[HaZeust]

>"Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?"

Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you. That's the foundation of socialization, everyone's resources - that they fork over from taxation - is shared for various activities and settlements that give as many individuals (past, present and emerging) as much of an acceptable baseline of living as it can.

To be sure, the goal of socialization is also not usually to make everyone rich or give immense quality of life, it's to make sure everyone has the same "lowest" bar for things that members of society deem as essential, and that the bar set as "lowest" is as humane and efficient as possible.

[RHSeeger]

>> "Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?"

> Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you.

I'd set the reason as even more basic than that. Children are absolutely essential the future of society. There is literally no way to argue that is not true.

Since they are essential to society, we should be working on ways to support them; as a society. Now, this can be argued against. But I feel pretty strongly that "I do not think it is important for us, as a society, to works towards goals that beneficial to society" is a fairly brain-dead stance. You can argue about the best uses for _available_ money; but to argue that's a matter of priorities, not "is it a valid goal".

[hellojesus]

I think my most basic argument is that society is the result of many individuals' participation. It should be viewed as emergemt of individuals working together and not as an organism in-and-of itself.

To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society.

These redistributions are not pareto optimal and have major deadweight losses and introduce moral hazard.

[RHSeeger]

> To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society.

We have an entire system of laws we put in place to force people to increase their utility within society.

What your statement is effectively arguing is... to go with anarchy; that we should not have rules that change human behavior, because human behavior _should_ be to maximize utility.

I think it's pretty well accepted that "just let everyone do whatever they want" isn't a viable system for a society.

[hellojesus]

You still need constraints. The law should exist to protect private property. The government should collect taxes to fund the legal system and public goods.

But I absolutely agree that the government shouldn't do much, if anything, more than that. Incentives to shape behavior should be extremely limited, because the government is the only entity that is allowed to force involuntarily transactions.

Voluntary transactions ensure that the transacting parties have a pareto optimal outcome. This is what should be maximized, even at the detriment of the longevity of society itself.

[immibis]

Why should the government do exactly the things that benefit society, benefit you, and don't benefit Debbie, but not the things that benefit society, benefit Debbie and don't benefit you? This is just disguised selfishness.

I'm not deep enough in the theory to know whether "voluntary transactions create a Pareto-optimal outcome" is a true statement. I suspect not, because of information asymmetry and so on.

Pareto-optimal is also kind of an arbitrary stopping point - you chose it because it supports your argument, not because it's actually a good one. If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that?

[hellojesus]

> Why should the government do exactly the things that benefit society, benefit you, and don't benefit Debbie, but not the things that benefit society, benefit Debbie and don't benefit you? This is just disguised selfishness

I want the government to provide the things that benefit Debbie and me equally, and only those things that benefit us equally.

> If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that?

How are you defining good? The same resources may be more equitably distributed, but ultimately the same fixed resources exist, and now poor Elon is far worse off. My point of search for pareto optimality is exactly that we should avoid this outcome because it's not better. Following it to it's logical conclusion, redistributing all wealth until it was exactly equally divided amongst the population would produce the most good outcome.

[Damogran6]

"We're making accomodations for the disabled because, on average, 100% of the population is disabled at one time or another."

[hellojesus]

I pay something like $150/month for private LTD insurance. All the government policies do is force everyone to participate with lower expected benefits. It would be more efficient for people to privately purchase it, where those who don't assume the risk of noncarry.

[Damogran6]

I'm talking about ramps to public buildings and handicap accessible bathrooms. It's a public good that most people don't realize they're actually going to use at some point.

Everybody drives the same roads ("Why would I pay to maintain Smith Street? I've never driven on it?"), some people REALLY need a firefighter in an emergency.

[hellojesus]

> I'm talking about ramps to public buildings and handicap accessible bathrooms.

To the extent these impact public buildings, I think this is a good thing. Just like I think public employers should not be allowed to discriminate based on age, race, etc.

But in both cases I would argue that private companies should not be held to the same standards.

Firefighters could arguably be a public good in that they are (approximately) nonrivalous and are definitely nonexcludable. In addition, fire fighting as a public good prevents the free rider problem that would likely exist with this service in the private market.

[HaZeust]

Sounds like a pretty good policy to back to me. I’ll never understand people that want to take advantage of the foundations of society for themselves, then become rather churlish when its their turn to do the same for others.

[hellojesus]

> that the bar set as "lowest" is as humane and efficient as possible

But by definition it is inefficient. Redistribution of money from Person A to Person B necessarily means Person A can't spend that money. If their optimal utility was to give that money to Person B, you wouldn't need such a policy governmentally.

Socialization makes sense for public goods, but healthcare and parental leave are both nonpublic.

As an annecdotal example, my state offers 12 weeks of parental leave. The maximum they are willing to pay is about $550/week. My company provides two weeks of paid leave. So for 10 weeks, I get the $550 from the state. But my w2 income is about 2k/week post tax, post 401k max. So I would forgo about $1400 a week to stay home. Daycare costs $550/week, so it's far better for me to work. But then I don't get the time off. And yet I still pay for others. This is an example of a terrible implementation of the already bad policy.

[jakelazaroff]

No, it's definitely more efficient:

- Preventative care is far cheaper and more effective than reactive care (e.g. your dentist telling you to floss more in a particular area vs. filling a cavity vs. filling a root canal)

- Insurance is more effective at dispersing costs amongst a larger pool of people

- In a system like the US where insurance companies must negotiate prices with healthcare providers, larger pools have more bargaining power

[hellojesus]

Yes, but what happens when you remove competition? Bargining power becomes absolute.

What happens when the single purchaser of healthcare refuses to pay an amount sufficient to raise supply to meet demand?

[jakelazaroff]

There's no need to ask this as a hypothetical; simply look at the many, many countries that have successfully implemented such systems.

[HaZeust]

I used to actually bat against universal healthcare for this reason, until COVID. The majority of private insurance companies are already doing that, here.

[hellojesus]

I think this is mostly because the US system strips choice from the individual. I hypothesize the outcomes would be far better if we decoupled private health insurance from employment and allowed an oprn market for individual consumers.

[jakelazaroff]

I have good news: the open market you're describing already exists! You are free to decline your employer's health insurance and sign up for a private plan at healthcare.gov.

[vel0city]

Your anecdote values time with your newborn children at $0 and assumes people are physically able to immediately return to work after having a child. Seems like a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of life with a newborn.

It also ignores the societal costs of separating mothers and babies at such extremely young ages, reducing the rates of successful breastfeeding, and more.

It also assumes a considerably above-average income job.

Your username is hellojesus. Which action is more Christlike, providing for children and families or hoarding your wealth? Are we called to build bigger barns?

[hellojesus]

I omitted the valuation of time with my child since it is hard to capture empirically.

> It also ignores the societal costs of separating mothers and babies at such extremely young ages, reducing the rates of successful breastfeeding, and more.

I'm not ignoring this cost. I'm stating that this cost should be borne by the individual that elected to have a child; e.g., lowered labor participation for some duration. The current US federal policy recognizes this by allowing unpaid leave for some duration.

> It also assumes a considerably above-average income job.

My point exactly. If above average compensation is actively harmed by this policy through deadweight loss, it means the policy is bad. This ignores the plethora of moral hazard that is introduced too. For example, how to we reconcile those laborers that take 12 weeks of paid taxpayer vacations only to promptly quit their job upon restarting it? These folks were always going to drop out of the labor force; now we've given them 12 weeks of free money redistributed from productive members.

> Your username is hellojesus. Which action is more Christlike, providing for children and families or hoarding your wealth? Are we called to build bigger barns?

Religious inclinations should direct followers how to execute behavior for themselves of a voluntary nature. It should not be used to dictate that everyone in society follow the same moral orders at the behest of a gun, which is what governmental policy does.

[vel0city]

That you phrase it as a "vacation" and can't seem to put a dollar value on it but obviously less than a couple hundred dollars a week really points to the idea you have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't think anyone thinks 12 weeks with a newborn is a vacation, and yet most people probably wouldn't trade that 12 weeks with their newborn for anything in the world.

> I'm not ignoring this cost

You literally are ignoring the cost, as its not your given model. And its not a cost that will only be borne by the immediate caregivers, there are knock-on costs throughout society that will be felt by this change.

[RHSeeger]

> Socialization makes sense for public goods, but healthcare and parental leave are both nonpublic.

Challenge. Healthcare is very much a public "good". The healthier evereyone is, the less we spend on healthcare overall. And the more we can accomplish overall. It works in everyone's benefit for society to be healthy.

The same way it works in everyone's benefit to have roads. We both want to get to the store/work/etc, and want healthy people to take care of those places. Neither one is a need, both are beneficial to everyone.

[hellojesus]

There is a duality to providing healthcare as a public good, and that is preventive care through lifestyle choices may diminish. I'm not so careful as to not have four pops a day because the gov will pick up my diabetes tab. It's not clearly a net benefit to society.

For the record, I also suggest roads do not meet the definition of a public good.

[collingreen]

The government subsidizes the birth rate because it has decided it IS a social good to have a constantly replenishing workforce (and potential military force). You may disagree with doing that but the argument that it isn't a social good doesn't match where those policies are coming from.

Moreover, this blinders-on-libertarianism "I should only pay for things directly for me" approach doesn't work if you pick and choose; you have to address it in context of the entire system (ie, you can't silently accept all the benefits and only shout about the individual moments you don't come out on top).

This society, for better or worse, pools money to do things at scale even when some of those things don't have the direct and equal benefit to every individual, instead aiming for a general good for all, stability, and a platform for everyone to have higher potential.

Yes, this gets abused in many ways and yes, it should always be constantly evaluated for effectively spending money.

However, your anecdotes about how the women or the poors get more than you in certain policies aren't impactful without looking at the whole which includes everything from the roads, breathable air, a widespread and capable workforce, a dynamic labor market, powerful financial markets, a justice system, fire departments, and lots of consumer protections so we can focus on growth instead of spending all our time trying to research if your bank is actually a scam or if the restaurant down the street washes their hands enough.

[hellojesus]

My anecdote was used to show how the policy introduces moral hazard and deadweight loss. I would equally oppose it, as I do things like government mandated smoke-free restaurants, even if they benefitted me. I would moreso prefer that smoke-free restaurants exist because the market dictates it wants them by not transacting with smoke-partitioned restaurants.

> everything from the roads, breathable air, a widespread and capable workforce, a dynamic labor market, powerful financial markets, a justice system, fire departments, and lots of consumer protections so we can focus on growth instead of spending all our time trying to research if your bank is actually a scam or if the restaurant down the street washes their hands enough.

There is certainly some gain in being able to outsource research, but it is difficult to determine if it is a net good for society or the individual due to the moral hazard it generates. Not worrying about your bank being a scam allows actual banks to take on outsized risk and then not face any repercussions. It skews the appetite for risk that disproportionately benefits risk takers. For a recent example, see the Silicon Valley Bank failure, which the FEDs totally bailed out to prevent a collapse across many more banks, mostly because those banks overleant at low mortgage rates and couldn't sell the low interest notes at face value after the rise in interest rates, leading to a liquidity crisis.

Focusing on growth comes at a cost; lots of inefficies are introduced. Instead, we could focus on being efficient and low waste and allow the growth to come naturally.

[vel0city]

> due to the moral hazard it generates.

The moral hazard of checks notes mothers breastfeeding and attending to their newborn children and husbands asssisting for a few weeks. Yes. What an absolutely upsidedown society we'll have if we allow such a thing to happen. Terrible. Need to ensure that doesn't happen.

And we need to reduce the rate of this happening to ensure checks notes wealthy people continue producing at high rates to profit the even wealthier.

That so many people have such mindsets and continue to wonder why our birthrates are dropping is astounding.

Wake up buddy. Keep drawing these lines. See where they go. I guess we'll both be dead though, so it doesn't matter.