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[–] bikergang_accountant 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Of course healthcare is expensive. It involves a lot of resources. Allocate accordingly.

Currently housing is much more expensive than food. Imagine a world where that was backwards. Food was largely expensive but having shelter was cheap. The world would be just as functional and no one would be morally wronged to a degree different than now seeing as both are needs. Some sectors are going to be expensive. That doesn't mean it should be free because you've imagined in your head some amount it should cost.

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[–] peacegnome 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

It only touches on the scarcity of doctors. The whole thing is a government granted monopoly; not just anyone can open a hospital, not just anyone can make/sell/buy drugs, not just anyone can take a strep culture, not just anyone can x-ray an arm, etc. Then whole thing is a scam; it is the government taking money from people and giving it to other people by force. It is just like, and along side, taxes.

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[–] bikergang_accountant ago 

Of course healthcare is expense. It hasn't become cheap yet.

In time things become cheap but certain sectors are sticky. Food, cheap now. Electronics, crazy cheap when you consider there are trillions of transistors inside a single microcontroler inside of a cheap ass kids toy which if you bought straight from china would basically cost shipping.

Some things are sticky. Power electronics are expensive. Shelter is expensive. Healthcare is expensive. Guess what, life is expensive. There are going to be certain sectors which cost a significant amount because they having been perfectly solved. The efficiency of the market in reducing prices to almost nothing for some items has made people think they have a right to things being almost free.

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[–] daskapitalist [S] ago  (edited ago)

Then why does medical care not covered by insurance become better, faster, and cheaper?

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[–] bikergang_accountant 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

This is something I've been struggling with, understanding which of these good are "sticky" and why. I think possibly the market invests money in reducing the costs in one particular segment at a time, like the sector that gives the best ROI for reducing costs in it. This is entirely emperical and not even studied on my part but I've noticed some costs are stable over time and some have been impacted by "the great cheapening" (made up term just now).

I think the day of awakening for each segment exists and will eventually have price reduced but everything seems to exist as part of a divide. Either prices have droped by half or more since the 90s or they have not dropped at all.

Non-free markets may have something to do with it because why invest in making something cheaper that is futile. So I think a few segments can satiate the total money spent on making things cheaper so it's a binary selection. Each segment could take upto I(s) for each segment and has R(s) rate of return for the activity of trying to make it cheaper, with Itot as total. The ones with greater R(s) recieve their full I(s) until Itot runs out. I also think that there isn't a downwardly monotonic marginal utility (deminishing return) for all levels of I(s)actual. Some money spent in an area leads to breakthoughs which makes it more opportune to do more. So I think until some sectors are exausted others are ignored for breakthroughs.


The other idea is intrinsic costs. Some things apparently have no intrisic cost and some maybe do. Processing is one without intrinsic cost. The price halves for what you get every 5-10 years. But power electronics you just can't bring their price down for some reason. It's gotten to the point where I can run a $0.20 micro controller powered by a $10 power supply. One of these is more complex than the other. Even the most powerful LEDs are much cheaper than you think. 90% of the cost in any LED lighting system is the power conversion. This is a problem that has existed for many years, is well understood, and has universal application. Yet reducing an LED's cost by 20% would produce a 2% reduction of cost in any system it's used in while a 20% reduction in cost of the power components would get you 18% savings. Dispite very little motivation to reduce the cost of LEDs it just keeps happening.

Edit: Dude. I totally misread your question. I'm still keeping what I typed.