Live data from Hacker News

Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

richardlynch.blogspot.com

311–317 of 317 posts

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet search has led to a market where, if Google doesn't like you, you don't exist. Are you sure this is the example you want to roll with?

Free markets means that stupid/wrong decisions (i.e. Google hurting people) result in competitive advantage to companies that don't do those stupid things. I'm sure CEO of DuckDuckGo.com just can't wait for Google to start hurting its customers. And then I take corporations competition every day over Government regulation.

Please provide one example of a free market.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets means that stupid/wrong decisions (i.e. Google hurting people) result in competitive advantage to companies that don't do those stupid things. I'm sure CEO of DuckDuckGo.com just can't wait for Google to start hurting its customers. And then I take corporations competition every day over Government regulation.

Please provide one example of a free market.

China.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Canada? Is that acceptable? Left canada to come here to the US where we pay less and get more for the care my children need. No system is without its problems. I'm just glad in the US it's not about quality or quantity of care, just funding.

I am a Canadian who occasionally complained about long (several hour) emergency waits for broken limbs from mountain bike downhill racing. The triage system prioritizes people who are dying, not adrenaline addicts. ... However ... I got diagnosed with Cancer (lymphoma) in 2008. I was xrayed, CT scanned, blood tested and ultrasound guidance biopsied so fast that my head spun. From initial lump discovery to the onset o…

I'm not talking about waiting times in the emergency room.

Imagine not getting treated for cancer for 3 years after being diagnosed.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#314
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Thanks to India's affordable health care, we don't have to be dependent on this national scam called health insurance. We just go to doctors, they give us treatment, we pay money, that's it. I remember how here in US I had to go to a doctor to be told "You don't have any disease, that happens to everybody" (no diagnosis) and charged $400. Insurance paid $300, I paid $100.

See my reply to markdown for context on his/her comment (if you're not aware). You should clarify your comment by mentioning what state and city you live in, how much you earn a year, and how many multiples that is of the average income in India, and in your state. Healthcare in India is operated by the states; there is no national program. Care is not consistent. [0] In India, can doctors provide food? I'm serious.…

Health care in India has a lot of issues, but it's affordable for most part. And if you read my reply to plaguuuuuu below, I wrote that it's still not good - but going the US way of insurance lobbying is not a solution either (because certainly, it's not working). Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who don't even have money to pay food, understandably they won't have money to pay for medicines. They get free government treatment in many cases (though no free food). There is a new Food Security bill passed late last year which is made to tackle those 42% undernourished children and other poor people. Implementation of that, in a populous country like India will take time. Poverty is a complex problem to solve.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#315
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tragedy of the commons type problems. Concrete example: CFC Regulations. Prisoners Dilema type problems. Concrete example: Cigarette advertising bans. (I'll clarify that this is better for the companies involved on a competition between company basis and "better" for the public in the form of a shrinking tobacco market) More to the point a real concrete example is healthcare costs. Per person they are cheaper in comp…

You claim cigarate bans helped tobacco industry? CFC helped grow corporations? Because if all you are saying is that regulation is destroying industries, well that's actually my point. And yes the US Government involvement and regulation in the Healthcare industry in the US destroyed it too. Up till 1960s and invention of Government intervention into US healthcare system, the healthcare in the US was cheap, affordabl…

Firstly the entire point of my comment was that capitalism is not the best system in all cases and that there are situations especially those involving externalities where an approach involving regulation is the better solution. I repeat it here so you realise what I'm arguing and what statement you made earlier.

Secondly you grossly misrepresent what I say with the first few sentences of your reply which makes me worry about whether you paused to give any thought to what I said or just decided to be argumentative and pick out random words you disliked. Nonetheless I'll go through your points.

>You claim cigarate bans helped tobacco industry?

No I claimed ADVERTISING bans on cigarettes helped the companies by reducing expenses related to competition between cigarette companies. I also claimed that outside of the industry it had other positive effects. However you will have noticed the quotes around "better" in ' "better" for the public' because I felt I should qualify that a non smoker generally costs the health system more by living longer.

> CFC helped grow corporations?

I'm sorry, perhaps I shouldn't have assumed you knew what CFCs are and why they are relevant to the conversation. CFC are a widely useful range of chemical compounds that were used in a great many products, they also deplete the ozone layer. The regulation of CFCs which phased out their use is an example where government intervention was required and the free market solution of localized profits failed. I have no data on whether it helped grow corporations, it is however known that the requlations reduced the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere which led to the shrinking of the hole in the ozone layer.

>Because if all you are saying is that regulation is destroying industries, well that's actually my point.

You're the one that's taken the hardline position of saying that centralized solutions never work better than pure free market and as I reject your reframing of better to be only industry, I am pointing out that centralized/regulated solutions do work better in some cases. Even if I didn't reject your definition of industrial production as the basis for better, wartime america with centralized planing on production was a 'better' idea than the free market system it had before it, being much more productive.

>And yes the...

It may have been cheap and affordable but that doesn't mean everyone was getting it, in fact that's the reason the government stepped in. So sure the system got screwed up by regulation, because it was the wrong regulation, they should have gone whole hog on the nationilization like the other countries and then the US would have a better system. (And by better I mean has a positive effect on the the most peoples lives, not maximises the money spent on basic healthcare, or the total wealth of the "healthcare industry")

I'm sure I've persuaded you that your original statement about the free market system always being the best system is an untenable position. If you still disagree could you explain to me how a system without regulation deals with atomic weapons. (Now a flippant question because I really would believe it to be absurd to hold to the unregulated premise at this point (I hope you realise I'm poking fun at the premise not you)) Do they always go to the highest bidder cash wise or do they only sell them if there's a sales contract not to blow up the seller... and whatever court the breach of contract trial would be held in?

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a Canadian who occasionally complained about long (several hour) emergency waits for broken limbs from mountain bike downhill racing. The triage system prioritizes people who are dying, not adrenaline addicts. ... However ... I got diagnosed with Cancer (lymphoma) in 2008. I was xrayed, CT scanned, blood tested and ultrasound guidance biopsied so fast that my head spun. From initial lump discovery to the onset o…

I'm not talking about waiting times in the emergency room. Imagine not getting treated for cancer for 3 years after being diagnosed.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I went from "Hmm, that's a weird lump" to chemo in just over two weeks. The quality of care was stunning, and the success rate is one of the highest in the world.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but I think "best in the world" is more a negative comment about other systems being terrible than a positive comment about this system being actually good.

My experience is that the system outside of payments and such is seen as superb (when it's actually average), and the rest is seen as OKish (when it's terrifyingly bad). I was discussing health care reform with one fellow who was under the mistaken impression that outcomes in the US were significantly better. After I explained that people in countries with socialized medicine get care that's just as good as ours, he…

I'm not sure what you base the statement "that's what a free market solution gives you" on, since as far as I know we've never had anything remotely resembling a free market solution. In my experience, one of the most common refrains from that side is "the current solution is bad precisely in the ways that it's not free market". Granted, they're just guessing what will happen, but I don't see that as meaningfully different from your guess about people dying in the streets etc.

Also, I have no doubt that you've talked to people with strange ideas, but your conception of what conservatives advocate (or fail to advocate) is very far from my conception of what conservatives advocate. Your statements make me think you know someone like one of my friends, but you're missing the whole rest of the spectrum of conservative/libertarian/capitalist thoughts, memes, and ideas.

Post reply on HN