Maggie's Farm

Supply-and-demand can seem like a cruel and inefficient way to allocate resources sometimes. But it's like what they say about democracy. It's a terrible system until you compare it with every other system anyone has thought to try so far.

Sometimes, I swear, people talk as though you could run the medical system on altruistic principles instead of supply-and-demand. The doctors would all just selflessly donate their lives, as would all the medical researchers. The investors would selflessly donate their capital. Or the minority of U.S. citizens who are taxpayers would selflessly donate a big chunk of their own profits in the form of taxes so they could pay wages and returns to doctors and medical investors, who would then have to be only semi-altruistic.

The problem, of course, is that most of these people are not genuinely altruistic at all. You can't depend on them to give this all away for free, so you've got to take it from some at gunpoint before you can pretend it's free for the ones you redistribute it to. Wouldn't it better to have a reality-based system? Most of the people in it will be profit-seeking. A few will have become so rich in some other way that they can afford to donate their services, or to donate their money to others who can then donate their services.

We'd have to admit that most people are not purely altruistic, but in return for that painful acknowledgement, we'd have more and better medical care available for more people on the terms that more people actually want.