Good evening again, Tim!
We hashed much of what you wrote, so I'll move on to a statement you just made that might be considered a fresh one regarding the use of government vs. the free market.
Tim Bedding wrote to everyone...
The state is unnecessary? So we just allow murder to go unpunished? How does the free market help the poor to get medical aid?
Most Libertarians would certainly not suggest that the State is unnecessary. However, most would also say that the State is trying to do things in which, by nature, it cannot do because it is an agency of 'force'.
The 'free market' you allude to here is something very different, since it's character, or nature, isn't necessarily driven by force but rather by choice, including volunteerism.
You might recall just a few short months ago when the horrendous sub-oceanic eruption occurred in the Indian Ocean and hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and voluminous property and infrastructure was destroyed instantly, that it wasn't necessarily 'government' that was able to really meet that challenge.
As you might remember now, the US government proposed a rather niggardly sum of $300+ million in relief to the victims of this disaster. At the same time, individual charity organizations, and voluminous numbers of people not only met what the government decided was enough to spend, and spent their own money voluntarily to aid these victims. This was entirely voluntary. And it was in an amount far in excess of what the US government itself forced the taxpayers to spend on the relief effort.
So, why would you even suggest that the poor, in a free-market context, would not have access to medial aid? Doctors Without Borders is only one organization that comes to mind, that routinely reaches around the globe to meet medical demands when various governments, using force, can't meet the challenge.
Are you trying to suggest that ordinary people, in a free market system, would not meet demands and challenges for poor people in need of medical care?
Here's a better question to ask, namely: Do you believe the government really cares at all whether or not anyone receives medical attention, including the poor? Politicians are driven by, and purchased by powerful well financed special interests. That is exactly how most, or the majority of them, ever see the light of day. None of them really cares at all whether you, or your grandmother falls prey to cancer or some other devastating disease. Their only purpose driven life is to get re-elected to public office, and hence pass the laws of the elite that finances them.
On the other hand, Real people, most of them anyway, really do care, and will do something to alleviate the ills you speak of regardless of whether or not the government does anything at all. That, my friend, is the free market you just spoke benignly of. These people do not operate by compulsion of force, but rather by concern and exercising their own right of free choice, and in a free market environment.
Kindest regards,
Frank
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