Hayekian critique of Obamacare

Hayek correctly predicted that socialism must be despotic, because it cannot operate according to laws, but according to decrees. And so we see the President issued a speech declaring his intent to ignore and unilaterally change some parts of a law, passed by Congress and signed by him, that he was suddenly finding inconvenient and then enforcing obedience on state employees, non federal government employees to obey his words and ignore his laws.

But, Hayek tells us, even this does not work, because the decrees are apt to be mutually incompatible. They cannot all be carried out. And so the Pharaoh winds up commanding bricks to be made without straw.

Issuing a thousand page law is revealed to be, in practice, the equivalent of issuing no law at all, and issuing thousands of pages of regulation, in practice, the equivalent of issuing no regulations at all.

The usual meaning and manifestation of anarcho tyranny is black privilege – that Martin Trayvon was allowed to get away with crimes against white people that that white people would rightly be prohibited from committing against each other, and that white people are required to treat black thugs like Martin Trayvon with special respect that they do not receive from each other, and still less from blacks.

But we are seeing another meaning manifest, another form of anarchy, that the commands issued by authority are chaotic, inconsistent, lawless, arbitrary, and mutually incompatible, that authority, trying to command more than it is capable of, is flailing chaotically, helpless to plan, far too capable of causing injury, disrupting the plans of others: We see socialism as so accurately depicted by Hayek.

Obama made a bunch of promises that could not be fulfilled simultaneously. And now he commands that they be fulfilled simultaneously, giving commands without bothering with any legal authority, and successfully enforcing obedience, though of course the obedience is unlikely to produce the expected results.

This is the slippery slope where socialism produces more socialism. The logic of events leads to killing fields, as commands mysteriously fail to have their intended effect, requiring ever greater extra legal powers which in turn require ever greater extra judicial punishments of ever more numerous “wreckers”.

While in general the Cathedral has moved ever leftwards, every time it was in danger of being sucked into the the socialist maelstrom, it has backed off.

On past form therefore, one would expect an successful tea party movement of massive deregulation and denationalization, of abolishing government departments, starting with genuine markets in healthcare, though leftism in other areas would continue and accelerate.

Does not seem likely.

An alternative interpretation of past form is survivorship bias: We only see those brands of leftism that managed to resist the socialist maelstrom, because the others were sucked in and perished in horror and blood – that the past escapes of the Cathedral were mere luck.

Survivorship bias means one starts with a many dice, throws each one. The one that does not come up six, gets smashed. Pretty soon you have only one dice remaining, which has a past form of coming up six, which is to say, past form of backing away from the socialist maelstrom.

It is possible to back off from socialism, and anglosphere leftism has survived this long by doing so whenever it found itself drawn towards that whirlpool, instead focusing on going leftwards in some different direction, though the further it goes leftwards in other directions, the harder it is to resist the pull of the socialist whirlpool. Backing well away from 1949 style socialism by nationalization, which today it will not touch with a ten foot pole, it now finds itself sliding into the whirlpool through socialism by regulation.

The trouble is since the government has elected a new people, it is ever harder to repeat past form. To back away from the socialist maelstrom this time around, will likely need to fix the electorate

Backing off from healthcare socialism means drifing towards a two tier system, where the poor and the healthy get free government healthcare that is worth ever penny and the government wards smell of death, and the middle class themselves pay for their healthcare and control it, a mixed economic system best exemplified by Singapore. That is a mixed system, not a fully capitalist system, but it is capitalist enough to avoid the killing fields, and to make sure that only unimportant people go to the killing hospital wards.

With Obama’s slide into rule by decree, the gulag is now in sight, though as yet only a small cloud on the horizon. At which point the Cathedral can ask how it wound up with thousand page laws and no budget, and back off from that path, which is to say a lot of Cathedral insiders secretly turn to the Dark Enlightenment, or the Cathedral keeps merrily sailing ever leftwards with gulag in sight and looming larger.

Past form is that it will find a way to back off from socialism and find some other direction leftwards. But past form may well be a survivorship illusion.

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25 Responses to “Hayekian critique of Obamacare”

  1. Ken Anderson nhs

    Hayekian critique of Obamacare « Jim?s Blog

  2. The Hivemind (a much better term than Cathedral, with less baggage) tends to shift its preferred “useful idiot” class every few decades. (There’s more than one way to elect a new people.) I suspect it’s currently shifting from blacks to single women.

  3. Until we are willing to admit just how bad things have gotten, we will never be willing to accept the solutions that are necessary to start fixing things.

  4. Ita Scripta Est says:

    Hayek the buddy of Pinochet chirping about “despotism”? What about Right-liberalism did that burst onto the world scene because a bunch of people got together and decided to adhere to the non aggression principle? Or was it rather through mass violence and despotism?

    • jim says:

      Allende imposed marxist tyranny and economic collapse. His socialism necessitated that democracy be crushed, and he proceeded to crush it.

      Pinochet’s big error, like Sulla’s, was that he saved democracy, an error that leftists like Ceasar never make.

      • Ita Scripta Est says:

        Allende imposed marxist tyranny and economic collapse. His socialism necessitated that democracy be crushed, and he proceeded to crush it.

        Pinochet’s big error, like Sulla’s, was that he saved democracy, an error that leftists like Ceasar never make.

        My point was more about the hypocrisy of Hayek and other modern Ancap followers who fail to own up to the fact that when their social orders have been tried they were almost always accompanied by tyranny” and in some cases mass property theft. Libertarians constantly assert that there ideas are somehow the most moral and humane when history has shown this to be the furthest from the truth.

      • Ita Scripta Est says:

        Allende imposed marxist tyranny and economic collapse. His socialism necessitated that democracy be crushed, and he proceeded to crush it.

        Pinochet’s big error, like Sulla’s, was that he saved democracy, an error that leftists like Ceasar never make.

        My point was more about the hypocrisy of Hayek and other modern Ancap followers who fail to own up to the fact that when their social orders have been tried they were almost always accompanied by tyranny” and in some cases mass property theft. Libertarians constantly assert that there ideas are somehow the most moral and humane when history has shown this to be the furthest from the truth.

        • Steve Johnson says:

          No libertarians here – no one here is persuaded by the idea that tyranny (i.e., no voting) outweighs secure property rights.

          …and a libertarian state would be much more moral and humane than the bloodbath that is at the end of leftism.

          The main problem with a libertarian state is that it doesn’t stop itself from being taken over by leftists.

          • Steve Johnson says:

            Well, that and it’s not well suited for societies with significant numbers of sub-100 IQ or clannish members.

  5. […] This is the slippery slope where socialism produces more socialism. The logic of events leads to kil… […]

  6. […] Liberty in an unfree world « Hayekian critique of Obamacare […]

  7. […] Hayekian critique of Obamacare « Jim’s Blog […]

  8. Thales says:

    Meanwhile, since the law is the law and Obamacare remains the law of the land, any insurance policy offered that violates the provisions of the ACA is illegal, and therefore unenforcible in court. If you were offered your old policy you could sue your insurance provider for fraud since the contract is illegal and you’re paying real money (thus giving you standing to sue), and Obama can’t grant immunity to the insurance provider — he can only promise he won’t prosecute them himself.

    Even if you did purchase a policy that is technically illegal, the policy’s provisions can’t be upheld in a court of law because an illegal contract is unenforcible, and thus void, much as if it were a contract to deliver cocaine and heroin at a specified price. You can’t take it to court, and so if the insurance company decided not to pay your health care costs as required in the contract, there’s nothing you could do about it.

    Only the legislature can grant immunity from lawsuits, not the administration, so the insurance companies would be foolish to offer such policies because all their customers could sue them for fraudulently offering a policy that doesn’t meet the new ACA guidelines as required by law (“this policy doesn’t cover male pregnancies, so I’m suing”). Further, almost all corporate codes of conduct disallow employees from taking actions that are illegal, whether the law is being actively enforced or not.

    So is Obama encouraging US companies to violate US law and encouraging American citizens to likewise violate the law of the land? Yes he is. One could argue that his actions constitute racketeering, given two obvious offenses under RICO (fraud and obstruction of justice – i.e. obstruction of enforcement of the ACA law), which would make it a federal crime punishable by 20 years in prison and a $25,000 fine, plus treble damages in civil suits.

    • jim says:

      Laws? We still have laws?

      I am reminded of my discussion on Orthosphere, where I was debating Christian adherents of the major Churches, who are still under the impression that the major churches are still Christian.

  9. Zach says:

    The sum, is greater than the parts:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKwHxGGzP80

    As death embraces…

  10. Red says:

    Having an opposition and being less blood thirsty than most leftist movements appears to be the brake on the cathedral leftward slide. But now their opposition is little more than token and they’re starting to be more and more blood thirsty. Oprah was calling for the murder of all racists the other day and I’ve heard similar if less explicit statements from others of the left.

    • jim says:

      As Sunshine Mary observed, leftists are oppressed by reality itself, so do not acknowledge being on top and privileged.

      Thus racism and sexism, strangely, never go away, no matter how much privilege women and black receive, which justifies ever more drastic measures against their oppressors.

      This is a different problem to socialism, where the failure of the economy to follow laws and regulations justifies abandoning law and regulation for direct command, and the failure of the economy to follow direct commands justifies ever more drastic measures against wreckers.

      • Red says:

        The leap between kill the racists and kill the capitalists doesn’t seem to be that great. Once the left starts killing wreckers of any type they’ll have to apply it to area after area.

  11. Zach says:

    …and no, I don’t think Milton has the last word…

    just sayin’

  12. Zach says:

    Well, after googling, I think you mean Hayek. Milton did not appreciate his economic work, but greatly appreciated his political and social philosophy.

  13. Zach says:

    Never heard of Hakek? Do you mean Hayek?

  14. Zach says:

    First sentence explains all that follows, in blog or in reality.

    Good shit.

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