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low-end jobs
More recently, I've interacted with automation that is designed to specifically replace humans rather than broadening service. The automated check-out at grocery stores is the big example here. Instead of one cashier per line, stores now need one employee per 4 or so lines. This isn't making things more convenient for customers; unlike ATMs, the scanners are only available when the store is open anyway.
There are practical reasons I tend to avoid the automated checkouts, mostly related to speed. The line for the human has to be about three times as long as the line for the machine before the machine looks like a time-saver. People may get more proficient at scanning and packing over time, of course.
But I find that even absent that consideration, I'm reluctant to use the machine. Doing so helps to eliminate a low-end job that might be the only job the job-holder is capable of doing. Most of the cashiers I see at the grocery store aren't college-age kids looking for spending money; they're middle-aged and sometimes visibly handicapped.
This is not wholly a compassion-based argument; it's also one of expedience. I think we as a society are better off if almost everyone has a productive job. And some people are only capable of the lower-end jobs that are most in danger of being automated away. (Aside: for this reason, requirements for high minimum wages are also a bad idea -- don't make it cost-ineffective to hire people at prices they're willing to work for!)
We cannot avoid automation, of course, and in many cases it's a good thing. I'm no Luddite (she says, typing on her computer :-) ). But I kind of wish that we could focus it a little differently sometimes.
And yes, sometimes the humans are annoying to deal with. Last night I lost close to ten minutes to an inept cashier, and there is one (mentally challenged) bagger who I will never again allow to touch my groceries because he seems utterly bewildered by ideas like "the bread goes on top" (multiple failures). People who aren't capable of doing the job shouldn't hold the job anyway just out of pity. (Giant Eagle was right to fire the guy who was partially eating food and then putting the package back on the shelf, and I don't care that he didn't understand that this was wrong.) But y'know, the machines aren't painless either -- just try to get a scanning error fixed. And for the most part, the people holding these jobs are quite capable and willing to work, and I find I'm rooting for the people over the machines.
Humans
Maybe, Egad, provide something like decent pay and health care. If we can't nationalize, bullying is the alternative. Let me know if it gets better. (Charles!? My smelling salts!
Re: Humans
The problem with the idea of mandated "decent pay" (which we all callibrate differently) is that some jobs aren't worth much. But I'd rather people take those jobs at the market rate and, if necessary, collect the difference from welfare, than have no job at all and collect all of it. (I realize that our welfare system is broken and interferes with this; I'm talking ideals here.) Because not only do I want to lower the cost of welfare to the workers who fund it, but I also want people to have the meme of working being good. It's better for all of us.
But if you tell the guy who runs the Mom&Pop grocery store that he now has to pay all his people twice the market rate, the result is that he'll be forced to fire half his workers or close up shop. Either way, the service to his customers diminishes, and more people end up out of work. I want Mom&Pop shops to be out there, not just mega-chains, so I can support my local community. Anti-business laws don't just target Giant Eagle and WallMart, after all.
Re: Humans
But let's say we were talking to the mom & pop store -- there are certainly ways to exempt businesses with a certain type of labor pool from wage and benefit requirements. Indeed it would provide a competitive boost to smaller stores to do so.
For supermarkets, an increase in the cost of doing business (in higher gas prices, or labor costs, or whatever), as long as it's uniform, is primarily passed on to the consumer rather than creating fewer jobs, since (as mentioned before) we're already talking about a bare-bones number and pay of employees. Sure, it's bad that consumers bear that cost. But if all consumers did what you did -- patronized less efficient mom & pop stores, or stores with no self-serve checkout -- that inefficiency would *still* be borne by the consumer, only voluntarily rather than by mandate. So either moral values -- and the costs associated with them -- are part of the equation, or they aren't. If people have jobs OR wages a free market would deny them, it makes no difference if it's the government or it's consumer morals that do the dictating. Economically OR morally. At least to me.
Re: Humans
It suddenly occurred to me last night, that it's reasonably likely that, nationalized health care is working just as well in Canada as private health care is working in the US -- only in Canada, that "well" is spread more evenly.
To oversimplify for clarity: In the US, some people get wonderful care, and some people get no care at all. In Canada, everybody gets middling health care.
In the US, people who get that wonderful care are going to look at Canada and say "Yeeesh! No way! I don't want my standard of care to go down!" From their perspective (that of the US "haves") nationalized health care looks like a disaster.
But, boy, it looks like a big step up to someone who has no health care at all. That's a hell of a lot of people who have no health care.
Is it morally/ethically fair that the wonderful health care I have available to me is only at the expense of my fellow man?
(This is all if we take as granted that the Canadian system necessarily results in lower maximal quality health care. Maybe it doesn't. But I'm certainly open to the argument that it does. So, if it does, but raises the minimal quality of health care, we have the moral issue I explain above.)
Re: Humans
Canada does not permit the "haves" to buy additional care. This means they come across the border to get care because they don't want to accept the standard level (or standard waiting-list time). I know that this happens at least somewhat because I know people who do it. Note, by the way, that if the US goes this route then we won't have the option of easily crossing the border for care; flights to Europe are a lot more expensive than drives to New York.
So if you have a minimum level and the ability to buy more then you're on firmer ground, except that then you might see the quality of that minimum drop because the policy-makers are "haves" who do not themselves use the system. (Sort of the way Congresscritters are exempt from the Social-Security Ponzi scheme.)
So on the one hand, you're tempted to force everyone into the same level of care as a prod for making it a reasonable level, but on the other hand, it's not fair to penalize people who have the resources to do better. Isn't this the fundamental problem of communism?
Re: Humans
Yeah. Let me be real, real clear on this. I really am proposing that maybe you and I -- clearly both "haves" -- should, for moral reasons, accept less good health care for ourselves, for the sake of other people having better health care. I hate, hate, hate this. It scares the bejesus out of me. This is life-and-death stuff, and the consequences of this sort of decision could be personally catastrophic and tragic to me and the people I care about.
But there are also people I care about who can't afford the medication they need to maintain a chronic illness so it doesn't spiral out of control. There are people I care about who only ever see a doctor when the problem has gotten to be such a crisis that the emergency room is the only option. This is not news, I'm sure.
This all scares me intensely.
But I also have to live with myself.
So please -- I would LOVE to be wrong on this one. Check my logic:
1) Given: The nationalization of medicine in Canada is why it is worse than the medicine in the US, which is private.
2) Id est: The private medicine of the US is better than the nationalized medicine in Canada, because it is private.
3) Private medicine -- medical care sold on the open market as a commodity -- is subject to the law of supply and demand in pricing.
4) The law of supply and demand in pricing stipulates that the price of a commodity will stabilize at that point on F(supply, demand) which maximizes F.
5) The law of supply and demand stipulates that as the price rises demand falls off. This is for the economic definition of "demand" which does not mean "wants", but means "has cash on the barrel head to pay for".
6) For any prize above zero, there are, definitionally, buyers for whom that price exceeds their demand. The further above zero it is, the more buyers that is.
7) Since F(supply, demand) never stabilizes with a price of zero (since it maximizes price X purchases), there will always be buyers for whom the price exceeds their demand, again, where "demand" include "capacity to pay".
8) Therefore medicine which requires being sold as a commodity (as our 1 and 2 above) to attain superior quality, as a concomitant requires for that quality that some known number of buyers be unable to acquire it.
Did I screw up anywhere? I'll be the first the say that economics is not one of my pursuits. (I'll tell you where and when economics and I parted company in a different thread.)
As far as I can see (and I welcome correction) the quality healthcare I enjoy can only exist if some people can't have any healthcare at all. That is, it seems, the logical outcome of arguing that our superior medicine is a result of it being a commodity.
(If, however, we can argue that our superior healthcare is due to something else, we can have our cake and eat it, too. A nice thought, but I'm dubious. Willing to entertain arguments though, if anybody has 'em.)
Re: Humans
But all this does is to redefine the "haves". Do you really think that, say, the family of a doctor is going to get the same quality care in this system that everyone else does? There will always be "haves" -- if not "have cash to pay for it", then "have connection to a provider who'll see me privately".
6) For any prize above zero, there are, definitionally, buyers for whom that price exceeds their demand. The further above zero it is, the more buyers that is.
This is true of health care, or food, or housing. The logical extension of your argument would be that no one should be able to buy any of those (above the median quality) because doing so means someone else would go without. If this argument is correct, then it's about much more than health care.
But what actually seems to happen today is that there is a government-subsidized minimum, in the form of welfare, and most people pay their own way. Why does it work for housing but not for health care?
Re: Humans
Housing: there is public housing for (some of) the very poor, those better off can afford to pay their own way, and those in the middle get screwed.
Health Care: there is a publicly funded system that (theoretically) cares for the very poor, those better off can afford to buy into the system, and those in the middle get screwed.
The group in the middle getting screwed is a lot bigger, but the difference isn't as big as you think.
Re: Humans
Most of Europe has what is called "two-tier health care" - a public universal system, and (presumably better) private care available for those who want to pay for it.
And one feature that you might want to think about: in Britain, Public Health doctors are public employees, and select from positions where the public health authorities have decided that doctors are needed. In Canada, doctors are all in private practice, with the bills paid by the various provincial health systems. One effect of this is a chronic shortage of doctors in smaller cities and towns, and in rural areas.
Which system would you prefer?
continued
So, if my logic is right, then the situation isn't:
to force everyone into the same level of care as a prod for making it a reasonable level
It's a matter theft.
it's not fair to penalize people who have the resources to do better
It dawns on me there's this interesting edge case I don't know the Libertarian position on. So, how do Libertarians feel about laws prohibiting the sale of stolen goods?
In any event, if I am managing to undersell my local Walmart by means of hijacking its widget delivery trucks, seizing its inventory of widgets and then selling them for less than Walmart does -- cause, hey, I didn't pay for those widgets, so they're pure profit to me -- I don't think that makes you entitled to buy widgets at my price instead of Walmart's price. If the police busted me, and you were to complain to them that they were interfering with your "personal liberty" to buy things by taking away your supplier, everyone would look at you like you were crazy, right? Would they be wrong to do so?
The fact that someone has the "resources to do better" does not mean that they're entitled to be provided with a market of stolen goods (or otherwise criminal goods, e.g. assassinations are also illegal to buy) in which to spend those resources.
I do not see it as either unfair not to let people buy things they could only have by depriving others of them, nor as a "penalty" and certainly not as a violation of "personal liberty".
Isn't this the fundamental problem of communism?
That depends on whose "problem" you're talking about. If you're talking about "why people who don't like communism don't like it", I think you're right, but that's quite a different thing from the implementary issues which people who like communism see as its problem. I've spoken with at least one communist Russian who approved and believed in that system (whose answer, BTW, to "So then why did you leave?" was "Anti-semitism") who felt that the "failure to reward" thing was a complete non-issue in reality. I'm modestly inclined to agree, due to my understanding of psychology.
Personally, I think the fundamental problem with Communism is the same as the fundamental problem with Libertarianism: pie-in-the-sky ideal systems which intersect with human reality really poorly. They assume spherical chickens.
theft
The same way you do. The libertarian philosophy is fundamentally about the individual's right to be left alone. Theft is a crime against the individual, and its consequences are invalid. (That is, third-party buyers don't get to say "not my problem"; they get to seek damages from the thief who sold them the stolen goods.)
I hadn't considered the health-care situation as theft. If one agrees that buying better health care takes any care at all from the poor, then that's something that has to be dealt with. I'm not sure about that premise, though (see my reply above).
Personally, I think the fundamental problem with Communism is the same as the fundamental problem with Libertarianism: pie-in-the-sky ideal systems which intersect with human reality really poorly. They assume spherical chickens.
Well, that's true of any system, including Capitalism. There has never been a perfect implementation of any of them.
As for communism, the specific point I was wondering about was the slacker factor -- why should I do more than I need to when it makes no difference to my level of comfort? Is the Russian you spoke with saying that that's not how it plays out? I understand that it doesn't play out that way on kibbutzim (at least sometimes), but those are smaller self-selected communities where everyone knows everyone else. It's much easier to slack off on the guy a few blocks over who you don't like much anyway and who'll never notice you doing it.
Re: theft
There is the "no perfect implementation" problem, and then there's the "if you had a 'perfect implementation' and populated it with real people" problem.
Anarcho-libertarianism probably works beautifully populated by Heinleinian rationalists. Heck, the early internet was basically anarcho-libertarian, and it was great. It got colonized and its culture eradicated by capitalists non-rationalists because it had absolutely no defense, but next time we'll build walls.
And then there's the "if you have a 'perfect implementation' populated with real people and it working perfectly.... but sucking mightily."
Totalitarian authoritarianism can "work" "splendidly" (I'm told). It accomodates real people really well. I doubt I would be happy in such a society, no matter how "perfectly" realized the vision was.
As for communism, the specific point I was wondering about was the slacker factor -- why should I do more than I need to when it makes no difference to my level of comfort? Is the Russian you spoke with saying that that's not how it plays out?
The Russian I spoke to is on LJ, should I invite her over?
As to myself, it seems to me there are two kinds of work: the work people would do anyway, and the work you have to pay people to do. Work in the first class is not necessarily any less valuable to society: it includes doctors, scientists, engineers, programmers, artists, librarians, etc. Those people aren't going to slack off simply because they're not necessarily working for money.
People who do work they don't like -- I don't expect many factory workers would do it without pay -- may slack off if compensation isn't contingent.
Then again, it's possible to have a system whereby if you fail to meet the grade, you're not docked pay, you're moved to a less desirable job; and contrariwise, mastery is rewarded with promotion. There are obvious problems with this, clearly.
Perhaps the solution is that "would-anyway" workers should be communistically organized, and everyone else capitalistically.... or is that just what socialism is?
Re: theft
Sure!
Work in the first class is not necessarily any less valuable to society: it includes doctors, scientists, engineers, programmers, artists, librarians, etc. Those people aren't going to slack off simply because they're not necessarily working for money.
On the other hand, they might cherry-pick the work. Programmers would rather develop grand new programs than maintain old cruft. Doctors would rather not deal with problem patients. Scientists would rather work on the shiny new research problems, not do grunt chores usually given to grad student. Within any field, it's worth looking at which sub-fields seem to have either shortages or higher compensation; that might signal work that won't get done without personal motivation even by people who have a stronger inclination to work. The answer to "will you work?" is rarely "yes" or "no"; it's usually "it depends on what the work is".
People who do work they don't like [...] may slack off if compensation isn't contingent.
I would certainly expect people who don't like their work to do the minimum acceptable job, yes. We've all dealt with such people, and not just in the crappy service jobs. Surely you've been stuck working with disgruntled programmers?
You're right that there are considerations other than money, such as what your next assignment will be. As you say, there are problems with that approach too.
Perhaps the solution is that "would-anyway" workers should be communistically organized, and everyone else capitalistically....
Except that if the "would-anyway" workers would be able to live better under capitalism (probably true for most doctors and programmers; probably not true for most artists and librarians), wouldn't they just lie about their intentions in order to get into the capitalist pool?
Re: Humans
A while back, Max Sawicky linked to some paper by a liberal think tank, proposing that the US save money on Medicaid by subcontracting out to countries that have a higher life expectancy than the US but spend less per capita on health care. He said he couldn't tell whether or not the paper was meant as a satire.
Re: Humans
Helped run the Mom, Son, & Daughter deal. We paid everyone what we could afford,(no executive bonuses) or what they were worth and hoped they'd leave if they weren't worth minimum. Our health care plan involved fish medicine and shiatsu. One does what one can. None of us were rich. My job was to make myself unnecessary.8-)
Re: Humans
1. I don't have to worry which doctor I go see.
2. I can choose my doctor without being penalized financially for using the PPO option
3. When I am sick, I go to the doctor without worrying about the headache of paying and being reimbursed. Since I am back in Canada, I am much more able to get the care I need instead of coming up to limits and unapproved treatment options. All the doctors know the system out here!
4. Cobra - yeah I had to pay 300$/month for about a year. Enough said
5. So you hear about Canadian waiting times and surgery. Well yes non-urgent stuff takes months but if you need to be seen ahead of the queue you are critical. My aunt had cancer related surgery - she waited days. My grandmother had excellent care before she died. It's not as bleak as the media puts it.
6. There was a cancer study a couple of years ago comparing Detroit and Windsor, ON. Upper and middle class had the same death rates. Lower class fared much worse in the US.
7. I walk out of the doctor without paying anything at all.*
*Ok in some provinces there is a monthly fee that is usually paid by your employer. There are subsidies readily available. When I moved back to Canada, I had to pay 50$ CDN/month for full coverage until my spouse's insurance started to cover me.
Re: Humans
Re: Humans
Actually, pretty much every balanced study I've seen indicates that Canada's system works a lot better than the one here.
The problem that the US has is an absolutely classic example of market failure. The issue is that the usage of the healthcare is massively decoupled from its pricing, due to the insurance system.
Most people who have real healthcare get it from private insurance carriers, and are paying a more or less flat rate for it. (Yes, there are co-pays, but they're too small to really impact the problem.) This means that the users have a strong motivation to maximize their usage, to get the most for their money. The insurance companies make a lot of noise about trying to drive this down, but in fact have a lot of motivation themselves to allow it, because it lets them raise their prices continuously. So we wind up in an upward spiral, with no real way to arrest it.
Most studies have shown that this system is horrifically inefficient. It is good for precisely one thing: people who have health insurance get remarkably instant gratification for their complaints. But this doesn't seem to lead to better health overall -- in fact, the US falls behind most of the rest of the first world on most longevity and quality-of-life metrics, despite spending something like thrice as much on healthcare as anyone else.
Really, it's just about the worst system one could come up with: having the insurance carriers as intermediaries manages to combine the worst features of the socialist and capitalist approaches. So while I'm a bit leery of simple nationalization, the fact is that almost anything (if decently run) would probably work better than what we've got now.
But I'd rather people take those jobs at the market rate and, if necessary, collect the difference from welfare, than have no job at all and collect all of it.
Careful: a well-designed welfare system is a bit subtler than that. You want them to collect more than just the difference from welfare, or the incentives wind up perverse. Remember, working has costs, in things like travel and childcare, and you want to make sure that someone who is working is making more in net than if they were not working. So you really want a formula that uses a sliding scale, reducing the welfare payments fairly gradually as the income goes up...
health care
Note: I am not saying this would be good; it's just an experiment I'm wondering about.
Careful: a well-designed welfare system is a bit subtler than that. You want them to collect more than just the difference from welfare, or the incentives wind up perverse.
Hmm. Good point.
Re: health care
Nope -- this misses the third part of the problem, which I really should have pointed out explicitly. Insurance-mediated healthcare is a problem. *Employer-funded* insurance-mediated healthcare is a much bigger one.
Remember, by now most of us with serious jobs demand high-end health insurance as a perk of that job. This disconnects us even more dramatically from the actual payment of the healthcare, because we're not even paying the full load. I'm paying, what, probably about a third of the actual cost of my health insurance; the rest is picked up by my employer, which is pretty normal. And it's rare for a company to offer multiple health plans -- the hassle of managing multiple plans just isn't worth it to them.
The result is that there's no good way to introduce competition into this marketplace. Sure, an insurance company can introduce competitive rates, but an employer who uses that plan is going to have much more trouble attracting the best employees. There isn't anyone properly motivated to buy this plan: the high-end companies are forced to buy high-end insurance, the low-end companies don't need to buy *any* insurance, and it's still too expensive for individuals, because the whole system is skewed towards the pricey and inefficient high-end plans.
It's really astonishingly messed-up: you would be hard-pressed to come up with a system of more perverse incentives if you tried. It illustrates nicely that governments aren't the only actors capable of introducing massive friction into a marketplace...
Re: health care
And yeah, the insurance business is really messed up now. But the phrase "let the government fix it" rarely inspires confidence, either. :-)
Re: health care
Mind, I'm not convinced that a purely government-run model is necessarily the best -- I suspect that a well-designed hybrid model would likely be better from my POV. But I *am* pretty sure that what we have right now is the worst. The entire point of capitalism -- really the one truly solid argument for it -- is that it's supposed to be efficient. But in this case, due to perverse incentives, it manages to be *remarkably* inefficient...
Re: health care