Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

> Why make the jump directly to central economic planning?

That's what government running things is.

> communism is when the government buys things?

No, communism is from each according to his ability and to each according to his need. You can form a commune with such a structure, it's not illegal.

> Are you arguing in favor for no government regulations whatsoever?

No.

> A government can provide services without expecting them to be profitable

Governments are just collections of people organized by incentives, just like corporations.

In corporations, the profit incentive pushes the organization to minimize the cost of production. At the same time, competition puts a ceiling in prices. Poorly organized, staffed and managed businesses go bankrupt.

In a government, there is no incentive to minimize costs. Next years budget is contingent on isi h all of this years. Leadership positions are politically appointed, not based on competency. Employees are not rewarded with huge bonuses or promotions for competing projects on time or ahead of schedule. Budgets can just be sink holes, as long as they are politically expedient and have the proper messaging. Better ideas are routinely stifled by political agendas, and investment is singular; one department gets all the funding and there is no competition.

Look at Venezuela as an example. When the government nationalized the oil industry, it completely fell apart. Production dropped off hugely.

In the US (a nation of 320,000,000 people), around 5 people per year die from this[0]. On the list of causes of death that need attention, this one is considerably lower than lightning strikes (which kill ~20 per year)[1].

Is it a problem? Sure. Is it an argument for reorganizing our economy? Hardly.

[0] https://rightcarealliance.org/activities/insulin/ [1] https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-lightnin....

Earlier you said the warping of insulin cost is caused by government regulation. It sounds like you're not differentiating between central economic planning, the government "running things," and regulation.

I'm confused by this because it seems a purposefully black and white take.

I don't use "central economic planning" unless I'm talking about a State that has implemented, well, central economic planning. It doesn't make sense to me to point to a country with nationalized transit and nothing else nationalized, and say "they do centralized economic planning." How are you differentiating between these two kinds of states? Because otherwise I don't know how to communicate the difference between the Soviet Union and, idk, Spain or whatever.

I'm also confused by the conflation of that with "the government running things." The government runs the military, is that central economic planning? The government "runs" elections, is that central economic planning? The government sends soldiers to break strikes, is that central economic planning? FEMA sends food and medicine to hurricane disaster zones, is that central economic planning? Is a firetruck central economic planning? Where does it end lol?

Finally the most confusing thing to me is where you stand on any form of government regulation. Happily it sounds like you aren't Full Libertarian and think Amazon should be building our roads, but when you say "the government running things" is the same as the government regulating things like how medicines can be produced and tested, I get totally confused. So a law that says "no murcury in medicine" is the same as... Central economic planning? It's equivalent to a nationalized healthcare system? That's weird because people have been arguing for the usa to socialize its healthcare system for decades but apparently it's already socialized, cause it has regulation?

I only am pinning you down so hard on this because I completely disagree that whatever people mean by "free market" is a means to greater material conditions for people, but I genuinely can't even figure out if that's what you're arguing for, I'm just working off my understanding of your world view from the other thread where you dropped a simple "this would be better if the free market did it."

It's sort of baffling that people could be angry about the mention that this sort of thing exists when there are school districts that not only racked up gigantic deficits from parents but also refused to allow third parties to pay off those deficits. It's clear that this was never a financial issue for those school districts. They wanted these people to individually suffer for the sin of being poor.