We Need More Competition in Government

Arnold Kling and Scott Sumner both advocate a return to decentralization and federalism-based policies. I particularily like this paragraph from Kling:

I would like to see more experiments and more variety. Instead of having a big national contest over what health care system, why not try single-payer in one part of the country and radical deregulation in another? Switzerland, which is about the size of Maryland, has different health care systems in each of its 20-odd cantons, which are about the size of Maryland counties. Surely it must be possible to try different health care approaches in Texas and Massachusetts.

I do not see what is unreasonable about this. One may say that this would lead to potentially devastating situations in states that took a more decentralized approach, but even if this were true, those peoples could move to a state that offered a more centralized approach if they felt that would benefit them.

Also, Sumner implies that comparing the United States to smaller, far less diverse and complex countries like Denmark and Switzerland is a mistake. I think it is safe to say that it gets exponentially more difficult to centrally plan for a country as it gets larger. Thus, the argument that the US should centrally plan health care because smaller countries do it effectively is a backwards statement. We shouldn't centrally plan precisely because these smaller, less complex nations are competent at it.


UPDATE: Here is Reason's Peter Suderman's take on Kling's post:

I'm obviously wary of socializing medical payment, even at the state or local level. But given the opportunity to see single payer compete against a genuinely deregulated market, I'm pretty sure I'd bite. And I suspect a lot of single payer supporters would too. But that sort of political competition isn't in the cards. Instead we're stuck with a broken, compromised system in which neither side gets what they want: On one hand, the government controls nearly half of all medical spending, but failures get blamed on the free market. On the other hand, those who want to sweep away the current system and socialize medical insurance get stuck with messy legislative compromises larded with handouts for special interests. You could make the Beltway centrist's case that this is a good thing—that political systems shouldn't cater to extremes. But in this instance, we've got a system that's catering to almost no one [emphasis mine -ed.] And in the meantime, we're stifling innovation and experimentation on both ends of the political spectrum.

Constitutional or Not?

Steve Chapman writes about whether current health care legislation is constitutional or not. From the article:

“Never in the history of the United States has the federal government ever required someone to engage in an economic activity with a private party,” Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett has said. If the Supreme Court goes along, he said, “there’s pretty much nothing Congress can’t do.”

George Will offers his thoughts here.

The only argument I've heard so far is the ICC, but I think that is a major stretch.

All In and Out?

Russell Roberts:

The real implication of Brown’s victory isn’t that the Republicans can now stop the Democrats. It’s the informational signal it sends to current Senators that they have over-reached. A lot. When a Republican wins an election to replace Ted Kennedy whose signature issue was health care in perhaps the most liberal state in the country, and he wins running against ObamaCare and as a real Republican not some Republican Lite for Massachusetts, it’s a wake-up call of enormous proportions.

It seems fairly obvious to me at this point that Obama and Co. have vastly overplayed their hand. US Senators, Representatives and even the White House are going to react to this in a way that is going to make true-blue liberals furious. But whether good or bad, right or wrong, it seems thats what the doctor has ordered.

The State of the Union is going to be fascinating.

Logic Trumps Politics. As Usual.

Don Boudreaux asks a wonderful question of Nancy Pelosi:

Reacting to Republican Scott Brown’s election to the U.S. Senate seat once held by Massachusetts’s Ted Kennedy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that “Massachusetts has health care… The rest of the country would like to have that too. So we don’t say a state that already has health care should determine whether the rest of the country should” (“Gut-Check for Obama and Dems on Health Care,” Jan. 20).

Questions for Ms. Pelosi. If the citizens of Massachusetts are able, without any further legislation from Congress, to foist on themselves the kind of government-directed health-care that Ms. Pelosi alleges the rest of the country desires, what’s stopping people across America from doing in each of their states what the people of Massachusetts have already done in that state? Why does Congress have to act at all?

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

I would love to hear her answer.

New Feature: Episodes of Skepticism

I would like to introduce a new feature here at Non Incautus where we take skeptical views of conventional wisdom. Here are some topics I hope to broach in the future:

Are borders obsolete?

Should performance-enhancing drugs be allowed in professional sports?

Are anti-trust laws self-defeating?

I do not hold any definitive opinions on these topics, only feel skeptical about their traditional answers. I think this will make for some interesting conversation.