October 14, 2004
Go The Distance
We have a fundamental difference of opinion. I think government-run health will lead to poor-quality health, will lead to rationing, will lead to less choice.
Once a health-care program ends up in a line item in the federal government budget, it leads to more controls.
And just look at other countries that have tried to have federally controlled health care. They have poor-quality health care.
Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.
So said George Bush during the third and final Presidential debate.
Okay. But if that's your "opinion", how if we apply the same logic to, I dunno, say, warfare?
Rather than letting some fat-assed chicken-hawked "officials" in "the nation's capital" make military decisions, let those doing the work make such decisions.
More importantly, so long as we're "privatising" more and more of warfare's "services", how if we do it correctly -- according to market theory?
In other words, rather than taxpayers footing the bill for private companies' operations in-theater, let the companies themselves "assume the risk" of doing business. That's the miracle of the market, right?
Halliburton wants to go to war in Iraq? Good, let Halliburton buy the fucking military machinery and materiel at "market prices". Let Halliburton hire the entire necessary soldiery at "market prices". Let Halliburton pony up a coupla hundred billion dollars to carry out the war's operations. Let Halliburton pay for so-called "externalities" (e.g., cleaning up environmental side-affects of manufacturing weapons and of making war). Let Halliburton pay "market rates" for access to the public's airwaves, that it may demonise a hapless leader in order to find willing takers for its plan to devastate a defenceless citizenry.
Let Halliburton lobby the United Nations for permission to invade sovereign countries. Let Halliburton assemble a "coalition of the willing" -- willing individuals considering the job to be worth the pay, not national soldiers compelled to go fight and die even when their home government's participation in a "coalition" is opposed by 90% of its population. Let Halliburton's CEO stand trial for war crimes. Let Halliburton pay reparations to the aggrieved country.
Once Halliburton has done all of this -- and rebuilt the Iraqi oil sector with its own money; while successfully "pacifying" the ungrateful niggers it's "liberated" from their homes, schools, occupations, and lives -- then, sure, let Halliburton reap whatever profits remain to be taken out of the Iraqi "market".
It is, after all, the American Way™.
Posted by Eddie Tews at October 14, 2004 05:55 PM
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