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[Xantalos]

Silly Loud Whispers, don't you know human life has a monetary value?

Wat

Not directed at you, kai.

[kaijyuu]

[GlyphGryph]

Maybe I and every other 101 economist just have "crazy baggage."

Okay, we... aren't actually talking to each each at this point. Either you're wildly misintrepreting everything I say, or I'm wildly misinterpreting everything you say, or both.

So I'll try to summarize my own point of view, and then I'm done:
In my world, you can get things for free (at least on a monetary front, which I'll reserve myself to here) if you do not have to pay for it. The power I get from my solar panels is free - I do not pay anyone for these kilowatts. The wood I gather from my land is free - I did not pay anyone the material. The bus ride I take downtown is free - I do not pay anyone when I get on or off, and I can ride a hundred times without even a penny disappearing from my wallet. Obviously all of these things had costs involved in setting up the system where I obtain them for free - personal costs, even. But those costs are fixed and sunk, and irrelevant to calculating the cost of any of these events themselves. They are all free - but only available if I've paid the cost to create and maintain the system that provides them.

In this world, you can go to the doctors for free, get your medicine for free, etc, and so on. We can, as a society, have free healthcare. This does not make the healthcare system free, obviously. That would be impossible madness. But the healthcare itself? Unequivocally free.

Perhaps your world works differently, and different words are used to describe the concept I'm describing here. Regardless, this conversation is unlikely to progress beyond this - stating my position as clearly as I can. If you don't agree, we will simply have to accept our differences, I think.

[Loud Whispers]

At the same time, respect what it costs society and don't leap to embrace free things, because most material things as presented as free are anything but, and are called free specifically to disguise the costs.

You do realize you're arguing against not-free healthcare and calling it free healthcare then?

Silly Loud Whispers, don't you know human life has a monetary value?

Fml for $7M you guys put too much attachment to money D:

[nenjin]

You do realize you're arguing against not-free healthcare and calling it free healthcare then?

I'm arguing against calling healthcare free in any way shape or form.

In my world, you can get things for free (at least on a monetary front, which I'll reserve myself to here) if you do not have to pay for it. The power I get from my solar panels is free - I do not pay anyone for these kilowatts. The wood I gather from my land is free - I did not pay anyone the material. The bus ride I take downtown is free - I do not pay anyone when I get on or off, and I can ride a hundred times without even a penny disappearing from my wallet.

Just so we're clear, here's how I see your world.

You paid to have those solar panels built and possibly installed. Or you paid for the materials that made them. Someone was paid to make it or was paid to get the materials. You pay to buy an axe to cut down wood. The soil paid to grow that tree, in the form of nutrients it gave up. That city bus runs on gas which the city pays for and taxes you and all citizens to provide, not to mention the salary of the bus driver, the cost of printing the bus route slips, the cost of the bus itself and the cost of the people that sit around at the bus station office.

Obviously all of these things had costs involved in setting up the system where I obtain them for free - personal costs, even.

That being my point.

But those costs are fixed and sunk, and irrelevant to calculating the cost of any of these events themselves. They are all free - but only available if I've paid the cost to create and maintain the system that provides them.

Are those costs really fixed and sunk though? The price of gasoline alone in my town, along with some zealous budget cutting, slashed about half the bus lines in my town. Drivers got laid off. Schedules got longer. Fares went up (per ride and yearly. Maybe university students with their year-long bus pass didn't pay anymore...or maybe that was a few dollars more in their ever-increasing yearly tuition.) All over the price of gasoline. And bottom line, you paid into the system to get something back. Is that truly free? To take a different example, we sacrifice many freedoms as Americans to the system so we get freedoms guaranteed. Are we really free or have we just negotiated a different set of circumstances for ourselves that other nations have not?

To me free is almost always a loaded term, even though I use it in passing plenty. But when someone tries to offer me something for free, I can't help but think about all the costs and processes behind it. Even when I get a second-hand monitor from a friend as an upgrade, I think about what he paid for it originally, and the supply chain that led up to it. Or how about a more topical example. Think about Foxconn and then listen to the commercials for cellphone carriers that offer a brand spankin' new, FREE iPhone when you sign up for a plan.

Everything costs something, and when we're talking about something of the scope and importance of nationalized healthcare....it is a thing to view with our eyes wide open to the costs involved.

[penguinofhonor]

"I'll leave my computer as soon as Pandora plays a song I don't like."

-me, like twenty minutes ago

[Loud Whispers]

You paid to have those solar panels built and possibly installed. Or you paid for the materials that made them. Someone was paid to make it or was paid to get the materials. You pay to buy an axe to cut down wood. The soil paid to grow that tree, in the form of nutrients it gave up. That city bus runs on gas which the city pays for and taxes you and all citizens to provide, not to mention the salary of the bus driver, the cost of printing the bus route slips, the cost of the bus itself and the cost of the people that sit around at the bus station office.

By your definitions nothing is free, everything has some energy cost in the world, so never being free. Your definition is wrawng. They're not calling it free to sell you something - because again, you should never be trading with lives (something Murrica is all too fond of). Semantics, semantics, semantics...

[nenjin]

We trade in lives all the time, big scale and small scale. All the time. We don't even do it in the maniacal, evil CEO greedily rubbing their hands kind of way.

I respect the Obama administration on healthcare because, and I could be wrong because an awful lot was said about it, that they didn't present it as "free" healthcare. It was always "affordable, accessible" healthcare, semantics I can totally live with. That didn't stop a lot of other people from labeling it as free healthcare though, which really torqued me off. Calling the European models free is also missing the mark, they pay out the ass for guaranteed service.

Yes, this is a semantic issue and I totally admit that. But I think our attitude about "free" says a lot about our culture and how short-sighted we can be. Because if we really drank in the whole cost of the things we consume, we'd consume less because it's morally right to do so. Or we'd slovenly admit that we're here to devour the world until it's gone and quit deluding ourselves.

Meanwhile, industry cranks out way more shit than we need and calls it free in an effort to keep us from looking too far ahead at the actual cost of what we're buying.

[Darvi]

Silly Loud Whispers, don't you know human life has a monetary value?

And that's why Economists are AlwaysChaoticEvil.

[GlyphGryph]

So... yeah. You've expanded the word free to the point of uselessness, and rendered the concept... nameless, I guess, since you didn't present the alternative title for what I described, as requested.

Pretty sure our worldviews are irreconcilable as well, and over minute differences. Ah well. But you're approach is dishonest at best - if you're planning on talking about this again at some point, it might be worth spending some time sharpening up your rhetoric.

[nenjin]

So... yeah. You've expanded the word free to the point of uselessness, and rendered the concept... nameless, I guess, since you didn't present the alternative title for what I described, as requested.

I gave you a couple. Nationalized healthcare for one. You could call it Socialist/Socialized Healthcare too, but it's a loaded term and I'm not really up to debating it. So, in case I didn't make it explicitly clear, that's a name I can live with.

But you're approach is dishonest at best - if you're planning on talking about this again at some point, it might be worth spending some time sharpening up your rhetoric.

What about my approach is dishonest? Because I point out the inherent cost of anything you do, which you believe is me dissembling? To me, it's a truism that's nicely summed up in the phrase "There's no such thing as a free lunch." It's both a point of fact and a philosophy to me.

I didn't provide any examples of truly free because I couldn't think of one in the context I'd created. (Without resorting to stuff like "Well I guess God is free.") I honestly believe most of existence operates on the concept of exchange, on every level.

And yes, I went and got philosophical on you and way off topic of healthcare, but it's a concept that's been brewing in my head for a long time.

[GlyphGryph]

Because you respond to things I didn't say, tell me I'm saying what you want me to say, and then use my own words as a "gotcha" by presenting them exactly as I intended them, as if your giving them some special interpretation. It is not enlightening, it is not educational, it is simply frustrating.

For example:

So... yeah. You've expanded the word free to the point of uselessness, and rendered the concept... nameless, I guess, since you didn't present the alternative title for what I described, as requested.

I gave you a couple. Nationalized healthcare for one. You could call it Socialist/Socialized Healthcare too, but it's a loaded term and I'm not really up to debating it. So, in case I didn't make it explicitly clear, that's a name I can live with.

What the heck are you even responding to here? What are you trying to say? Because your words seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with the line you quoted! It's felt like this the entire time. I'll say something, you'll quote it and respond... and I'll be left scratching my head. I honestly don't think you'd call me gathering wood or taking a ride on the bus "National Healthcare", so you're dissembling or simply not bothering to actually read my posts.

And then you admit that you can't think of any use for the word within this new definition you constructed! So why not simply take this now unused word, and use it to describe the concept I mentioned above that you seem unable to describe with another word, as it was originally intended?

[Tellemurius]

Can we just be happy that our government is working towards its citizens?

[Aklyon]

Can we just be happy that our government is working towards its citizens?

We could complain more, I suppose.

[misko27]

Estimates of the value of life

In the US, the following estimates have been applied to the value of life. The estimates are either for one year of additional life or for the statistical value of a single life.
 $50 000 per year of quality life (international standard most private and government-run health insurance plans worldwide use to determine whether to cover a new medical procedure) [5]
 $129 000 per year of quality life (based on analysis of kidney dialysis procedures by Stefanos Zenios and colleagues at Stanford Graduate School of Business)[5]
 $6.9 million (Environmental Protection Agency)[6]
 $7.9 million (Food and Drug Administration)[7]
 $6 million (Transportation Department)[7]
 $7 million (median value for prime aged workers) [2]
 
The income elasticity of the value of statistical life has been estimated at 0.5 to 0.6.[2] Developing markets have smaller statistical value of life.[2] The statistical value of life also decreases with age.[2]