Who is Jane Galt?
Yesterday I read a chirp on Hit and Run about how "Jane Galt" (Megan McArdle) was now blogging for Atlantic. I kind of blew it off, until Beck rubbed my nose in it. And it really is JUST as bad as he says.
In discussing the morality of a single-payer system, those efficiency considerations are irrelevant. In discussing the morality, one thing matters: who is made better off, and who worse off, by the system? ... But I think many of those who read the post attributed to me a much broader claim that no government transfer would be moral. That is not so. I was questioning the moral justice of the enormous, blunt transfer between huge classes that is necessarily embodied in a single payer system, or at least one such as the versions of mandatory pooling envisioned by wonks like Ezra. Many people took that to mean that I believed there was therefore no moral argument in favor of caring for the sick. I confess that I'm surprised that someone like Scott Lemieux would make such an error, but as I say, perhaps I was unclear.There is indeed a very compelling moral argument to be made in favor of some sort of government sponsored health care finance, which is simply this: no one should die, or suffer unduly, because they don't have the money to pay for treatment. Some of my libertarian readers will say that this still doesn't give the government the right to take the fruits of our labor by force, but in fact, I find this argument fairly convincing.
I don't know what's more appalling: that...or 90% of the comments after it...or the blase reaction of the libertysphere to it. But I must say that Andrew Sullivan is becoming a most accurate indicator of quality and truth; if Sully likes it, it sucks.
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