal democracy I live in not become an authoritarian state.

The key part of that simplistic phrase being "...hurt anyone else." The basic ideal for many libertarians is the Non or Zero Aggression Principle. Random violence is aggression, and should not be tolerated. Science Says, your concerns about violence in media are unwarranted. Violence in the West, including the US has been on a downward cycle for a long time. If it, violence in media, truly was causing aggression then I'd go along with some kind of action.

I don't believe there is a conspiracy, just ignorance.

Problem is that we are going to end up in the same boat with this system. Even in the sixties health care was relatively heavily regulated. Here's a question for you. Why is it that every other technical resource we have now, tvs, cell phones, appliances, etc. have gotten cheaper over the years, while the price of healthcare a heavily tech reliant industry has gone up? It wouldn't have anything with corporatism and government regulation would it?

Anarchism is a broad class of political thinking. Some libertarians are anarchists. All anarchists are not libertarians. There are left anarchists who don't believe in government, but also don't believe in the right to own property. Libertarian anarchists don't believe in government but hold sacred the right to own property. Voluntarists are one such group. I like a lot of what they say but find a lot of their views as Utopian. The reason Monty Python echoes in your head is because you've been inundated with anti-libertarian propaganda for your entire life. Don't worry it's completely natural.

I'm here to answer questions.

Your confusion confuses me.

Here is the Libertarian Party on healthcare. Not all libertarians are party members and they may have different views. My view is that the system were are instituting now has no way to assess the value of the services and products being used because of the elimination of market cues. This is what causes economic disasters like the one unraveling in Venezuela right now. Bread lines in the Soviet Union is another result of this kind of planning.

I'm not a new nurse or libertarian. I am new to allnurses. And yes ask me anything.

What spawned this post? I'm a libertarian nurse who feels that the increasingly centralized control of healthcare is a bad thing. That's not enough?