Comments on: Towards minimal government: http://www.eridu.org.uk/blog/2007/10/22/towards-minimal-government/ Liberalism and general burblings Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:04:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Jock http://www.eridu.org.uk/blog/2007/10/22/towards-minimal-government/#comment-16277 Jock Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:24:24 +0000 http://www.eridu.org.uk/blog/2007/10/22/towards-minimal-government/#comment-16277 Of course my prescription, if you pardon the pun, is for full land value tax funding a citizens' income to distribute the mutually created value of the "common wealth" - economic "land" to everyone equitably. They then choose to eke out a meagre life on that basic income - choosing where to purchase services accordingly - or work however many hours and at whatever rate they are willing to accept (no minimum wage) to top it up with no marginal tax penalties for doing so. But I've been looking more at the Health Service - I concluded something similar about <a href="http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/paying_education_0" rel="nofollow">education</a> a month or so back. The NHS is one gigantic protection racket so far as I can see. Necessary it might have been to co-ordinate the distribution of resources when the country was broke, post war, but with GPs contracts and consultants' contracts, favourable drugs deals with pharmcos, monopoly status and so on today it does have the hallmarks of a protection racket, which cannot be good for the end users. PS - Maybe it's just my Firefox, but there's something really weird about this reply box by the way - it seems not to wrap at the end of the box but about ten characters later and until you type beyond the end of one box height's worth and get vertical scroll bars there's no horizontal scroll bar either to let you see what's "hidden" beyond the end of the box. Of course my prescription, if you pardon the pun, is for full land value tax funding a citizens’ income to distribute the mutually created value of the “common wealth” - economic “land” to everyone equitably. They then choose to eke out a meagre life on that basic income - choosing where to purchase services accordingly - or work however many hours and at whatever rate they are willing to accept (no minimum wage) to top it up with no marginal tax penalties for doing so.

But I’ve been looking more at the Health Service - I concluded something similar about education a month or so back. The NHS is one gigantic protection racket so far as I can see. Necessary it might have been to co-ordinate the distribution of resources when the country was broke, post war, but with GPs contracts and consultants’ contracts, favourable drugs deals with pharmcos, monopoly status and so on today it does have the hallmarks of a protection racket, which cannot be good for the end users.

PS - Maybe it’s just my Firefox, but there’s something really weird about this reply box by the way - it seems not to wrap at the end of the box but about ten characters later and until you type beyond the end of one box height’s worth and get vertical scroll bars there’s no horizontal scroll bar either to let you see what’s “hidden” beyond the end of the box.

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