> My new neighbors – artists, musicians, shop owners, builders, gallerists, restaurateurs – treated me like family. Our community was diverse in age, but we all had our independent creative pursuits in a place with scant economic opportunity otherwise. Thus, many of us shared the same problem: a lack of access to healthcare. America’s healthcare system has long been in shambles: then and still today, where single-payer care was available, premiums and deductibles were astronomical. Luckily, among our friends were doctors and dentists who valued the work we did as equal to their own. So, we came up with a plan. Drawing on the age-old system of barter, we figured out a way to trade – the art of medicine for the medicine of art.
I wish they'd gone more in-depth with this part of the story, instead of trying to tie a bunch of different things together under a vague "collapse of capitalism" theme. The healthcare problem is much more acute and their solution is much more interesting than the rest of what the article covers.
qnsi 1626 days ago [-]
sounds like a solution to help each other with easy to treat conditions like flu etc. How would they perform surgery?
Also this whole "barter" is just regressing to the times without one of the most important innovation, money. Going without money because you don't like capitalism is like cutting the Internet cord because you don't like Google
_bxg1 1626 days ago [-]
Money is the very problem. Capitalism pushes prices towards whatever brings in the most profit, not towards what does the most good for the most people. Those two things can align to varying degrees in different domains, but in healthcare they are extremely divergent. Any solution to the healthcare problem requires either artificially warping the market, or circumventing it. Single-payer healthcare is an example of the former; the bartering idea is an example of the latter.
I'm not going to place a bet on barter-based healthcare taking the country by storm, but it's good to see people experimenting with alternate systems, especially when this one seems to be working in at least this small test case.
jmpman 1626 days ago [-]
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?
_bxg1 1626 days ago [-]
I don't believe pure communism can ever work, but yeah, I agree with the principle of this statement.
qnsi 1622 days ago [-]
I am not that knowledgable, I study at business university with some economics classes.
In my understanding, in monopoly there is an incentive towards rising prices to gain the biggest profit. In competitive models, market price is getting lowered until profits reach 0 for all companies.
This is of course ideal. I am capitalism biased, mostly because my parents lived under communism, and after it ended Poland achieved great growth (inequality has risen, so there are people with other views)
One thing that is the big topic now, is healthcare. Of course there is no gain in comparing developed country like USA to Poland, but our healthcare is one of the worst in EU. Czech Republic, not that richer and also post-communist has much better place regarding healthcare (12th in Europe, Poland is 31st)
I hope I didn't bore you, maybe perspective from forgotten part of the world is interesting for you
Estonia and Slovenia are also high in the list. Estonia has competetive system. Slovakia has more centralized system I think, but they spend a lot of GDP % on healthcare I think.
Rendered at 09:58:28 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I wish they'd gone more in-depth with this part of the story, instead of trying to tie a bunch of different things together under a vague "collapse of capitalism" theme. The healthcare problem is much more acute and their solution is much more interesting than the rest of what the article covers.
Also this whole "barter" is just regressing to the times without one of the most important innovation, money. Going without money because you don't like capitalism is like cutting the Internet cord because you don't like Google
I'm not going to place a bet on barter-based healthcare taking the country by storm, but it's good to see people experimenting with alternate systems, especially when this one seems to be working in at least this small test case.
In my understanding, in monopoly there is an incentive towards rising prices to gain the biggest profit. In competitive models, market price is getting lowered until profits reach 0 for all companies.
This is of course ideal. I am capitalism biased, mostly because my parents lived under communism, and after it ended Poland achieved great growth (inequality has risen, so there are people with other views)
https://www.theglobalist.com/poland-economy-gdp-european-uni... This portal seems to be biased, but article has some info about what improved in Poland
One thing that is the big topic now, is healthcare. Of course there is no gain in comparing developed country like USA to Poland, but our healthcare is one of the worst in EU. Czech Republic, not that richer and also post-communist has much better place regarding healthcare (12th in Europe, Poland is 31st)
I hope I didn't bore you, maybe perspective from forgotten part of the world is interesting for you
Estonia and Slovenia are also high in the list. Estonia has competetive system. Slovakia has more centralized system I think, but they spend a lot of GDP % on healthcare I think.